one pure and holy passion

Give me one pure and holy passion.

Give me one magnificent obsession.

Give me one glorious ambition for my life,

to know and follow hard after You.

To know and follow hard after You.

To grow as Your disciple in the truth.

This world is empty, pale and poor

compared to knowing You my Lord;

Lead me on, and I will run after You.

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I have sang and prayed that song many times, and I believe meant it from my heart, and yet never really considered what it would take for God to answer that prayer. How can God answer that prayer except by the removal of things which stand in the way of it? And then how do I respond to God's answer? Do I immediately ask God to give those things back which he removed? It's not so hard when the things removed are things which we know are not good. But what about when they are things which are good? What if it is things like my love of woodworking..... a skill God has given me and I have been blessed to be able to use to help support my family.... now mostly sidelined by weakness and exhaustion. Or my joy in kayaking and the wonderful times I have been able to share with my girls on our kayak trips together.... and my ability to be able to do that being very questionable. These are good things, but do they somehow get in the way of better things? I don't know for sure, but God does, and I just have to entrust him with the answer. And still I have to keep praying, even when the answer He gives feels painful.

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"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him." Philippians 3:7-9

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These verses mirror the song I started with, but what really stands out is the following verses where Paul continues in the same thought... "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (v. 10-11)

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The fellowship of sharing in his sufferings..... that doesn't seem like something we would like to pray for, but maybe that is part of what it takes to know Christ. And so when these things come, it could be an answer to our own prayers.... "a severe mercy." (a C.S. Lewis phrase I believe)

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The next verses in the chapter (3:12-14) can be turned into our prayer along the way...

Lord,

I have not already abtained all this, and I have certainly not already been made perfect, but help me to press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Let this be the one thing I do: to forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead, and to press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. In His name, amen.