BECOME GOOD SOIL

Father, I confess that what I want is for my heart to be made whole and my life to be integrated. I confess that I want the freedom and the restoration of my strength through the integration of the whole person. And I invite you to do it. I invite you to partner with me to become a man who astonishes you because we are united in love and I’ve learned to do nothing apart from you. 

Father, I agree with your relentless love, your relentless pursuit—that you will stop at nothing to continue to open the doorway to invite me home, for me to give access to you to the whole man, to be made whole and holy. 

Father, I confess the parts of me that have yet to yield to you, that are resistant, and I give you the shame and the fear and the disappointment and the hurt. I give you my belief in life being found in self-determination and self-reliance, and I say your love is greater still—your love is stronger than death. I ask that you would shine your light, that you would expose every place in me that has yet to come home to you as my good Father. 

Jesus, Holy Spirit, Father, I receive you afresh today, and your inextinguishable life. I receive your Kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in the Kingdom of heaven. I arise once again to trust you in your mighty strength, uniting my heart with your heart.

Jesus, I ask that you would break every limit I’ve placed on who you can be, what you can do, and how you can do it. I ask for your forgiveness for those limits, and I say break them in your power and in your name. I say in that place that I am rooted and established in your love. It is infinite, ever-present, and always flowing.

Father, I name that you care about me, that I matter to you, that you are the one who sees me. I say it out loud: You are the One who sees me, and I have seen the One who sees me. I name you as the One Who Sees Me. 

I receive you afresh in this place. I ask that you would make me good soil. I say I want more. I ask that you would dismantle the self-promotion, self-protection, self-reliance; that you would dismantle the Self and restore the True Man, making me whole and holy by your love. I give you permission to my body, my soul, and my spirit.  

I receive your inheritance. You have given me unlimited resources. That is my inheritance, and I claim it, I receive it. I ask that you would help me to access it more: your favor, your life—to accept it and receive it. 

Through your death, your resurrection, and your ascension, I choose union with you. Forgive me for trying to arrange so many things to feel good. You alone are contentment, and so I choose you to be my place of contentment. And I choose to receive that smile of the Holy Spirit that says you alone bring true joy. 

I receive you, Holy Spirit, afresh today—your breath. You are the wild one. You want to partner with me. You know what I need. You are my counselor, my comforter, my strength and my guide. So I choose You, Holy Spirit. I ask that you would increase my awareness to sense your moving, your leadership. Show me how to move. Give me the shoes of the readiness of the gospel of peace so that I can move in step with you—your pace, your rhythm, your way. 

Holy Spirit, I believe that you usher in this mothering that I so deeply need, that you alone can nourish me to fullness—robust wellbeing. You alone, through mothering me, can make me feel safe and loved, make me feel “10 feet tall and bursting with joy.” I want that, Holy Spirit, so would you mother me in new ways? I confess you’re good at mothering. I want to know and believe that I am loved, because I am yours. I am worthy of love and belonging.  

Father, I confess that I still resist you, hiding as an orphan and a slave. I want to come home to you. Today afresh, Father, I ask that I could come home to you—home to your love, home to your generosity, home to your abundance, home to your provision, home to your protection. Father, all that I am, in union with all that you are. I do it through the life of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus, I receive you as my brother, as my Savior, as the Doorway, the Pathway—your life spent so that I could have Life. Through you, my old man is given to death, and death rises to new life. I rise with you, Jesus—your unstoppable life and strength and force. Jesus, you have my yes. Validate me. I receive my name from you, my place in the Kingdom, my inheritance through you, Jesus.

God, in that place I confess all the sophisticated ways I have created a life to protect me from engaging in true relationship, all the ways I’ve arranged to disengage from relationship—the ways that I move against people, the ways that I move away from people and move towards people, all searching for validation, searching for love. I ask that you would dismantle all of it in me, God, that you would restore my style of relating and restore my relating with you, that I would see you move and walk, that you would cultivate a love language with me more deeply than ever before, that I would find myself laughing because you know me! This is our moment, just us. I hold a part of your heart no one else does, God, and you hold a part of mine. Can we cultivate an acquaintance? I confess that I need to live more deeply in a habitat that allows my soul to thrive. To cultivate that acquaintance, I know there’s unfinished business here, and so I give you the habitat of my life, and I ask that you would bring it into alignment with the habitat that’s right for my soul. Unforced rhythms of grace, learning to live freely and lightly, putting down everything that is heavy-laden, and everything that is ill-fitting, that doesn’t fit me. And help me to be comfortable in my own skin. Help me to like me as you like me. 

