TILL HE COMES Blog

Yesterday I made a post about how God is a stripper, meaning that He strips things out of our life to make us more usable for Him. I’ve been going through some trying times in my life recently, and amidst all of the frustration and questions of “Why, God?” it was as if God said to me, “Jeremy, it’s because you’ve been praying for it! I’m only answering your prayers.”

You see, one of my prayers while in seminary has been for God to make me into the kind of person He can use to reach the kind of people that many churches cannot or will not reach. More on that in future posts…  I guess that to make me into that kind of person, God has has to strip me of some things.

So the anwer to “Why God?” is “He’s answering my prayers.” 

In fact, He’s answering my “life prayer.” The prayer of my life is not found in the Bible. Oh sure, I pray the prayers in the Bible, and I pray Scripture, but the prayer I pray most frequently was penned by my favorite poet, John Donne. If I had realized how painful the answer to this prayer would be, I’m not sure I would have ever started praying it. 

Anyway, here is my prayer, as prayed first by John Donne in Holy Sonnet XIV.

Holy Sonnet XIV 

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

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