Celtic Daily Prayer

The Celtic Morning Prayer now has more specific question - “Do you seek Him with all your heart?” That asks for the response: “Amen. Lord, have mercy.:”

We start our biblical heart search with Jeremiah relaying Å the words of the Lord, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (29:13) Earlier, Jeremiah  reveals that God even gives us the means when he says, “ I will give them a heart to know me.” (24:7)

To seek God with all your heart is all about having a love and a passion for God. With such heart passion we will become the person God wants us to be:

• When God is your First Love. God loves us as His first love, and He loves us more than anything else that He has created. God wants us to love Him back this way… to love God more than anything else or anyone else.

• When in your heart God is your Treasure. God sees us as very special and precious treasures, and we are more special and valuable to God than anything else He has created. God wants to be our Treasure, so that we will value Him more than anything else.

• When in your heart God is your Passion. God is passionate about us, and has a passion to have close fellowship with us. He wants to be our passion, where we are more passionate about God (and the things He is passionate about like saving lost people…) than anything else.

Louis Albert Banks tells of an elderly Christian man, a fine singer, who learned that he had cancer of the tongue and that surgery was required. In the hospital after everything was ready for the operation, the man said to the doctor, “Are you sure I will never sing again?” The surgeon found it difficult to answer his question. He simply shook his head no. The patient then asked if he could sit up for a moment. “I’ve had many good times singing the praises of God,” he said. “And now you tell me I can never sing again. I have one song that will be my last. It will be of gratitude and praise to God.”

There in the doctor’s presence the man sang softly the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn,

I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve Breath,

And when my voice is lost in death,

Praise shall employ my nobler power;

My days of praise shall ne’er be past,

While life, and thought, and being last,

Or immortality endures.

For our prayer today we use the hymn of Charles Wesley

1 O for a heart to praise my God,

a heart from sin set free;

a heart that's sprinkled with the blood

so freely shed for me:

2 A heart resigned, submissive, meek,

my great Redeemer's throne;

where only Christ is heard to speak,

where Jesus reigns alone;

3 A humble, lowly, contrite heart,

believing, true, and clean,

which neither life nor death can part

from him that dwells within:

4 A heart in every thought renewed,

and full of love divine;

perfect and right and pure and good —

a copy, Lord, of thine.

5 Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart,

come quickly from above;

write thy new name upon my heart,

thy new best name of Love.