In Our Weakness

My God! My God!

Father, as I sit here listening to the quiet. Counting the ticks and tocks of the clock behind me, feeling the warmth of the blanket on my feet and breathing deep for a brief moment I am relatively still. I am rarely still. I am in constant motion—fluttering and flitting. Fixing and straightening.

Father, settle me. Settle us.

Constantly I am trying to meet my own needs by my own enterprises and abilities. Forever am I attempting to reason it all out, to try and make sense of it all, but I fall short. My abilities never meet the need and my reasoning never connects completely.

Only you can meet our needs. Only you can cut through all the hem-haw, all the excuses, all the explanations and sidelines and pinpoint the real need and fill it. Only you.

This week, Father, I have been disoriented. Like I have been blindfolded and turned around way too many times. The blindfold is now off, but I can’t seem to determine which direction I need to go. You always know which direction I need to be moving. Please help us today to trust you with this. Help us to ask you where the good way is and to actually walk in and on it. The good way is not just metaphorical. We need to know where to walk today, Father.

In our marriages today…show us how to listen. Really listen. Not with one ear and waiting to speak our piece even before our husbands are finished talking. Help us serve. Show us that being a servant is far different than we have been taught. Show us how to serve our husbands without expecting something in return. Shield us from the enemy’s darts: little benign things that suddenly fester.

In our mothering today…show us how to be patient. Really patient. Not the grimaced if-I-get-through-this kind of patience. But the patience that bears out because of the Holy Spirit. Show us how to love our children in ways that would truly benefit them. I pray especially this morning for mothers of almost-grown and grown children. Help us, Father, to learn to grow in your graces as a mother. Teach us how to love these children-grown, how to benefit them, how to pray for them, how to offer guidance without being overbearing and interfering.

In our friendships today…show us how to bear one another up. Help us to be encouragers. How to be safe places. Enable us to speak the word into people’s hearts. Help us to speak hard things in gentle ways. Help us to honestly rejoice with those who are rejoicing and seriously mourn with those who are mourning.

In our relationship with you today…help us to do as you have commanded. Out of an obedience rooted in love and gratitude. Help us today not only hear your word, but to use it and breath it. Father, help us be honest with you. Help us call sin sin. Show us the way of repentance. Enable us to turn. Help us to understand we need you. Shut our ears to the world’s mantra that depending on you is weakness. Help us to understand that coming to a place of acknowledging our need for you is crucial. It is in our weakness that you are revealed strong.

Father, we ask these things today in the precious, gracious and blood soaked name of Jesus. His name is above all names. He is above all things. In him all things work and hold together. Today may we be found in his name.

Amen