My Prayer

My friend Mack loves the prayer of Jabez. But in reading one of my favorite sections of scripture, I found a prayer that is the cry of my heart that I had never noticed before. It is found in Exodus 33:12-13, "Moses said to the Lord, 'See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.'" 

Nestled among these words I found the very simple yet profound cry of my heart, "Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight." In these words we see the true beauty of knowing God. When we find favor in His sight, we find a desire to continue in His favor. We find a desire to know Him and to please Him. We do not find the desire to be blessed with any other blessing other than His presence. It is a consuming fire within us and proves Hebrews 12:29, "for our God is a consuming fire." It is the same fire Jeremiah felt in 20:9, "f I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot." This same fire burns within me, and my prayer is that of Moses, "Show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight." It is the one consuming thing in my life that burns away all the dross of other fears or desires that might consume me. Praise be to God for His unspeakable gift.