Three Prayers

                                                Lord Jesus Christ

Lord Jesus Christ, beloved and eternal and faithful Son of the Father, Homoousios to Patri, Anointed of the Holy Spirit, incarnate, crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord of all creation, I believe in you.  With great joy, with the praise of my whole heart I acknowledge and agree that you have found me in my darkness and sin, laid hold of me and taken me down in your death, freed me from sin and evil, quickened me with new life in your resurrection, and lifted me up into your Father’s arms in your ascension, and into the communion of the Holy Spirit.  All of me, and mine, every war-torn fragment, every fearful, unbelieving, shame-riddled, broken part is in you, in your Father, in the Holy Spirit.  I rest in you, Jesus, lover of my soul, my Savior, my Salvation, my Saving Act, my King, my Liberator, healer of my broken heart, the author and finisher of faith. You have included me in all that you are and have in your union and face-to-face communion with your Father, and you have included me in your own anointing in the Holy Spirit.  You have included me in your victory over evil and wickedness, and in your session at the Father’s right hand, above all rule and authority in heaven and on earth.  Nothing can separate me from you, your Father, and the Holy Spirit, and the life you share together.  Blessed be your great name.

Thank you, blessed brother, Lord Jesus.  You became what I am to bring me to be what you are in your life with your Father in the Holy Spirit.  I hear you speak my name, and with the freedom of your heart, and mind, I turn toward your Father to see him with your eyes.  I receive the witness of the Spirit of Adoption.  I hear you Lord Jesus, and your “Abba! Father!” inside my own soul.  I receive your Father’s everlasting love, and give myself, all of me, to your Father’s embrace, and to the healing and restoration of the Holy Spirit’s communion.

Lord Jesus, in your courage, in the comfort of the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, and in the unearthly assurance of your Father’s arms, I pledge all of me to your service, to participate in your ministry of liberation of our brothers and sisters.  Reveal to me how and where you, your Father and the Holy Spirit are already present in my ordinary life, work and play.  Reveal to me the agreements that I have made with evil and darkness, that have given evil access to my life in you, that I may break these agreements in your name, and that I may walk in every way in the glorious freedom of the children of God, in full agreement with the Holy Spirit, and in all the Holy Spirit’s gifts.  Holy Spirit do for me, and mine, what only you can do.

I take my stand in you, Lord Jesus, and in your name and authority I bind and banish from my life, my body, my mind, heart and will, my family, my sphere of influence, and my belongings every foul thing, every spirit and form of darkness and religion and wickedness, every power and art, every curse and covering and accusation that are directed towards me and mine.  In your name, and by your authority, Lord Jesus, I summon the holy and faithful angels and command them to destroy the kingdom of darkness throughout my kingdom, and to establish the kingdom of the blessed Trinity throughout my domain and ministry.

Worthy are you blessed Lord Jesus Christ, Father’s Son, Homoousios to Patri, Anointed One, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, Victorious Warrior, worthy are you of all praise and adoration and worship, now and forever.  Thank you for being my Savior, my Good Shepherd, my High Priest, my True and Faithful witness, my Alpha and Omega, the Captain of my salvation, and the Healer of my soul.  I rest in you, and await your Word to me today. Amen

C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D. October, 2013

                                   Holy Spirit

Blessed Holy Spirit, forgive me for running from you.  My heart grieves as I confess to you that for many seasons in my life, even for years, I have been afraid of you.  I thought you were a ghost to be avoided.  In the insanity of darkness I have ignored you, and your heart, and your guidance and promptings. In the fear of the shadows I have resisted you, Holy Spirit, even grieved you—the Lord and giver of life, the communion of the Father and Son, the joy of the cosmos.  Holy Spirit I ask you now to forgive me.  You know my true heart.  You know who I am.  I want no darkness in me at all, only light, only you, in Jesus, in the Father. I acknowledge that I am made for you Holy Spirit, created and recreated in Jesus himself to be the temple of your joy, the fountain of your communion, the living expression of your cascading life. I honor you as the secret of my very being and life in Christ.  For you my soul cries.  Thank you for your humility, for your irrepressible love, for your merciful and tender care.

Blessed Holy Spirit, in hope and wonder I acknowledge that in your great love you have made your way in Jesus and in his suffering at human hands into the catacombs of my soul.  In unspeakable love you endured my rejection of the Lord Jesus to find me in the broken places where I have allowed darkness to gain a foothold in me and wound my eyes.  In your presence, Holy Spirit, I acknowledge that I have been deceived.  I have unwittingly, though willfully, allowed darkness access to my mind and heart and will, to my life in Jesus in you.  I have opened my soul to the father of lies.  Forgive me Holy Spirit.  Heal my soul.  Restore my heart.  I confess to you that in the darkness I have lived from pain.  Again and again I have reached for and embraced false comforts.  In my confusion I have lived for myself, sacrificed my heart and relationships for the approval of others and their schemes of salvation.  I have hurt those you love.  Heal the wounds that I have caused in others.  Restore the hearts of those that I have broken in my grand quest for life that only you can awaken.  I acknowledge to you Holy Spirit that I have participated in the lies and half-truths of darkness, in the pretense and crafty shifting and hiding of the evil one.  Thank you for giving me Jesus’ eyes so that I can see what I have done, see how I have been deceived, see the darkness in me as darkness.  Continue to enlighten me Holy Spirit; take my heart and guide me, free me to break every association and agreement with evil, and banish all forms of darkness from my being forever in Jesus’ name.

