For Week of April 18, 2021
WEEKLY PRAYER GUIDE
April 18, 2021
Augustine’s Confessions ranks among the greater masterpieces of western literature and has a perennial power to speak to any and every century of believers. This week we will reflect upon the power of the words of one of his prayers, for our personal journey, and for our troubled world.
(1) “You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised (Psalm 47:2): great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable’ (Psalm 146:5). Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being ‘bearing his mortality with him’ (2 Corinthians 4:10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you ‘resist the proud’ (1 Peter 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
‘Grant me Lord to know and understand’ (Psalm 118:34, 73, 144) which come first – to call upon you or to praise you, and whether knowing you precedes calling upon you. But who call upon you when he does not know you? For an ignorant person might call upon someone else instead of the right one. But surely you may be called upon in prayer that you may be known. Yet, ‘how shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe without a preacher? (Romans 10:14). ‘They will praise the Lord who seek for him’ (Psalm 21:27).
In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you – and calling upon you is an act of believing in you. You have been preached to us. My faith, Lord, calls upon you. It is your gift to me. You breathed it into me by the humanity of your Son, by the ministry of your preacher. Amen.