I Pray This is Godly Grief?

God, today I do not feel transformed. Today I feel like I'm pushing a broken plow in a dry and rocky field. I see no potential for harvest. I feel tired and I feel frustrated. I feel as if I'm wasting your time. I can't see what you want me to do with this broken plow and brittle earth. I don't know where to go when my own will and determination fail me.

Lord, these feeiling come out of grief. Grief that I do sin against my wife, grief that Psalm 52:2 is about me. Grief that I choose to believe lies time and time again.

Psalm 52:2 ESV

"Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit."

Somehow, at the same time I seem to declare myself just. Lord I am afraid that, given the opportunity, I would throw myself at your feet expecting a pat on the head and an award of recognition. That given that opportunity I might learn that you don't know me. I have done nothing to deserve your grace. There is nothing I can do or could ever do to deserve your grace. I wonder at what point my time will be up. At what point I will be pulled from the branch that I am suffocating and tossed into the fire. When, Lord, will I be pruned away? At what point will you see me as a wolf amongst your flock?

God I pray these are lies. I take comfort in the thought that todays confession of sin is you at work in my heart. That you cannot be deceived and that you have hope in me even as I lose my own. That the pain in my heart and the pain I caused in hers is your work of redemption. Jesus, I know that I need to trust in you alone, but I don't know how to. I don't know what to do. I need more of you God. I take comfort in your promise that "godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret." I am afraid that "worldly grief produces death."

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

"For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death."

Lord, help me to put a stop to Satan and his affects in my life, in our family, in this home. Please, please, take up his residence and bless us with your Holy Spirit. Show me how to close the doors to sin. Teach me to follow the will of your spirit in protecting this family.

Help me to get out of my own way and let you lead me. I thank you that you forgive me. I thank you that you love me despite myself. I thank you that my hope rests in your unconditional love.

My Psalm

I am currently going through a process at my church called "Redemption Group" I will [intend to] post a blog more on RG later, but for now let me just say that it's teaching and group discussion in an effort to reveal the amazing redemptive power of Christ's love for us individually.

In any event, one of our assignments was to write a Psalm. Mine is loosely based around a verse from Romans 2: 4

"4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."

Here's the Psalm:

"Holy, holy, holy and righteous God
Creator, Designer, Operator, and Controller. Forgiver, Justifier, and Redeemer. Oh, so patient and loving Savior.

My sin runs far and wide and deep. Deep into my heart and far reaching to those I love most. Those who might look to me to find you.

So deep I find myself minimizing each action, or lack thereof, before I’ve finished confessing it.

Minimizing each lash against the back of your innocent son, negating each insult hurled at my only hope for salvation. Yet Jesus bore my sins and offered me His righteousness in the face of my transgressions.

My pride imagines me as the deciding factor. It imagines me immune to pain, remorse, or sorrow. It imagines me judge and jury. Persuades me that there is no failure. At times it succeeds in convincing me. Even worldy sorrow seems to fall short of these walls.

Blow your trumpet my God! Let the walls of my sin crumble to the ground. Throw me shaken to my knees, broken onto my face. Give me tears! Do not allow me to presume upon the riches of your kindness and forbearance and patience!
Blessed are those who’s anguish have left them broken of their own wickedness. Who were left with no option but to know that there is only hope in Jesus.

Blessed am I, that you have revealed yourself to me despite myself.

My sin cuts you deeply yesterday, today and tomorrow. It has laid a crushing blow against the innocent back of your true and perfect son. Yet You made Him to be sin who knew no sin.

Only by your grace are you still with me. Were it to me alone I would have rejected you long ago and a dozen times since.

You are beyond explanation, beyond comprehension. I should not, without you. I will not, without you. I cannot, without you. There is nothing without you.

Holy, holy, holy and righteous God. You have been calling me all my life, only now have I acknowledged your voice."


After discussing the Psalm in group and praying about it, God revealed to me that I am still placing myself in a position of control. My psalm makes it more about how bad I am, but it's not about that. It's about how GOOD HE IS. It doesn't matter what I have done or haven't done. What matters is that I need him, and that he chose to love me even when I don't understand what that means or why I need it. My sin did not put him on the cross against his will. He lovely chose to go there for me, and if you accept him, for you too.

A New Perspective on Psalm 139

Psalm 139, Verses 13-16
13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Yesterday we saw our baby for the first time. I can't even describe how amazing it is to see the life that God is knitting together first hand. Last night I took several 2 second clips, that the doctor gave us, and left Brooke watching them on loop while I went to Redemption group for the evening. When I returned 2.5 hours later I found my wife curled up to the computer screen jotting down names on a mini steno pad. "I love our baby!" She exclaimed.

Nothing can be more powerful in conveying God's unconditional love for us than the love a parent feels for their child. We are truly, truly, humbled by His grace. He has blessed us with a great gift and responsibility in who may some day be, [insert name here].