Restore my soul. Integrate the whole man. God, I give you permission. I pray that you would cultivate the habits that are necessary so that I can be available to receive that which I can’t arrange for. What do I need to abstain from? And what do I need to engage in? Teach me; I’m your student. Let’s try it on, try it out—let’s practice, let’s blunder around. Allow me not to go to shame or self-reproach. 

I want to be a student, and I want to be a son. And so I name that over my life, God: Student and Son. As you restore my true self from the inside out, I consecrate my motives to you, I consecrate my beliefs to you, and I choose to adopt a worldview that is steeped in and seated on wisdom and not simply gifting or the Spirit of the Age. I choose to partner with Wisdom that you set as the Craftsman at your right hand, that is in the fabric of all of creation. You say that he who finds wisdom finds life, and I ask for wisdom, because I need life. 

God, I stand with you against my enemies; against every scheme that has been set against me as a man, against my masculinity, and against my masculine line. I say, “It stops with me.” In the authority of Jesus Christ I say no. I take my stand with you, and I say, “It stops with me, in the authority of Jesus Christ.” And I ask for you to begin a new work in me, to establish a new legacy, a new generation; to restore what you originally intended since before Creation. Show me the warfare set against me; and in your authority, I stand against it. I choose against it by your power and through your Life. 

And, Jesus, in the Spirit of the Age, I confess how much I’ve agreed with a distracted life, with this “temporary atheism” where I so often find myself living apart from you. Lord, you never give any man too much to do. And so I ask for your forgiveness for every place I find myself feeling overwhelmed and alone. I break every agreement I’ve made with drivenness and hurriedness and busyness; and I ask in its place that you would give me intimacy, that you would cultivate acquaintance. Give me intimacy with you. 

Father, I give you every way that I have elevated myself in a kingly realm, in a way that was beyond what you entrusted to my care. I ask for your forgiveness, and I give you access to sort it all out. Jesus, I ask that you would heal my heart in the traumatized places where I have been set as a king by uninitiated men, where I have been maimed and harmed and used and abused. I forgive them, for they know not what they do. I release them and bless them, and I say, you have your way with them, God. I ask that you would heal my heart in those places and help restore the false conclusions I’ve come to about my life and calling because of the pain and the hurt and the violation. 

Father, I ask that you would dismantle every shortcut that I’ve willfully chosen. I pray that you would reveal again the shortcuts I’ve taken, that you would dismantle them; and I choose the long, holy, and narrow road you have for me that is truly Life. I want to be your apprentice, God. You are accepting master students, and I say yes! I want to work with you; I want to watch how you do it. I’m signing up. Show me how to grow in fierce mastery over all of it, the fullness of my domain. I pray that you would right-size it; shrink it where it needs to shrink. And help me with my body, with my soul and spirit, with my imagination, with my mind. 

I give all of my kingdom to all of you. I bring it back under the rule and reign of Jesus—every piece of it. I ask for your blood to wash it and for your anointing to come. And I’m asking for your favor over my kingdom. I set it apart for your life. 

Father, I ask for forgiveness: I’ve played it safe in a lot of ways. I haven’t risked, because I’ve been fearful. Help me exercise risking—risking love, risking courage, risking generosity. Meet me in this frontier. I want to trust you more. I believe that you want to increase the stakes, and this is my practice. 

I ask for your forgiveness for every way I’ve agreed with the spirit of false comparison with other men and had jealousy and envy and want of their life. I confess that the only life worth living is my life in you. Father, forgive me for comparing part of my life with part of his life. I release him. I bless him. And I cut off every judgment, every value I have made, every way I’ve cursed inadvertently. I ask for your forgiveness, and I bring blessing in the place of cursing. I choose in the heavenlies with my will to cause good on behalf of those men. 

And I own my life, my story—you as author, me as participant and partner and friend. Father, I invite you into all of my suffering. You’re the only person who can handle it. And you can handle it. So I invite you into it. I ask that you would make something beautiful come out of it. I ask that you would show me what to do with it, that you would make it worth it, Jesus, that you would tell me that it matters to you. All of it. And that you’re not far off, that you’re moving towards me.

