Monday Meditation: My Prayer

 

 

  "Not My will but Thine."
(Luke 22:42)

Image courtesy/Evangelical Times

 

 And shall I pray Thee change Thy will my Father,

Until it be according to mine?

But no, Lord, no, that shall never be, rather

I pray Thee blend my human will with Thine. 

I pray Thee hush the hurrying eager longing

I pray Thee soothe the pangs of keen desire.

See in my quiet places wishes thronging,

Forbid them, Lord, purge, though it be with fire. 

And work in me to will and do Thy pleasure.

Let all within me, peaceful, reconciled,

Tarry content my Wellbeloved's leisure,

At last, at last, even as a weaned child. 

 "My Prayer"
Amy Beatrice Carmichael
(1867-1951)
Irish Missionary 
Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship
in Tamil Nadu, India

"He who suffered in Gethsemane will be our strength and our victory too. 
We may fear, we may also sink, but let us not be dismayed, and we shall
yet praise Him, and look back from a finished course, and say,

"Not one word hath failed of all the Lord hath spoken."

But in order to do this, we must, like Him, meet the conflict, not with a defiant,
but with a submissive spirit.  He had to say, "Not My will, but Thine be done."
but in saying it, He gained the very thing He surrendered.  So the submission
of Gethsemane is not a blind and dead submission of a heart that abandons
all its hope; but it is the free submission that bows the head, in order to
get double strength through faith and prayer. 

We let go, in order that we may take a firmer hold.  We give up, in order
that we may more fully receive.  We lay our Isaac on Mount Moriah, and 
 we ask him back, no longer Isaac, but God's Isaac, and infinitely more
 secure, because given back in the resurrection life."

"Days of Heaven upon Earth" 
A devotional written by
Reverend Albert Benjamin Simpson
(1843-1919)
Canadian preacher, author, theologian and
founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance