Jan 15 - Deeper Repentance

Prayer was tough today in several different ways. To start out my car had a flat tire and Laura's car was nearly out of gas and wouldn't start for a while. Fortunately, God had woken me up about thirty minutes early so I was able to roll with the punches and still get to morning prayer a little early.

Dad told me that the night before was spent repenting. I guess there was more to do because that's the direction we went in this morning as well. There has been a common prayer for several days that we would begin to have conviction over the things that have just become common place in our lives. Whether it is that we have given up on certain callings, battling sin, or whatever. Would God show us how He wants to remove those things from our lives? He is into big transformations after all.

Dad read Psalm 51...open our lips and our mouths shall proclaim your praise. The need for desperation in repentance became a focus of my prayers. Desperation for the pure water that washes away our every sin. And yet we are like the lame man who sits by the pool of healing water. It is available to us and we are unable to move.

Can we be desperate like the woman with the issue of blood, desperate like the blind man who cried out "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner", desperate like the father of the demoniac who spoke for all of us when he said "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." Lord we repent, help our unrepentance. Lord we are desperate, help our lack of desperation. Lord we want more of you, Living water rain down on me.

I repented personally for a spirit of criticism that seeks to destroy. This is a tough thing for me because it is such a part of who I am, how I relate to people, how I joke with people. It is in the fabric of my personality. So I've always considered it to be something of an untouchable. But over the past few days I've felt God asking me to open that up for him. All I can do is say I'm failing in that area. Please God, make me clean.