Jesus, would you show me how to rest? And play? Would you show me how to receive love? There are places in me that just avoid it and fear it. Show me how to receive. Show me how to play. Show me how to become the kind of person of whom my kids (or future kids) would one day be able to say, “He was playful. He was so fun to be with.” Take off the burden. Lift the burden. 

Father, I give you all of my relationships: my marriage (future marriage), my kids (future kids), my friendships—I give it all to you. In the area of marriage, I give you my dreams and my dilemmas. And I am asking that you would simply breathe life into the here-and-now, that you would show me what needs to be done, that you would help me come to the center, and that you would give me your heart for her. Father, at every one of those junctures where it’s going sideways, I pray that you would help me be mindful to simply turn again to you and say, “Give me your heart for her.” I pray that you would help me believe that you are my defender; I have no need to defend myself. I ask that you would heal my marriage, restore my marriage; and I pray that you would bring my wife onto the same parallel journey as a woman and as a bride. Only you can do that, and only you can orchestrate it. I give you my marriage, I trust you with the pain, and I ask for a miracle. Today. A miracle. I agree that she’s the one you chose for me, and you don’t make mistakes. So I break every agreement I’ve made around an alternative path, and I receive her again in love. I renew my heart for her because of you. 

Father, I give you my children. I give you what I’ve missed of their hearts. I give you the hours I’ve missed and the days I’ve missed; and I stay in your love, where you say, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” I’m banking on it, Jesus. And I believe that the only way I become the kind of parent I want to be is through parenting. So I receive grace for myself as a parent. 

I pray that you would teach me how to be present; that you would work my schedule supernaturally, flowing out of my beliefs, to give them more of my time—and also out of my beliefs, more of my heart; that you would help me be present to the regular, day-to-day moments where you are asking me to bring them into deeper realities and wonder of the Kingdom of God; that I would model a Larger Story, bigger than anything they find; that I would give them access to you, Father; that I would turn and that they would see my model of turning to you, the one with unlimited resources. I don’t have to have it figured out, God. I confess all the pressure I put on myself to have it figured out. And I pray, God, that you would help me bring them deeper into the Kingdom of God, to know your heart. 

I confess that these are the hidden years. I give you permission to hide me in the ways you want to hide me. Only you can figure that out, and only you can resolve that. But I ask that you would clarify and consecrate my yes. Help me understand what it is that I am to say yes to, and who it is that I am to say yes to. Help me establish my yes and amen as it is in the Kingdom of Heaven, so that I can have confidence to say no to everything and everyone that’s a no from you. Help me discern; help me walk in that.  

Father, I pray for pure relationships. I ask, God, that you would give me one, that you would give me two, that you would help me see like-hearted kings who want what I want and have to fight through the same stuff to get it. Help me fight for those. Show me where I need to sacrifice more. Pour your robust life into those relationships. Give us shared mission so that we can lock arms and move toward something larger, as a context to dive deeper into the restoration of our hearts together.  Give me a few. I believe that it’s your idea, it’s your design, it’s your desire, and it’s my destiny. So would you bring me those men? Father, bring me the peers, bring me the mentors, bring me the men; order my expression of the Body of Christ, my community, my story, that I would own my life and I would cast off every other story. I release it. I own my life. 

Father, the love that you have for your Son Jesus is the same love that you give to me, the love that you offer me. I receive it today. I receive it with confidence. I receive it with joy, with expectation. I receive your love afresh today.

And I put on the armor afresh today as your son, the armor of God: shoes of the gospel of peace, whereby I can move in step with your Spirit; a belt of truth, whereby I love the things you love and I hate the things you hate; a breastplate of righteousness, whereby I choose what you choose and I refuse what you refuse. I put on the helmet of salvation, whereby my hope is seated and established in the Kingdom to come and the place that you have carved out for me. My hope is in the intervention of Heaven today. I take up the sword of the Spirit, that you would arm me with the Word of God; and the shield of faith, whereby I am sure of what I hope for and certain of all that I do not see. I put it on. 

I am your son, and I say, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” I choose you today; I invite you into this decade. I invite you to shape it, to lead it and guide it. Father me. Apprentice me in your Kingdom. I am an unfinished man, but I choose today to give all of me to all of you. I accept your acceptance of me. I choose to live in the present moment. I ask for a wise and discerning heart. I unite my heart with your heart. I choose to listen to your voice. I receive your peace that passes understanding. I receive your courage, I receive your strength, I receive your joy. I love you. I trust you. I choose to become good soil. You have my yes. 

Amen.