A Prayer of Repentance

Father, for too long I've loved theology without loving You. I've compiled it... used it as a notch on my belt... A trophy on my case... A way I earn my identity through my own knowledge... Instead of learning you...knowing you, not simply knowing about you. It's no wonder that my heart can be so far away from you in beautiful moments like today...

For too long as a pastor, I've taught text and context while the subtext of my heart was proving myself to you, to others and even myself. Like a mother bird I have often chewed up and spit out your glorious Word to feed those you've placed under my care, while taking none for myself. Pride leads to malnourishment. When theology becomes a list of ethereal principles and truths, the heart gets lost. Sermons dry up. Communities veer off course. Life loses its meaning. Ministry becomes a dead-dry duty.

I repent. I am ashamed at how frequently I have cannibalized your truth in the form of tweets and blogs in order to gather oohs and aahs from spectators. I am so sorry for seeking to honor myself in your name. I am sorry for using you.

I pray that we as disciples would begin seeking your heart. That we would begin seeing you and knowing you through truth, and not for our own sake, but simply for the sake of knowing you, God. That our hearts would change in this process of seeing you as you are. That as we make disciples we would be pointing them to you, not to disconnected truths about you. Help us to become a people, not marked by pride in how much we know, but marked by humility because of who we know... By who's name we have been called... Called by sheer grace.