"Father God, just for today,
Help me walk the narrow way.
Help me stand when I might fall.
Give me Your strength to hear your call.
May my steps be worship;
May my thoughts be praise;
May my words bring honor to Your Name.
May my steps be worship;
May my thoughts be praise;
May my words bring honor to Your Name."
Help me walk the narrow way.
Help me stand when I might fall.
Give me Your strength to hear your call.
May my steps be worship;
May my thoughts be praise;
May my words bring honor to Your Name.
May my steps be worship;
May my thoughts be praise;
May my words bring honor to Your Name."
I love this song and find such strength and resolve from singing it that I sing it quite often. Many times throughout most of my days when I am not singing it, I catch myself humming its tune. It is a very specific prayer couched in a concise, economical package.
As I have sung the words "the narrow way" all these times, I don't really know what I have, until lately, pictured, but I'm pretty sure "narrow" in my mind was something more ethereal, less down-to-earth than Jesus was getting at when He spoke of the gate and the road in Matthew 7. I believe maybe I thought "the narrow way" meant behaving really well morally-- walking straight down the trail and never veering off it either to the left or to the right. Using this criteria, I was doing pretty well on this part of this song-prayer. I don't drink, do drugs, steal, commit adultery, cuss (very often), or skip church to go fishing (even less often).
But recently I have been given some opportunities to gain a whole new perspective on what "the narrow way" might really mean-- at least to me, right now-- and these opportunities have burdened me with the need to confess that I am lot less comfortable about the status of my check-marks now when I sing that song than I used to be.
Most of these "opportunities" have had to do with feeling taken advantage of or being made to feel obligated to do some unreasonable errand; I might go so far as to say I have even felt bullied because I have been trying to be a nice person and do what it takes to get along. Usually the one bullying me is someone I love and respect, so rather than putting my hands on my hips, putting my foot down, and asserting,"Absolutely NOT! This is RIDICULOUS!," I have gone ahead, huffing and puffing under my hot breath and done the ludicrous thing asked of me.
Once lately as I was driving through the late night hours on one of these errands of mercy, I found myself itching to call somebody and just complain-- just bend some sympathetic ear into helping me rationalize my feeling so needlessly and mercilessly put upon. (That phrase "put upon" had heretofore been pretty much foreign to me, just an archaism past its prime-- a couple of words that once accurately translated something to someone who had never heard of a garage door opener or a microwave but that had long since lost relevance in this postmodern world. But that night, when I wanted to make that pity call, those words came to me unbidden and translated perfectly what I was feeling... put upon. Somebody had just put something upon me without my permission or acceptance, and here I was carrying it down the highway in my car at this ungodly hour like some dumb beast of burden.)
But before I could even realize I had left my cell phone at home, that unmistakable Voice interrupted my seething with an announcement. The Voice was the Holy Spirit of God, and the announcement was in the form of a song: "Father God, just for today, help me walk the narrow way..." UGH! The "narrow way" was somehow connected with THIS? How could such a sweet, holy, reasonable request have anything to do with THIS ridiculous, unwieldy errand that was so obviously unreasonable? When I asked Him to chisel out my ears so that I could hear His message, I was humbled to learn that the narrow way right then was to bear patiently and quietly what my flesh was itching to flail out at with righteous indignation. I wanted justification and a sympathetic ear; God wanted to take me at my word and help me to do just what I had been asking Him to do all those hundreds of times I had so glibly lifted to Him that prayer request.
And since that night, I keep having the same kinds of opportunities almost daily to see just how narrow that way is that Jesus wishes I would choose to take. Learning to behave morally was yesterday's very narrow road, but today it's a fairly wide, flat, and easy expressway for me to mosey on down-- and moseying is neither going to accomplish growth in me nor testify to a powerful God of supernatural love in a vastly evil world. I see now that if I am to keep growing from one degree of glory to the next, I am going to have to go through the training. The degrees are not accomplished by just wishing for them. I would never expect, just because I can drive a car, that next week I could fly a 747 just by desiring to do so or even praying to do so. Neither would I expect to be able to perform successful brain surgery just because I had done a good job of pulling my grandson's tooth and now desire to do something greater. To accomplish these tasks, I would expect to go through lots of training. How much training I am willing to go through will be determined by my degree of desire to accomplish the tasks.
