A Prayer For A Certainty Clothed With Love

 

Father God, who so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, we live in a time when our certainty in Christ, as the only way to heaven, has come under attack.   Our claim to certainty is considered divisive, old fashioned and harmful, and ought to be trashed along with our old black and white television sets and our obsolete gas guzzling cars.   To believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to You except through Him, is arrogant, repulsive, and unreasonable and out dated.   Forgive us Lord, if we appear this way.  But You are the giver of our certainty.  You have stated in Your Word: “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye witnesses and servants of Your Word…so that we know with  certainty the things we have been taught.” Our certainty arises out of the Holy Word which was recorded for us under Your guidance and direction.  Our prayer this week is that Your people might have certainty concerning the life and death of our Savior Jesus Christ.

 

Certainty is our strength; it is the basis for our hope.  Who wants to be operated on by a doctor who isn’t sure that he can perform the needed surgery?  Who wants to eat at the table of someone who isn’t sure that the meat he is eating is free of disease?  But the fact that the world thinks our certainty is arrogant and at times intolerant and conceited reminds us that we need to be alert to self deception.    Our hearts know well the power of self deception.  We need to be constantly aware of our need for clothing our certainty in love and humility.    The apostle Paul reminds us of this when he wrote:  “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels I’m only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love I am nothing.”  Certainty, without love, can make our witness hollow and our words empty.   If we use our certainty to put down others, to silence and debase them, we will have used it to our own harm and hurt.  Love alone can make our certainty attractive to those who would criticize it.

 

Lord we plead, forgive us for those times when our certainty is not clothed in love and humility.  Forgive us for those times when we have become fools, not for Christ’s sake but out of arrogance and misuse of our certainty.   Open our eyes to see the power of our certainty but also the ultimate need to clothe it in love.

 

Hear this, our humble prayer.   Amen