Everyone wants to receive unconditional love, but how many give unconditional prayer to the Lord? By unconditional prayer, I am talking about praying for the Lord’s will “no matter what” that means in our lives. Most of us pray for “the Lord’s will”, yet we still have in mind what we want Him to do for us. We ask Him to “help me” to do this or that, because we believe we must receive His help. But what most Christians do not acknowledge is that we do not need only His “help,” we need Him to actually take over our situations and life and “make us” into who He desires us to be. Once again, it all comes down to the daily surrender of our life to the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we surrender our life to the Lord, we realize in our “head” that we need Him to lead us and help us; but we rarely truly surrender in our hearts until we hit a wall that we cannot overcome. We have head knowledge of what we should do and what we know is right, and we ask the Lord to “help me” do those things and become who He desires us to be. But the change and revelation does not make it to our hearts until we hit a wall that forces us to realize we cannot change ourselves, He must change us. As long as we are doing the changing and laying our “flesh” upon the alter, we can still take it back and compromise when things get hard…It is our choice and we will “choose” to go back to our old ways when the going gets rough (we tell ourselves that we can always “choose” to give it up again later, right?). The only way we can be changed into the image of Christ is to allow the Lord to “make us” into His image. If He “takes” a piece out of us that does not reflect Him, we cannot take it back and change our minds about giving it to Him…it is gone. As we grow and surrender in Christ, we will hit many walls that will force us to either choose to go in our own direction (not the direction the Lord is leading) or to throw our hands up in surrender and allow Him to have His will in our life and change us to go through or over the wall.
I would like to share one of my wall experiences with you. Many years ago, I hit a wall that helped me to realize what I am sharing with you in this post; I could not change my situation or myself and that only the Lord knew what was best for me. I finally said, “I can’t do it and I can no longer live like this, YOU HAVE GOT TO DO SOMETHING!” Yes, I was yelling…actually crying out to the Lord very loudly in the Spirit. I had to die to pride and had to make the choice of allowing the Lord to do what He knew was best. I always wanted him to prove that I was right or make things better. He had other ideas, He wanted to change and strengthen me to help me through that stormy period in my life. It was at that wall that I finally stopped asking him to “help me” and acknowledged to Him and myself that He needed to “make me” into whatever I needed to be to make it through the situation. I stopped praying conditional prayers asking Him to help me to do what I wanted to do “for Him” and began praying unconditional prayers asking him to “make me” into whoever and whatever He needed me to be. My prayers are no longer about me, but are now about Him.
Often we have no idea what it is that will need to change within us or in our lives, so taking the step of unconditional prayer is stepping out in faith into the unknown, trusting the Lord will be there every step of the way. Sometimes he chooses to lead us through an open door with a clear view of the path before us. Other times he will choose to lead us into the dark, lighting only the next step on the path before us. It is on this dark path that we must surrender our own will and knowledge of how things “should” be done, because only the Lord knows where the path will lead. It is also along these dark paths that we realize our dependence upon Him.
He is there waiting for us to pray unconditional prayers of surrender to Him, so that He may “make us” into His image. We must choose daily to surrender to His unknown will for our lives, trusting that He knows what we need and what is best for our lives.
Your style is so unique compared to other folks I’ve read stuff from.
Thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess I will just book mark
this site.
Very nice depth 😀
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I could not refrain from commenting. Well written!