Giving up cussing was a pretty narrow road for me to travel on when I was thirteen, but I'm 59, and ... well, you get the picture.
As I have sung the words "the narrow way" all these times, I don't really know what I have, until lately, pictured, but I'm pretty sure "narrow" in my mind was something more ethereal, less down-to-earth than Jesus was getting at when He spoke of the gate and the road in Matthew 7. I believe maybe I thought "the narrow way" meant behaving really well morally-- walking straight down the trail and never veering off it either to the left or to the right. Using this criteria, I was doing pretty well on this part of this song-prayer. I don't drink, do drugs, steal, commit adultery, cuss (very often), or skip church to go fishing (even less often).
But recently I have been given some opportunities to gain a whole new perspective on what "the narrow way" might really mean-- at least to me, right now-- and these opportunities have burdened me with the need to confess that I am lot less comfortable about the status of my check-marks now when I sing that song than I used to be.
Most of these "opportunities" have had to do with feeling taken advantage of or being made to feel obligated to do some unreasonable errand; I might go so far as to say I have even felt bullied because I have been trying to be a nice person and do what it takes to get along. Usually the one bullying me is someone I love and respect, so rather than putting my hands on my hips, putting my foot down, and asserting,"Absolutely NOT! This is RIDICULOUS!," I have gone ahead, huffing and puffing under my hot breath and done the ludicrous thing asked of me.
Once lately as I was driving through the late night hours on one of these errands of mercy, I found myself itching to call somebody and just complain-- just bend some sympathetic ear into helping me rationalize my feeling so needlessly and mercilessly put upon. (That phrase "put upon" had heretofore been pretty much foreign to me, just an archaism past its prime-- a couple of words that once accurately translated something to someone who had never heard of a garage door opener or a microwave but that had long since lost relevance in this postmodern world. But that night, when I wanted to make that pity call, those words came to me unbidden and translated perfectly what I was feeling... put upon. Somebody had just put something upon me without my permission or acceptance, and here I was carrying it down the highway in my car at this ungodly hour like some dumb beast of burden.)
But before I could even realize I had left my cell phone at home, that unmistakable Voice interrupted my seething with an announcement. The Voice was the Holy Spirit of God, and the announcement was in the form of a song: "Father God, just for today, help me walk the narrow way..." UGH! The "narrow way" was somehow connected with THIS? How could such a sweet, holy, reasonable request have anything to do with THIS ridiculous, unwieldy errand that was so obviously unreasonable? When I asked Him to chisel out my ears so that I could hear His message, I was humbled to learn that the narrow way right then was to bear patiently and quietly what my flesh was itching to flail out at with righteous indignation. I wanted justification and a sympathetic ear; God wanted to take me at my word and help me to do just what I had been asking Him to do all those hundreds of times I had so glibly lifted to Him that prayer request.
And since that night, I keep having the same kinds of opportunities almost daily to see just how narrow that way is that Jesus wishes I would choose to take. Learning to behave morally was yesterday's very narrow road, but today it's a fairly wide, flat, and easy expressway for me to mosey on down-- and moseying is neither going to accomplish growth in me nor testify to a powerful God of supernatural love in a vastly evil world. I see now that if I am to keep growing from one degree of glory to the next, I am going to have to go through the training. The degrees are not accomplished by just wishing for them. I would never expect, just because I can drive a car, that next week I could fly a 747 just by desiring to do so or even praying to do so. Neither would I expect to be able to perform successful brain surgery just because I had done a good job of pulling my grandson's tooth and now desire to do something greater. To accomplish these tasks, I would expect to go through lots of training. How much training I am willing to go through will be determined by my degree of desire to accomplish the tasks.
Giving up cussing was a pretty narrow road for me to travel on when I was thirteen, but I'm 59, and ... well, you get the picture.
