Trust - Leadership Prayers
Trust
I know you love me, and I trust you.
We know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. 1 John 4:16, NIV
The impossible thought, the transcending miracle, is that the awesome Creator God of the universe is my Father, whom I can trust completely as I do my best to lead.
I LOVE you, God. You know I do. How natural it is to love you. You are perfect. You are beautiful, pure, powerful, absolutely truthful, and kind. You have been so generous to me that just saying thank you seems pitiful sometimes.
But far more powerful in my life is knowing and feeling that you love me. You know exactly and completely who I am—all my ugly thoughts, my mangled motivations, my pretending, my irrational fears, my pride, and my unfaithfulness—and you still love me. I know you love me.
You know me, and yet, because you love me, you let me lead others. I do not understand it, but I am grateful.
Because you love me, you want me to know the right thing to do, the right direction, the true meaning of every situation. You want me to choose wisely. You want what is best for everyone. You want me to see what you are doing, to understand the reality of things as you do.
I need a special gift of foresight, Father. I know your guidance is subtle; you are gentle with me. You do not shout orders, so I will wait for your Spirit to whisper what is true, shed light on what is wise, make sense of all the indicators. The choices may be mine, but the foresight and wisdom must be yours. I want to know your mind.
Because you love me, you never show me the future or tell me how things will turn out. I would never handle such knowledge well. But because you love me, you always want me to know the deep truth, to know what is possible and what is good. You never trick me or leave me. I trust you to lead my spirit to know what is real.
If you did not love me, there would be no hope or meaning in anything—no reason to lead, no reason to live. Your love is life itself.
You want me to get it right, to choose wisely. You want what is best.
Because you love me, it is safe for me to love you in return. Because you love me, I can hear your Spirit of truth and find the right way to go. Because you love me, I can lead.
I know you love me, and I trust you.
Reflections
Normally, prayer is mainly talking to God, either publicly or privately. God is the consummate listener, and usually we just want him to listen to us.
However, it is quite another thing to ask God to speak to me, personally and directly, and for me to be able to listen and understand him. Sometimes it is scary when I talk to God, but the prophet Isaiah was right: It is patently terrifying when God speaks to me.
To take the risk of trusting myself with the awesome Creator of all things, I need reassurance that he loves me. I don’t know exactly why I need to begin every event of deep spiritual searching by reminding myself that God loves me and that I can trust him to guide me. That is just how it always happens. When I fail to do this, when I race past this prayer and blurt out my problems or questions, God is understanding about it, but I can never hear clearly what he is saying.
Seeking God’s guidance begins with an intense awareness that I can safely trust his love for me. When I am reassured of his love, then I feel safe to trust the quiet yes or no that concludes the issue, the picture of how things could be or should be, the guiding words that hang in my memory, the insight that eventually brings meaning and leads me to want what is right. The more God enables me to want the right things, the more freedom I experience to trust myself and lead as a powerful expression of who I am.