Blessed Holy Spirit, I rejoice in seeing your redeeming genius in all of my life.  In profound gratitude, I marvel at your persistent care.  You have taken my weakness and shame and blindness and transformed them into life for me, and for others.  I give myself to you Holy Spirit—all that I know how to give, and all that I don’t, all of me and mine, all of my doubts and fears and unbelief, my broken eyes, my hurt, my failure, all of my shame and the accusations that I have accepted as truth, all of the damaged emotions trapped in me and in my body, all of the ‘I am nots’ whispered to me by evil to which I have agreed, all of me as I have given myself to participate in darkness—I give to you, Holy Spirit.  I am all yours, Holy Spirit; do for me what you alone can do.  Unravel the twisted kudzu of evil that I have allowed to entangle my soul. I have no desire to be alive without knowing you, Holy Spirit, without knowing your presence, your care, and your encouragement, without your deep and abiding comfort and inspiration.  For you my heart longs. I turn away from all things to you Holy Spirit. I want to be the man of your dreams.  I turn to you, Holy Spirit; lead me, comfort me.  Sing your song in my heart, dance with me; make me alive with your affirmation.  Restore me, Holy Spirit, to your sanity that I might live in you and in your communion, in the glorious liberation of our adoption in Christ, in the simple joy of your presence.  I ask you, Holy Spirit, to fashion me into a living sacrament of Jesus’ grace, a human embodiment of the Father’s love, and into a personal incarnation of your abounding life and care and mercy, and of all of your gifts.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D., 2014

                                                            

                                                       Abba, Father

Father, with all that is in me I bless you, and I bless your Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Thank you for giving Jesus to us, to me.  He is the humble brother of the human race, the truest friend in all of creation.  I love his prayer to you:  “Father, I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, that the love with which you love Me may be in them, and I in them.”   Father, my soul shakes with hope as I read Jesus’ words.  I see his burden for us so lost in the lie.  I sense his excitement in finding us, in finding me in the gnarled darkness of evil that has broken our minds.  Father, I am astounded.  Your beloved Son, who lives face to face with you in the unspeakable fellowship of the Holy Spirit submitted himself to us to be cursed by us, beaten, mocked, and crucified.  I see you, Father, there in him, and the Holy Spirit.  How can this be, Father?  I have so missed your heart.  I see  Jesus’ heart beating with a love that could not bear for us to live without knowing you.  I see the whole of his being running to become what we are, one of us.  I see him bow before our insanity.  We cursed Jesus, Father, your eternal and beloved and faithful Son, we damned and rejected.  Yet, in the horror of our rejection of Jesus I see joy in his heart.  What humility, what determined, passionate love I see in his soul as he submitted to us.  O Father, he found us.  O blessed Lord Jesus, in submitting to us you made your way inside the great darkness that has broken our very beings.  Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, let all the earth be filled with silent joy.  I stand in awe Father.  Your Son accepted our brutal rejection, and used our betrayal as his way to get inside our abyss of hopeless hell.  And he brought you Father, and the Holy Spirit with him.  O Lord Jesus may your name be praised forever.  You have pitched your tent, your own being inside our hell that we may know your Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit—and live.

Father, I am beginning to see you with Jesus’ eyes.  I am learning to take sides with Jesus against the way I see you Father.  I am coming to know your heart and feel your affection.  It is scary to risk believing what Jesus shares with me about your goodness and love and mercy, but I have had enough with the way I see things and the mess I have made of myself.  I welcome Jesus' fellowship with you, and bow before his knowledge of you, and of me, and of others.

Father, MacDonald was right: “Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.”  I am one of those good souls, Father.  Forgive me for what I have believed about you, for the way I have tarred your face with the brush of evil’s madness.  I have been blindsided by the foul whisperer and his dastardly lies.  You are love, Father, irrepressibly good.  You have no darkness in you at all.  Your oneness with Jesus in the Holy Spirit is too beautiful for words.  Thank you for dreaming of me, for never once abandoning me to my folly.  Thank you for your beloved Son. I am embarrassed at how much of my life I have spent hiding from you, Father.  I cry out to Jesus to expand my thoughts until they are worthy of the theme of your heart.

Father, I see now how you have cared for me all of my life, how you have protected me, nurtured me, created opportunities for me.  Forgive me for how I have mishandled so much of my life, and the hearts of those we both love.  It gives me courage to see how you have always had my back.  Father, I receive your overflowing blessings upon me and mine.  Blessed be your great name. 

Father, you have given me a heart for your Son’s glory.  I am honored, humbled, and thrilled.  I ask you to send the Spirit in and through Jesus to me in ever new ways that I might proclaim the unsearchable riches of your beloved Son to the world in darkness.

C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D., 2014