Y.A.P.

Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the mis-formed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life. You also know my reluctance to let you have your way with me in these areas. Here the deeper cry of my heart for wholeness and by your grace enable me to be open to your transforming presence in this reading. Lord, have mercy.

God of our creation and re-creation, you who are constantly at work to shape me in the wholeness of Christ, you know the hardness of the structures of my being that resist your shaping touch. You know the deep inner rigidities of my being that reject your changing grace. By your grace soften my hardness and rigidity; help me to become pliable in your hands. Even as I read this, may there be a melting of my inmate resistance to your transforming love.

Gracious and loving God, it is with thankfulness that I hear your call to become Christlike. Something deep within my heart stirs in its heavy sleep at your call. The  memory of something I was to have been, but I'm not, yet could still be flits on the fringes of my consciousness. O loving God, stir up this hunger in my heart until it becomes the all consuming passion of my life.

Gracious God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, deliver me, I pray, from the easy habit of thinking that my spirituality is something between you and me alone. It is so difficult to except the idea that my spiritual wholeness cannot be attainable outside of my life with others. Help me to open my heart and spirit to what you want to say to me in this chapter. Help me to commit my relationships to you, that they may become channels of your grace in my life and that I may become a channel of your grace for others.

Thank you, oh God, for meeting me here in ways far beyond my knowing. I thank you for working in many in ways far deeper than my awareness. I thank you for your love. It enfolds me even when I am most resistant to your presence. I thank you for your grace. It offers yourself to me even when my back is turned. I thank you, as I come into your presence in this chapter, for the infinite variety of your creative power in my life. I thank you for the infinite diversity that you have crafted into me. It makes me a unique person. As I think upon this, I pray that you will enable me to be truly thankful for the creation gifts you have given me. Enable me to offer myself to you in them for the work you want to do in me and through me in my life in the world.

Thank you, gracious God, for your steadfast love and patience with me. Even though I persist in the misuse of the creation gifts you have given me, you continue to call me out of my incompleteness into the wholeness you have for me in Christ. Even when I try to hide behind a "spirituality" that confirms me in my incompleteness and brokenness, your love neither abandons me nor tolerates my evasions. Your love becomes troubling grace that shakes my foundations and breaches my defenses. Help me to let you do your disturbing work in my life in this chapter. Let it become for me a mirror in which you show me what you want me to see about myself.

If you are praying this prayer it is a simple thing to change the line "in this chapter" to in this situation, circumstance, relationship, etc.

Oh God of wholeness, when I consider the lack of balance and wholeness in my life, the one-sided spiritualities with which I attempt to appease you, to appear good in the eyes of others, and to please myself, I come face to face with my need for a holistic spiritual life. Help me, I pray, to hunger and thirst for the wholeness you have for me in Christ. Help me to be willing to surrender to you whatever stands in the way of such wholeness.

Oh God, I feel like Abraham must have felt when he started his journey of obedience to you, not knowing where he was going. I am uncomfortable not having control of my itinerary, not being able to choose the route. While my present state of brokenness and incompleteness is not always pleasant or comfortable, at least I am accustomed to it and know my way around in it. Help me to let you lead me out into the unknown; overcome my fear with your love, my hesitancy with your hope for my wholeness.

Gracious and loving God, I confess that the idea of "discipline" raises negative feelings and thoughts in me. Perhaps I think of discipline as punishment; it may raise dark shadows of long forgotten and deeply buried abuse as a child. Perhaps I think of discipline as a heavy burden imposed upon me by some outside agency; it may call to mind such experiences from my past. I have difficulty thinking of discipline as a positive and creative dimension of my relationship with you. I especially have difficulty seeing spiritual disciplines as a means of your grace in my life. Can't you simply touch me at the points of my brokenness and incompleteness and make me well and whole? Help me, Lord, to receive what you have for me here. Help me to be willing to put my feet upon the narrow way of the disciplines that will bring me to complete freedom in your love.

Oh God, the consideration of the classical spiritual disciplines has awakened me to the radical nature of being a disciple of Jesus. I have seen so many aspects of my practice of Christianity that have simply been my own form of works righteousness. I have seen many areas of my discipleship that need to be reconsidered. I have been challenged to undertake frighteningly new disciplines and to begin to walk in unknown paths with you. If the classical disciplines are so challenging, what do the personal disciplines hold for me? Help me to be open and available to you, to place my life at your disposal, that you may fulfill your purposes in me and through me.

Gracious and loving God, I stand in awe of your infinite patience. You desire my perfect wholeness. You are deeply desirous to make me perfectly whole, even to the extent of entering into my brokenness and taking its death into your own being on the cross. And yet you never violate my independence, you never trample upon my free will, you never usurp the integrity of my being. You wait and infinite patience for me to open my life to your cleansing, healing, liberating, transforming grace. You wait for me to willingly cooperate with your purposes for my wholeness. Help me, oh my God, to offer to you the deep inner yieldedness of my being that will enable my spiritual disciplines to become avenues of grace in me.

Gracious and loving God, we thank and praise you for what we have been sharing together. We thank you for your presence with us. For the work you have been doing in our minds and hearts, for the ways you have been touching our lives, known and unknown, we give you praise and thanks. And as we come to the final aspects of our sharing, may we again, by your grace, open our lives to you fully, completely, and give you permission to do whatever you want to do in us through these pages. Help us, in the depths of our hearts, to say yes to you in a fuller, more complete way. Guide us by the anointing of your Spirit, that we may receive what you have for us.

Oh God of peoples, nations in history; you who became incarnate in the midst of economic, social and political injustice; you who call us to incarnate the reality of your kingdom in the midst of the world's destructive values, structures and dynamics: we confess that we would much rather limit our relationship with you to the comfortable confines of our own insulated world. We are prone to withdrawal and to create islands of security within which we can live in some degree of peace and comfort without having to see the pain and anguish of the world outside. We are tempted to limit our spirituality to the narrow boundaries of our self circumscribed world. Oh God of justice and mercy, help us see that to be conformed to the image of Christ is to be thrust out into the world as agents of your redeeming, healing, liberating, transforming grace. Help us to see that our growth toward wholeness in Christ cannot move toward its fruition apart from our life in the world. Guide us in our consideration of this reality in this chapter, and help us to be open and responsive to what you are saying to us.

These prayers start the chapters in M. Robert Mulholland Jr.'s wonderful book,  Invitation to a Journey. This book was required reading for one of my Seminary classes. Since graduating I've read it twice more and it still leaves me convicted and feeling like I need to read it again.