Grow in Thy love
Three quick thoughts from the prayer I read this morning in Valley of Vision (a book of Puritan Prayers).
1) “Order all my ways by thy Holy Word,” is a great prayer to bring to God. In other words, sort out my priorities by Your priorities. How could one know them? The answer of course is by knowing and loving the Word of God. It’s in Bible reading that we discover the heart of God and can then seek to align ourselves with His heart beat.
2) ”..by them I may have happy converse with thee.” The phrasing is very much ye Olde English but the meaning is helpful. By making God’s commandments our joy we will find a life of glad relating to our God. When Jesus says, in John 14:23, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching,” He is getting to the very heart of this. Obedience leads to happiness because the best pattern of living is found along the path of God’s good plan for us expressed in His commands.
3) “May I grow in thy love and manifest it to mankind.” Our joy in God is never to be kept for ourselves. Humanity around us is to be blessed through our growing love of God – one thing naturally leads to the other.
So.. to pull it all together, the prayer is asking that we align ourselves with God’s heart as we have come to know it in His Word and that doing this will lead to a closer walk with Him and a blessing to mankind.
So we can pray:
”Order all my ways by thy holy Word and make thy commandments the joy of my heart, that by them I may have happy converse with thee. May I grow in thy love and manifest it to mankind.” Amen.
Stuart.
