A Prayer

Lord, as I met you in prayer today it suddenly dawned on me that you must have certainly been up there shaking your head while “tsking” me, and perhaps even chuckling a bit. It was almost as if you were saying to me, “Joey, Joey, Joey” when you were shaking your head. Just as suddenly I realized why I had had that thought.

Here I was, in honest and earnest intention, sharing with you the sins which had prompted the prayer, asking, even begging, for your forgiveness. That was followed by a pleading—“take this sin away from me, Lord.” I had previously been thinking about that sin and reflecting on the words of Paul in his well-known passage in Romans, the do-do statement, where he wrote about questioning himself. He wanted to know why he did the things he didn’t want to do and didn’t do the things he wanted to do, and I equated those sentiments to my recent sins.

Then it dawned on me, Lord. You are a giver. You are not a taker. And, I was asking you to do something that you don’t do…take my sins away, instead of thanking you for so very graciously and amply giving me every single tool to make the right choices so as not to sin in the first place, tools I simply keep ignoring. Yes Lord, you gave me the free will to make those choices, and I made the wrong ones.

Lord, it hurt me to sense that you were shaking your head at me and “tsking” me as I asked you to take my sin when I realized that you gave me everything in the world, including Your Son, to not sin in the first place. Forgive me for not using those gifts to bring about the change in me you so desire for me. May my imagined response of Yours become a benchmark upon which I will, in the future, make those better choices, using your gift of free will to make Kingdom choices instead, choices that are pleasing to You!