The Prayer that Saves Me

It’s the prayer that hits all the Goliaths of my sin square between the eyes. I read it and fall to my knees.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really pray this prayer at all. I hold it in awe and choke it down. I look at it askance, always out of the corner of my eye, never straight on. I might be burned. Yet the wholehearted surrender grips me tight and I can’t put it down.

I don’t have hands this open.

I need another Copernican Revolution.

Self, who do you revolve around? Who is your gravity, your breath, who built you from two cells to four?

If He is God, faithful and trustworthy, can’t I brave prying open the fingers of my life? If He loves, can’t I crawl into the deep caverns of His goodness?

This prayer sifts and quakes and sweeps and saves me from the prosperity gospel I could easily sign up for on some days. Pray this prayer and receive all your heart desires? Where’s the dotted line?

Do you have the courage to pray this prayer?

“I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt;

put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing;

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.

So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

From the Watch Night Service by John Wesley, possibly 1755