“May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.” 2Thess.3:5
Lord Jesus, I’ll never forget the first time a “driverless Uber” stopped beside me at a stoplight. My first thought was, “Never me—I’ll never get in one of those.” But this verse reminds me of a worse plight—living my life faithless, graceless, aimless, hopeless—as though I have no “Driver” and no certain destination. What does this look like for any of us?
Some mornings we wake up with the GPS of our hearts set for worry, drivenness, fear, sadness, or resentment. By mid-morning, we’re well on our way to living like spiritual orphans—as though God isn’t our loving Father, as though you aren’t really our Good Shepherd leading us to green pastures, as though the Holy Spirit lives in every other believer but us.
Before we know it, we’re taking side trips into the villages of comparison, envy, discontent, and drivenness. By late afternoon our unguarded hearts are looking for rest stops that offer no rest—at best, just momentary relief. Sugar highs always take us lower than where we started, people pleasing pleases no one, and fanaticizing inevitably leads to “nightmare-ing.”
So Jesus, on this June Thursday, we take 2Thess.3:5 seriously. Direct our hearts into your lavish, liberating, life-giving love; and take us deeper into your perseverance—that is, into your finished work for us, ongoing work in us, and sovereign work all around us.
We don’t have to ask you to “take the wheel” because you’ve got the whole world in your hands and us in your heart. Free us to live accordingly, Jesus. May your peace rule in our hearts today just as surely as one Day your glory will fill the earth. Hallelujah, and So Very Amen.
