One hundred: It's all for you

I don't know if you're counting, Lord God, but this is my hundredth post. You've listened to me whinge and whine and grumble and sing and dance and laugh a hundred times as I've been sitting at my computer. For me it's flown by - maybe now you'll tell me that it feels like the two hundredth! 

Still.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to give it back to you again. This has been my emotional outlet, a sounding board, a platform for getting things off my chest and a way of exploring what I really think, and what you really think. That perhaps should have been the other way round, but you know what I mean. But I suspect that it's changed into something else and I just want to check that it's ok, or get back on the right track. I love this blog. I love that I so often start out feeling one way, and end up feeling something completely different. So often I've started out angry and hurt and worried and finished up more peaceful, and that's entirely because of you. Sometimes you speak to me through what I write - sometimes I'm quite sure I don't give you a chance. I write and run.

On the first of January I said that I wanted you to sit with me as I did this, and I want to thank you that you have never left my side. I want to thank you that you're here now. I'm writing this waiting for dinner to cook and I know that you are here; you can smell the garlic and you can hear the pans bubbling and you can taste the wine. I know that you have your hand on my shoulder and that you care what I say. I know that it's only because of you that I am able to do this; indeed anything.

If at any point I have started to think that it's me that writes this, I give it back to you, Lord. I know that what I do I do through you, who gives me strength. I know that I have no inspiration, no way of understanding even the little things, no way of working things out unless your Holy Spirit shows me how. I know that I would have no faith to lean on or talk about or investigate if you had not given me this most precious of gifts. I know that I would not be able to express myself and share my ideas and worries and wonderings if you didn't enable me to do it.

I want to give you the glory, Lord. I don't want to be the one who writes the blog, I want to be the one who points to you and says, 'He does it.'  It's all for you, Lord Jesus. It's all for you.

Lord, forgive me for my vanity and my selfishness and my pride. Let me reflect your light and beauty so that people see me and see you. Let my words be your words. Guide me and teach me so that I can sit here and notice, and understand, and reflect, and worship. Give me wisdom so that I can write wise things. Give me perception so that I can notice. Give me discernment so I can tell the difference between your voice and the voice of my own ego. Give me faithfulness to write what is true. And again, give me wisdom so that I can recognise truth when I see it.

I'm asking you to show me the way forward, Lord. Show me if you want me to do something different or if this pleases you as I'm stumbling along. Show me when I get too self-conscious or too inward-looking. Show me when I'm going on too much. Give me the words, Lord.

I want to do what you want me to do.

So I'm off to see if there's another glass of wine in the bottle, Lord. I'm going to raise a glass to you, my Lord and my God and my Friend. And then I'm going to press 'publish' for the hundredth time.

Here's to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Thankyou for so much. May my little offering be pleasing to you.

Amen.