Good Gifts

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer about the Disciplines of Grace

It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. Heb. 13:9

While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. 1 Timothy 4:8

Dear Father, the health clubs and fitness centers are packed with post-holiday traffic. Once again, scores of us seem ready to leave the sugar/butter/carbohydrate binge of the past six weeks for the purge of exercise and sweat. This is a good thing, for stewardship of our physical hearts and bodies does have value, and it does bring you glory.

Yet I’ve never been more aware that spiritual formation based on the “binge and purge” cycle simply doesn’t work. I see this most clearly in my relationships. When our fail to meet with you regularly, it affects how I meet with anybody else. Our spiritual hearts need to be strengthened by the grace of the gospel daily, all year long. We cannot afford periods of “cruise control,” when we leave the banquet of your love for a buffet of comfort foods, fast foods, and junk foods. Just like the physical hearts you’ve given us, our spiritual heart muscles will atrophy if we don’t take care of them.

So I thank you for the “means of grace”—the good gifts you’ve freely given us to help us grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus. Thank you for the Bible, your written Word, through which you reveal yourself and feed us with the riches of the gospel. Thank you for prayer, meditation, and corporate worship, by which you meet and fellowship with us. Thank you for the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, these tangible expressions of your covenant love and grace.

Father, you won’t love us more or less based on our use of these good gifts. But we certainly demonstrate and deepen our love for you as we do so. By the convicting work of your Holy Spirit, help us to be far more concerned about flabby, graceless hearts than bigger love handles. Because you love us, don’t let us get used to being spiritually lazy. Forgive us when we use grace as an excuse from, rather than as the power for a more disciplined life.

May our training for godliness be far more apparent than our training for looser fitting jeans.  May we come to the point where we’d sooner avoid air and water than the means of grace. May this be a year in which a passion for gospel sanity trumps an obsession with personal vanity. So very Amen we pray, in Jesus’ loving and faithful name.