A Prayer for Knowledge and Faith

A God who is omniscient is the reason I pray.

You create and impart all knowledge, even those who choose to believe You don’t exist. I am awed by Your patience and Your grace in allowing each of us to search, resist, or find You as we will.

You don’t push. You don’t cajole. You don’t condemn.

You just love.

You must know that Your love is irresistible to me. Your love persuades me to see You and experience You for who You are, somehow a deity who knows everything about me and yet is not repulsed by me. You aren’t afraid that more knowledge of life and science will turn me away from You. Indeed, more knowledge ought to produce more faith.

An omniscient God knows that knowledge and faith are congruent and complimentary. You invented science–You designed its intricacies. I’m sure much of science is yet to be discovered. And yet my ignorance doesn’t anger You. You smile and wait, like a patient father, for this over-confident human to grasp even a touch of Your creativity.

This is what I pray, to the one who knows everything:

Oh, Lord, Reveal Yourself to me.

Reveal Your power, Your will, the complexities of Your existence. Show me enough of Yourself so I believe, and give me the courage to accept the mysteries I’ll never be able to comprehend.

Help me realize that a God whose actions I can explain would be no God at all. He would be me.

And I don’t need to pray to myself. I’m the reason I need to pray to You. I can’t really comprehend anything that goes on in my heart. It’s desperately wicked, and it deceives me daily. (Jer. 17:9)

Create in me a new heart, O God. (Ps. 51: 10). Help me not to trust my own understanding. I adore You. I fear You. I believe in You.

Amen.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your path straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)


image by Petr Kratochvil