It does us all well to look in the mirror, to look into our spiritual life and ask this question of ourselves and ask God this question about ourselves:
Lord, how am I before You?
I have a friend who used to advise me in the spiritual life: “Paul, when you pray the Lord’s Prayer you better understand and believe all that you are praying, because every time I pray, ‘Lord, may Your Kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ — I duck!” In other words, my friend believes that if you and I are to pray that God’s Kingdom come and God’s will be done in our life, then we better be very honest about how we occur in His Divine and Holy Presence. We better repent and change our lives, in other words! We better be brutally honest with ourselves and before God! Remember, we can kid ourselves and we can kid others, but we cannot kid God!
When I examine myself before God there is much to regret and much to beg God for mercy for having become a prisoner to a life lived too often apart from Him! I beg for forgiveness and pray that He would turn me around now and give me His sufficient grace to abandon myself and devote my entire life to following Him! I repent! I pray for My Good Shepherd to come for me and bring me back to the flock, to the other faithful who stay close to HIm. I pray that in the remaining days and hours of my life I may follow in His footsteps by being deeply aware of His Holy Presence.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner!
From the Bible:
“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves”
2 Corinthians 13:5.
“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” James 1:23.
“Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord” Lamentations 3:40!
“For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load” Galatians 6:3-5.
“Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world”
1 Corinthians 11:28-32.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me”
Psalm 139: 1-24.
Comentarios