college

I Don’t Know a Lot

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I will be the first to confess that there is a whole lot out there that I don’t know. Particularly when it comes to mathematics or statistics or anything having to do with numbers. I escaped Algebra my freshman year at Union University and haven’t looked back since.

Some days, I feel like I know less than I used to. That is, there are a lot more things I am a lot less certain about than I was ten years ago. Or even five.

I do know a few things with an increasing certainty.

1) My God loves me with a love that is radical almost to the point of being embarrassing. It is a love that is prodigal and liberal and generous and unending.

2) That I am as much in need of grace as I ever was. I truly believe that I love grace as much as I see my need of it. Those who think they are fine without it don’t really put much stock into it, but those who know they are lost without it embrace it with every fiber of their beings. I am one of those in the second category.

3) What will convince a lost world of the genuineness of our faith isn’t how well we can defend and prove what we believe or how adamantly we can argue our side or even the impressive number of good works we can muster. It’s about how much we love each other. That was turned the 1st century world upside down and that’s what will turn our world right-side up again.

4) I know for 100% certain that God is good and His plans for me are good. Period. What I think and feel may tell me differently. What my eyes and ears tell me may speak a different story. But I know in the deepest core of my heart and mind that while my feelings and thoughts and eyes and ears may deceive me and lie to me, God never ever will.

I think that’s all I need to know.

A Prayer for My Friends Tonight

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God, I bring my friends before you tonight. I know that You know what they need better than I do and even better than they do.

God, they are burdened and heavy-laden with work and with school, with spouses and with romantic relationships, with family and friends.

Grant them Your perfect peace tonight and enfold them in Your arms so that they can feel You near to know that You are just as near when they can’t feel You.

Grant them the joy than transcends circumstances and events, good or bad. Joy that can only come from You and that other people can only attribute to You.

Give them wisdom in their friendships. Bring people into their lives who will draw out the God-colors in them and inspire them to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to above all yearn for Jesus more than life itself.

Remove the people who hinder them being who You called them to be. Lord, even me, if I am a hindrance to Your work in their lives. Give them the grace to let the people go who You take out of their existance.

Above all, give them a single passion and vision: to follow hard after You, regardless of what it costs or what anyone else around them thinks. May they see only You and love only You. May their love for others be Your love flowing through them.

Lord, cause Your face to shine on them and be gracious to them. Take them to the lowliest people and let them be Your hands and feet to those who will never be able to repay what You do to them through my friends.

I pray for success and prosperity and good fortune for my friends. More than that, I pray intimacy and a deeper, wilder love for You, even if it comes at the expense of success and prosperity and good fortune.

Thank You for my friends. May they know how grateful I am. Much more than that, may they know each and every day and all through the night how You love them and how fond You are of them and how You call them beloved and how You are their Abba Father. May they each hear the sweet sound of You singing with joy over them in the deep waches of the night.

That’s my prayer for them tonight. Amen.