Russian Roulette...

I need your peace tonight, God.  I feel restless and listless.  I need you to accompany me, to encamp around me.  To hide me in the shadow of your wings.  I need you to whisper to me, anything really, just something to let me know you’re with me tonight.  Can you do that?

I need you.  I don’t need something from you, I need you.  I want you.  I want every bit of you to come sit with me here, to be with me now. 

There are days when I just tire of faith.  I feel thin, threadbare and weary of living this way, living with the eyes of my heart.  I want to see you.  I want to touch you.  I want to hear you.  “He’s just a prayer away.”  “He’s as close as your next breath.”  These little notions feel like lotions to soothe me, potions to enchant me with some spell for the time being until I get over my confession of confusion, my dabbling with doubt.  I don’t need notions, lotions, or potions right now, Lord.  I need your Wind to blow through me once again. 

I don’t need much of it, but I do need a little.  Life gets long and laborious without your wind blowing the turbines of my heart.  Can you hear me?  I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re with me?  I don’t want to get used to doing ministry without you.  Do you know how easy that is to pull off?  Frighteningly easy.  Terrifyingly easy.  I know, I’ve done it before without the slightest negative outward consequence.  But the inside is full of dead man’s bones, I tell you.  So I don’t mean to ever return to that contradictory place if I can help it.  The problem is this…I don’t know if I can help it aside from your grace.   This is why I cry out tonight.  Will you come to my aide?

No one knows a man, but the spirit of the man within him…this is what the Scriptures say.  It’s true.  I know myself all too well.  I now my tendencies, my affinities.  I’m well aware of my triggers and my defaults.  I know when my heart is vulnerable and my decisions volatile.  This is one of those times.  I don’t want to float down the river of resignation.  I don’t want to pop into neutral.  I don’t want to be neutered.  I don’t want to flirt with secret sin.  I don’t want to play Russian roulette with Lucifer.  He’s blown my head off too many times before.

It’s Saturday night.  Tomorrow’s Sunday.  I need the energy of God to fill my feckless frame.  My restless heart.  Will you come, Lord?  Will you meet me here tonight?  Will you stand afar?  I can’t afford that response tonight. 

The hour is desperate.