Two Prayers

I don't read a lot of poetry but I have an excellent compilation of Christian poems by James M. S. Tait called "Bells and Pomegranates". It was first published in 1946 and published again in 1985 with additional poems. JMS Tait was a well-known solicitor and preacher in Shetland. He was born in 1903 and died in 1980.

One of my favourite poems by JMS Tait is called "The Two Prayers" and is based on the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15.

The Two Prayers

Father, give me - Luke 15:12
Father...make me - Luke 15:19

'Give me' he prayed, the foolish, wilful boy,
He thought that but to have was to enjoy,
A broken, sobered man, robbed, hungry, bare,
'Make me' he prayed; and 'twas a wiser prayer.

Much wiser. My possessions may decay:
What I become can no one take away.
A man's true worth may be appraised the best
By what he was, not by what he possessed.

Grace-driven effort

An oxymoron (plural oxymora), according to en.wikipedia.org, is “a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms. Oxymoron is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull"). Thus the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron”. Examples of oxymora are “pretty ugly” and “deafening silence”. My favourite oxymoron is “Microsoft Works” – although arguably it’s not an oxymoron in it’s strictest sense!

“Grace-driven effort” may seem like an oxymoron to some people...I would disagree.

I agree that we are helpless sinners and that, as such, we are unable to save ourselves – only God can, and He does so because of His grace (Eph. 2:8-9). We have no involvement in our saving; we simply receive it by faith.

Having been saved by grace we continue to rely on God’s grace – we stand in it (Rom 5:2) and we should be strong in (2 Tim 2:1). But we must labour too.

“Let go and let God” is a phrase often seen on bumper stickers and t-shirts. It's a catchy phrase and on the surface, it seems sound too, but I find it rather misleading - and dangerous when taken to an extreme. The danger is that as Christians we abdicate responsibility and hand it over to God.

The apostle Paul had a very clear attitude in His life regarding his responsibility as a child of God: "I discipline my body and keep it under control" (1 Cor 9:27). But in disciplining and controlling his body Paul relied on the grace of God. In 1 Corinthians 15:10 he could say "by the grace of God I am what I am...I worked harder than any of them [the apostles], though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me".

This is what we call grace-driven effort - and it is badly needed today. If you are a child of God, don't just sit and wait for God to change you and use you! Seek God diligently, pursue holiness, discpline your body and keep it under control - but do so realising that in yourself you can do nothing (John 15:5) and rest on God's grace to conform you more and more, day by day, into the likeness of His Son.

Don Carson said this about grace-driven effort:

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated