Stir Up a Compelling Desire - Prayers of Our Predecessors (May 26)

 

And without faith it is impossible to please him... Hebrews 11:6

The Prayer:

Our Father, which art in Heaven, with praise on our lips and thanksgiving in our hearts we, Your children, worship You. From Your hand we have been fed; by Your bounty we have been clothed; and day and night under the shelter of Your love we have dwelt in safety. In the poverty of our service of You we have freely received all things.

Forgive, we beseech of You, all our ingratitude. Cast away all remembrance of our sins, for with sorrow do we repent of them them before You. Stir up within a compelling desire to love You above all else, and to do in our living all Your will concerning us. 

Grant us Your Grace that in word and though and deed we may show that we have been with Christ and learned of Him. May, in some measure, Your Kingdom come through our living, and so Your Name be glorified. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit make us fit for Your service in all our days here, and bring us in Your own good time to Yourself, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Man. 

John Gribbel, Philadelphia, Penn.

The Author:

John Gribbel was an industrialist and philanthropist. He was born March 29, 1858 and died August 25, 1936. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal denomination as well as a Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut) trustee. 

Thoughts:  

When you read about a wealthy industrialist in the early 1900s, a caricature of greed springs from the pages of history books. And while I have no idea what the true nature of John Gribbel was (as a human being as fallen as the rest of us I would suspect) his prayer seems to be honest and Christ-Centered plea. It sounds like the prayer of a man who has seen immeasurable blessing in his life and yet is constrained by his devotion to Christ as not to chalk it up to his own ingenuity, but the goodness of the Lord. This prayer is not what I would expect of a greedy caricature. Instead, he prays, "Stir up within a compelling desire to love You above all else..." Perhaps aware of his own desire to love things, Gribbel prays that he might love the Lord above all else. 

The prayer itself is compelling. Would that we in our lack or bounty be willing to pray for the love of the Lord and the doing of His will to be our preeminent desire and our greatest love.