"Come on, Eileen
Oh I swear
In this moment, you mean everything."
—Dexy's Midnight Runners
Okay, so it's not a Bible verse, but it kinda sums up the momentary religion of the flesh, doesn't it? At any given moment, we are singing subconscious praises to whatever we are desiring—"In this moment, you mean everything." We are pretty pathetic, when you think about it. One moment we are echoing Dexy's midnight ode to a person we're attracted to and in the next to a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger. (Any stress eaters out there? I see that hand.) There are so many things offering so many things. Can you blame us?
The Lord can. He sees our fickle, feeble hearts yearning after every tantalizing morsel put before our eyes. He hears the praise he deserves that we instead sing to work, sex, food, entertainment, family, children, church. "In this moment, you mean everything." But only he can bear that weight. And when we put the meaning of everything on anything besides him, we abuse it. Then the weight comes back to us, deflating and crushing and condemning.
But the loving God does an amazing thing. He turns around and takes the crushing too. He puts it on his son. In that moment, his son means everything, and in every moment forever after, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" Pretty much covers everything there.
And in his grace, the Lord shares his glory in exciting, satisfying ways. John tells us that "from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" (John 1:16). So our Savior who is everything, who means everything, who owns everything, takes our nothing into himself in order to actually grant us the everythingness from himself in place of the vacuous everythingness we've been seeking in everything else. We don't deserve it. But we get it. And in this way, the grace of God in Jesus Christ meets all of our needs and satisfies our deepest desires.
Here's a Bible verse:
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?—Romans 8:32
How does God's Word impact our prayers?
God invites His children to talk with Him, yet our prayers often become repetitive and stale. How do we have a real conversation with God? How do we come to know Him so that we may pray for His will as our own?
In the Bible, God speaks to us as His children and gives us words for prayer—to praise Him, confess our sins, and request His help in our lives.
We’re giving away a free eBook copy of Praying the Bible, where Donald S. Whitney offers practical insight to help Christians talk to God with the words of Scripture.