A Prayer About New Year’s Eve
Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness. Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.Psalm 115:1-4
Heavenly Father, as I sit quietly before you on the eve of a New Year, I’ve got a good case of redemptive ambivalence going on inside of me. Ambivalence, because there are two conflicting themes at work in my heart. Redemptive, because it’s a good tension-a battle for which the gospel is more than sufficient, a war that King Jesus will most definitely win.
Looking back over the past twelve months, I’m compelled to say with the Psalmist, “Be praised, adored and worshipped, oh, God, for your love and your faithfulness!” Abba, Father, you loved me all year long with an everlasting, engaged, unwavering love… irrespective of anything I did or didn’t do.
You loved me as much as you love your Son, Jesus, for you’ve hidden my life in his. Thank you, for your steadfast love and fresh mercies that came to me every single day of the year… when I was aware of them and when I wasn’t. You remained faithful to everything you’ve promised in Jesus… even when I was faithless, fragile, fickle and fitful. GREAT is your faithfulness, oh God, my Father. You do everything that pleases you.
Father, it’s because of your love and faithfulness to me in Jesus, that I also want to be honest about the other voice you heard echoing in my heart this past year-the one that joined the nations in saying, “So where is your God?” I said this most often when you were busying doing what pleases you, and not what pleases me.
Therein lies my ambivalence, Father. For there were many times this past year when I trusted my voiceless, sightless, senseless, powerless idols more than I trusted you. I am so sorry and I grieve my foolishness. But herein lies the redemption in my ambivalence and for my ambivalence. I will not always be a man in two minds with a divided heart. Father, you will bring to completion the good gospel-work you have begun in me. One Day I will no longer even be tempted to make or worship anything or anyone but You. Oh, hasten that glad and glorious Day.
But until that Day, even on the eve of a New Year, free me to give back to you in this next year a growing portion of the love and the faithfulness which you have inundated and saturated me in the gospel. So very Amen, I pray, in Jesus’ name.
