prayer over psalm 23

Lord, you are my shepherd, and I am but a dumb sheep. I can’t even make decisions on my own for my good, yet you put up with me. I need You, I need You. I love You and yet my actions, my life, my worries, my anxieties don’t reflect that in the dark times, even in the light times I struggle with what appears to me a lack of allegiance to you. Oh to let go of this world’s stuff and grab a hold tight to you, that is what I want. Lord I want nothing more than to honor you, but yet there seems to be something missing in me. Why do I look for a formula, for a list, for a method, for a way to know you other than what you have put forth. It seems to easy, yet it is so hard. Your free gift costs everything and yet cannot be received for payment. Lord help me know your acceptance, in the midst of my sin, my failure, my filth, that I can’t clean myself enough, can’t muster enough service to gain any acceptance than through your Son. Lord I fight with thoughts and deception that I cannot be yours, because I fail so often, my heart wanders, my mind becomes distracted, but You pull me back to you. Lord my dependence is upon you and you alone. Take away the voices of deceit that tell me that you could never love me, that I am never good enough, tricking me into thinking that this is what it is about. Because you could never love me for myself, but only for your Son, the glorious Christ. Help me to know you more as I desire to be closer and closer and lead my family closer. I want to be free, I want to be apart from my selfishness that rages inside me. catch me Lord, I fall sometimes, place me in the cleft of the rock and let me see your glory, such that I would shine. I don’t deserve it, I fear it, but I want to see it. I want to be awed by an overwhelming awe of who you are, by the greatness of you, to have you not able to be seen because your immensity fill my vision such that everything else falls away. Not as an escapist of this place, but that I would see and then turn and live like I know you, like I fear you, like I love you because you are an awesome God, who so often I put in a box, who so often I diminish as powerless against the problems in my life and yet, the truth, still abides that you set all in motion, your mouth spoke all into being, you tossed the stars into the sky, whom shall I fear? Why should I fret. Lord Come in Power and take this life that I hold out to you, FREE ME for your glory and give me grace to know you more and more. You alone do I want to live for, for you my God are great. Amen