A Prayer To Be God’s Image Bearers

 

 

Heavenly Father, God Almighty our prayer this week is that we, Your people, might be Your image bearers.  In the opening chapter of the first book of Your
Word we are taught that You created us in Your image.  We confess, with the ancient fathers, that the divine image in us has been frightfully damaged through the fall of our first parents.  So damaged that throughout the history of Your people until the coming of Jesus Christ, no attempt was made to define what You meant when You said that: “You created man in Your image, in Your image did You create him.”  It was only after the coming of Your Son, Jesus, did Your Word explain what it means that we were created in Your image.  Paul addresses the question when he wrote that, “Christ is the image of the invisible God.”  In another place he tells us that when we reflect Christ’s glory, we are reflecting that part of us which is created in Your image.   We reveal how much we are created in the image of God when we live the life Christ tells us to live.

 

All of which means that when Christ tells us to love our enemies, it is not because there is something in them that is loveable, but because when we love them we are revealing Your image in us.  When he tells us to reach out to strangers it is not because strangers are loveable but because when we reach out to them, we are revealing Your image  in us.  When You tells us to clothe the unclothed; to feed the hungry; to minister to the sick; to visit the imprisoned, we are to do so for no other reason than that we are to reveal Your image to them.

 

Lord, now we know why the four letters WWJD are so important.  When we ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” we are asking ourselves what can we do to reveal Your image to others?   That’s it!  Every time we do what Jesus would do we are revealing Your image.   

 

Father God, give to all who would pray this prayer a deep and sincere desire to reveal to the world that part of us made in Your image.  It has nothing to do with our looks, our intellect or our ability to talk, but it has to do with our desire to do what Jesus would do.  Help us, O God, to so live that those around us will see Your image in us.  What an awesome responsibility, what an awesome privilege.  May Your image shine through us that many will come to know of Your love and grace because of us.  In Jesus name.    Amen