Loving Jesus like his Father does

“I have paraphrased John 17:26 in order to pray it like this: ‘Father, grant me power from the Holy Spirit to love the Son of God like you love him.’

I pray this in the morning when I get up; I pray it during the day when my mind slips into neutral; and I pray it when I fall asleep at night. My heart has been captured by this prayer.

When I pray it, I am confessing to God that if he does not grant me a work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I will never acquire passion for the Son of God. I am confessing to him that my godliness, my discipline, my knowledge of the Word, though all good, are insufficient to produce passion for the Son of God.

I can change my mind, but only the Holy Spirit can change my heart. Divine love can only be divinely imparted.”

—Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 201

Published in: on May 15, 2008 at 1:00 am

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://firstimportance.org/2008/05/15/loving-jesus-like-his-father-does/trackback/

RSS feed for comments on this post.

3 Comments Leave a comment.

  1. On May 15, 2008 at 7:56 pm A Prayer for Passionate Living « To Live is Christ, To Die is Gain Said:

    [...] for a good reminder as we wrap up our semester theme of Passionate living. I came across this as an article of the site Of First Importance because I subscribe to his [...]

  2. On May 15, 2008 at 8:00 pm A Prayer for Passionate Living « Seize the Word Said:

    [...] for a good reminder as we wrap up our semester theme of Passionate living. I came across this as an article of the site Of First Importance because I subscribe to his [...]

  3. On May 16, 2008 at 1:33 pm Loving Jesus like his Father does « Already Not Yet Said:

    [...] (HT: Of First Importance) [...]

Leave a Comment