HomeGod has created all things for His glory. Start there. Children created for His glory. Children created to reflect His glory. Marvelous gifts they are. Mirrors of ourselves in many ways, mirrors of our relationship with God, mirrors of our sinfulness, mirrors of God’s grace, mercy, freely extended.
I am frustrated at myself, how I demand strict obedience of my child, yet I don’t strictly obey God. I am convicted, many times tonight, such that it pains my soul, my very being and angers me, with me, with her, with my unfaithfulness. How awful I am, wretched and sinful before God, carrying on about all things about me, me centered, when in fact, I should be Christ centered, recognizing His gift and what has allowed me into the throne room of God to pour out my heart in the first place. It is amazing I have not been struck from the earth.
I have been praying that I would be filled with passion, hunger, desire. I have been filled with pictures of my failures, wrongs, my ugliness. Ironically, this has made me more hungry, more intent on figuring out where I am at and how to get closer to God. And then this tonight, my daughter being rebellious and my disciplining her and discussing things with her just blasting me in my face about how I treat God, exactly the same way, except worse, as my daughter treats me.
Lord, oh God, I fear I am often far from you. I long to be close, to hear your voice and to see your face. Lord, draw me near, I admit my faults, my faithlessness, my disobedience. In so many ways. In not being passionate about your word, in not loving others as myself, in being petty over so many things. In being harsh or angry with people. All these things happen often in my life, more than I care to count in any given week. HELP ME GOD! If you don’t come, I am lost, if your spirit does not rule my life then I am undone. I have only you. Lord, I am not a good leader in my home, I am weak. i have listened to the devil and fell victim to his lies and allowed that to discourage me in my leadership position. I have continued to be passive in many ways, instead of going to war against the things that you despise. Lord help me to do that. I beg you to lead me in leading my wife, my daughter in loving and Christlike ways, but firm and in faith and in Love. We are at war with sin and this requires violence towards my sin. I need to kill my own sin, or rather, to allow you to kill it in me. I must be intentional. Not allowing nature to run it’s course, but to wield your word as a weapon against the things that I am faced with. Lord, help me to institute family bible time, where each of us is in the word together, nightly. Help me to pray with my wife, more than just when I arise, but also when we are both awake, way before we go to sleep. Help me, admonish me to allow Brighton to see this. Lord, take my hunger for the word and spread it throughout the house. increase it in me Lord. Give me practical, down to earth things to share with a four year old about your word, with a little girl already attentive to your statutes. Lord, help me to bring joy and life and excitement into studying the word together that it is not a duty in this family, but a delight and a time of celebration as we look upon your promises and your great deeds and works and see your Glory. Lord make this true in my house. Make it start with me. Put people in my life that will call me out on it. Put this desire on the hearts of other men near me and that we would follow this together. Let my wife know, through my actions and my life that Your are most important, that you are the center of all that I have, we have and that she, of all earthly relationships is treasured above all other earthly things and relationships. I am a busy man, who lacks focus. Help me to focus on loving You first Lord, then my wife, then others, and fill me with a love that does not end, that does not wear of doing good, but that seeks relationship, not isolation. Lord you are awesome above all things. Majestic and Mighty in all ways, your enormity fills my vision, blinds me, terrifies me. Lord, extend to me the grace that I would fear you, revere your, be awed by you at all times and that I would never tire of proclaiming your name. Lord, let me be a light, let me not fade, let me not disappoint you or waste another day of my life for the world, but to pursue you and to bring gain to your kingdom. In Jesus Name I pray that you would come in power. AMEN.