COMMITMENT

Eternal God, our Father, we would listen again to Jesus' warning and promising words: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear". We know that the hymns we sing and the Scripture we read are given to make us wise unto salvation. But so often they seem to us only dead words because we have not been made alive through the Holy Spirit. The world has been too much with us. We have spent our money for that which is not bread and our labor for that which does not satisfy. We have sought the pleasures of the flesh rather than the life of the Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit, and make us alive to the things of God so that spirit and flesh, soul and body, heaven and earth can be made new.

We thank Thee for the invitation of the Gospel. It is hard to believe that we are invited to come just as we are--we want to wait until we are better--until we have changed--But the good news of the gospel is that we can come to Thee just as we are, without one plea but that thy blood was shed for us, and that we are invited to come. We thank Thee for the power of the gospel, that it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. This, too, our Father, is hard to believe. For we want to be able to explain everything and fit it into our own patterns of thought. Help us this day, perhaps for the first time, to step out on faith, for how can we know whether faith works unless we give it the test? As we believe, in a skeptical world, help our unbelief. We thank Thee for the challenge of the gospel. Here we know is where we fall down the most. We have so much to make us happy, like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus. We have tried to live as best we could under the circumstances. But we know we lack something yet. And, O Lord, we know that what we lack is commitment. "Go sell all you have and give it to the poor; and come take up your cross and follow me." When the gospel has made its demands upon us to change our thoughts, our habits, our patterns of living, we have turned away from Jesus like the rich young ruler. And we, like him, are sorrowful and will remain so until we are willing to make our commitment complete. Help us all, dear Father, to take a step beyond church membership with its formal duties to discipleship with its new life in a new world with a new reason for living and a new hope for the future.

We make this prayer, not for ourselves alone, but for all those who care and those who do not care--and we make it for the whole world--for America, our native land, but also for the lands beyond the seas. Amen.