quiet and settled hearts
the importance of a daily liturgy
As I putter around my desk on a Sunday afternoon, and organize the detritus that has accumulated over the past week, I came across a prayer that I had written out to take with me that day. It comes from a resource I’ve mentioned before—Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship—one that maybe y’all think I’ve now referred to ad nauseam.
So let me be a little more helpful and clarify why I have.
I am learning, in my own stumbling efforts, the value of a daily liturgy. I say stumbling because I still miss some days, because at times I’m merely reading the words and not really thinking on them, because at times my heart is too darn cold and isn’t warmed to what’s there.
At times.
But at other times, thankfully more often than not, the words penetrate. They break away the hardness of my morning heart and get spiritual warmth pumping through my veins, showing once again its worth persevering in this liturgical pursuit, this routine.
Such was the case the other morning with this prayer for Be Thou My Vision, one that I had our congregation rehearse in our service recently. It goes like this:
O Yahweh,
let not your law be a cursing to our consciences,
but rather give us grace under this extreme and heavy burden of sin,
to be fully persuaded,
that you by your death have taken away all our sins,
and fulfilled the law for us,
and by this means have delivered us from the curse of the law and paid our ransom;
and then we, being thus fully persuaded,
may have quiet and settled hearts,
and a free conscience,
and glad desiring wills to forsake this wicked world.
Yes, and very amen, in Jesus’ name.
Part of what a liturgy does is humble me before the long-lasting witness of the church. C.S. Lewis once said we are prone to “chronological snobbery,” thinking all of our words and ideas are the most important ones. And in the liturgy from the past, I am reminded that wisdom from God has been around a long time. My words aren’t revolutionary. I can be helped by my brothers and sisters from the past.
And what help I find here!
The possibility of a quiet and settled heart. Doesn’t that sound glorious? Who doesn’t want one of those?!
And this prayer shows me the path.
That God would supply “grace under this extreme and heavy burden of sin.”
That this empowering grace would help us to be persuaded, against the wrong condemnation the evil one and the proper conviction of the Holy One, that Jesus by his death has “taken away all our sins, and fulfilled the law for us, and by this means have delivered us from the curse of the law and paid our ransom.
We need a special grace from God for that, is what the prayer says. And it’s true, isn’t it? Because we find it hard to believe. That’s why the prayer says we need to be fully persuaded. Because we argue. We find all kinds of reasons it can’t be this good. That he has taken away all our sins. That we are forgiven. That because we are in Jesus, in him we have fully fulfilled the law and its demands. And so we have loud and restless hearts. There is discord clanging away inside of us, like a gigantic orchestra playing horribly off-key.
Which is why we must fall on our knees and pray. And plead with God for grace under such an “extreme and heavy burden of sin.” We get on our knees and we wrestle. We cry out. We cry. And we wait, if necessary. We stay there in that place of vulnerability before our Father, in a quiet place in our home or apartment. We wait on Yahweh. To be fully persuaded.
We read promises….
5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. 6 We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. 8 And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him.
Romans 6:5-7 (NLT)
And by his Spirit, with such words washing over us, we slowly, maybe partially, hopefully fully, we are persuaded.
That it’s true.
We believe. And we ask for mercy in our unbelief.
And we realize our old sinful selves were actually crucified with Christ.
So that sin might lose its power in our lives.
And we are no longer slaves.
We have been set free from the power of sin.
We know—know—that we will live with him, and can live by him in freedom now.
And so that which God wants for us—quiet and settled hearts—becomes true of us.
We breathe in deeply with a free conscience.
And we can walk into the day with “glad desiring wills to forsake this wicked world.”
Huh.
Hence the importance of a daily liturgy, wether you use Jonathan Gibson’s book or not to do it. You’ve got a liturgy for the morning already, what’s in question is wether it is serving you. Maybe your liturgy includes only coffee, an egg, maybe a croissant, a cup of tea. I hope it has a portion of God’s Word, and a time to talk with him, like this prayer offers.
Because, I mean….who wouldn’t want a quiet and settled heart?
O Yahweh,
let not your law be a cursing to our consciences,
but rather give us grace under this extreme and heavy burden of sin,
to be fully persuaded,
that you by your death have taken away all our sins,
and fulfilled the law for us,
and by this means have delivered us from the curse of the law and paid our ransom;
and then we, being thus fully persuaded,
may have quiet and settled hearts,
and a free conscience,
and glad desiring wills to forsake this wicked world.
Yes, and very amen, in Jesus’ name.
