Just Loving and Serving Them

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Being Set Free by the Compelling Love of God

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. Ps. 63:3-5

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge. Eph. 3:17-20

Dear Lord Jesus, King David’s words of unbridled adoration, in praise of you and your love, are a rebuke to my measured heart. I spend a lot of time and energy trying to make a “better” life for myself, yet David speaks of your love as being better than life itself! What a holy paradox, unparalleled wonder, and heart-expanding possibility. Oh, to know your love in such a sensate, soul-satisfying, whole-life-transforming way.

What would it be like to be so alive to the width, length, height, and depth of your love, that I lose control—so free that I shed all of my insecurities and inhibitions; fear of man and dread of failure? David danced with shameless nakedness before the returned ark of the covenant. Why can’t I be as free before the finished cross of glory?

I have no trouble singing to you or lifting my hands in the assembly of your people; but I want to be free to love out loud in contexts not so safe and predictable. I want your compelling love to mark all of my relationships. Free me, Lord Jesus, to love one woman well the rest of my life, no matter what that involves. Oh, that my wife would taste your delight by the way I relate to her and seek to honor her. Oh, that my children would see their dad not just growing older, but growing deeper and richer in grace.

Lord Jesus, free me to use fewer words in relationships so there’s more space for listening, sitting still, and savoring other people’s stories and struggles. I want to be a friend who offers a substantive taste of how you love us—how you love me. Oh, that the aroma of grace would be released more copiously and consistently through my life…

I want your love to be so compelling that I don’t think of “witnessing” to people, just loving and serving them. I want your love to be so satisfying that I find it hard to make excuses for my brokenness and much easier to live transparently and authentically before others. I want your love to bring forth hot tears of compassion and loud guffaws of joy. I want your love to set my heart to live at the pace of grace. You’ve set me free for eternity. Jesus, please set me free for today. So very Amen I pray in your merciful and mighty name.