dear God

dear God,

i thank You and i love You. You've seen the deepest longings of my heart, God, dealt with me in times of complete ignorance, hypocrisy, selfishness. You've been patient and merciful and gracious, abounding and overflowing and forgiving in Your grace. i ask that You would make me small, but exalt Yourself. i ask that You would show me what really matters, God, and that i would only care and regard those things. i ask that You would give me a life worth living. You're the One who breaks me down and builds me up and tells me who i am and what i need to do and how i should live my life.

i'm weak. i feel the pressures of this world and this life, i feel the desperation and the indulgence of acceptance. my brain begins to lag under the weight and fatigue. still, You're the only One who sees me, and it's been like this for years. You call me as Your own, gently, to Your peace and to Your comfort and care. at the end of the day, You're the only One i want to see me. You're the One i want to hear, saying "it's okay. I've got you. I'm holding you."

may my heart be filled with Godly sorrow, with holy dissatisfaction and pursuit, with the awe of a righteous Judge, the fright of an omnipotent King. may i be humbled, for all these false securities and facades i put up are just waiting for me to let them fall down, to expose my own weakness and dependence on the Greater One. God, how unprepared i am, how small and little, how unable and incapable i am of greater things. i have no capacity to love, to come alive, to erupt in joy over joyous things. how helpless i am in my own filth, how completely undeserving, how completely wrong to think myself worthy or deserving of any great treasures, any precious riches.

but if You are jealous for me, surely that does change everything. surely that does make my heart beat, and suddenly my nakedness before You isn't such a bad thing after all. suddenly my desperation is turned to praise, beauty given for ashes. and this done on no intellectual grounds, no rational accomplishment. but You loved, and so we may love back. You approached and pursued, so let me be still-ed. and You qualified, so let me be unashamed.