“May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.” 2Thess.3:5
Heavenly Father, this Scripture is your response to one of my favorite hymn lines: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” We’re prone to wander, but you’re more than prone to redirect our hearts. Hallelujah, and thank you—for we easily wander into faithless, graceless, aimless, hopeless directions.
Some mornings we wake up with our hearts drifting (or running) to self-pity and/or fear. Our gripes become more real than your grace, and our worries loom larger than your worship-worthiness. By mid-morning, heart-cruise-control takes us into the morass of people-pleasing. But caring more about who we are in people’s eyes than who we are in Christ will always lead us into a ditch.
Some afternoons the magnetic pull of resentment, anger, and blame take the wheel. Before we know it, we’re taking side trips into the villages of comparison, envy, and discontent. By late afternoon, our unguarded hearts are on the look for rest stops that offer no rest—just momentary relief. Sugar highs always take us lower than where we started; and fanatcizing inevitably leads to nightmare-ing.
So Father, on this June Friday—at the beginning of this weekend, please answer the apostle Paul’s prayer in 2Thess.3:5 on our behalf. Drive and direct our hearts into your lavish, liberating, life-giving love. And take us deeper into Christ’s perseverance—his finished work for us, and his ongoing work in us.
We’ll gladly live like an electric automatic driving car. Don’t just “take the wheel,” Abba; take our whole being, the roadway, and final destination. By the power of your sovereign Spirit, redirect our hearts into every good thing we have in Jesus, and everything you’ve planned for us before the world began. So Very Amen.