The Nearness of God
Description
Pray like Jabez:
I don't want to make plans and ask You to bless them, because You chose me and appointed me that I should respond to Your bidding (John 15:16). Instead, fill my vision with Yourself and beckon me where You are truly in Your plans to redeem the time.
Enlarge Your harvest through the seeds of my life sown in the ground to die (John 12:24-25). I await Your manifestation and timing, confident that the righteous yield of Your Spirit has its times and seasons of greatest "ripeness" which You have marked out for me.
Let me be not even a breath away from You, my whole life directed toward Your person and Your presence. You have numbered the very hairs of my head (Matt. 10:30). How foolish I would be to let go of Your hand and run my separate way, ahead of You, much less away from You!
Guard my heart, and set a watch over the door of my lips (Ps. 141:3, Isa. 6:5-7). You have established around me the blood shield of the perfect Sacrifice which has neutralized all the hurt of hell assigned against me.
And God answered his request. It is Your greatest delight to give me unveiled openness before You (Isa. 58:9a), as I abide in You and behold You as You are, not my religious caricature of You, and as I mirror the character of Your Son (2 Cor. 3:18).