O Jesus, meek & humble of heart, hear me,
That others might be loved more than I.
That others might be esteemed more than I.
That in the opinion of the world, others may increase, & I many decrease.
That others may be chosen & I set aside.
That others may be praised & I unnoticed.
That others may be preferred to me in everything.
That others may become holier than I, provided I become as holy as I should.
Wow! What a prayer. After reading that, I remember feeling overwhelmed but extremely moved by it. That wasn't me. I didn't desire those things – but desperately wanted to. Over the course of a few weeks, I couldn't get the prayer off my mind. I remember the ache in my heart to so want to be able to mean that. So…I started praying it. For a while it became something I prayed every day. Please God, give me the grace to desire that others may be preferred to me in everything!
I guess in some ways, the 'rightness' of this prayer could be debated. It is basically debasing ourselves as human beings – asking for the grace to not care about our own needs or desires. We are surrounded in society with this attitude of self. It's important to make sure our own needs are met, to exercise our own rights as human beings, to not let people walk all over us, and most importantly to have confidence in ourselves. Self worth has become a massively important issue, and it is essential that we have it if we are to 'succeed in life'. If anyone needed any more convincing that this is the attitude of society, notice the words of the following song:
Because the greatest love of all Is happening to me
Now I am not saying that we do not need self worth, but I have to question whether we tend to make it the object of our search rather than the result of our living. If we try to find our self worth by searching for all of those things in the first paragraph of the prayer – love, honour, praise etc, and by avoiding those things in the second paragraph, will we not be forever searching? Not only that, but it will be a very inward search. If instead of seeking those things, instead we learned to reject the desire for those things, would our own self worth not be much stronger, because it was less dependent on 'the world'? Would we find our 'self worth' in the result of living without dependence on those things? In living a life that was truly first and foremost God-centred rather than self-centred? Or would we just end up hating ourselves?
I stopped praying this prayer after a while, not because I didn't want it anymore, but mainly through laziness and the fact that I didn't seem to be getting anywhere with it. I was praying for the desire, but did not sense my need for love and honour and praise diminishing. Looking back on it now, I have to say that since then, since stopping praying the prayer, if anything, those desires have got a lot stronger. Personally, I feel very challenged to make this my prayer again. Those desires are so strong that sometimes they can spoil the way I live my life. They can take over my mind, and become my sole purpose for living, making my living less effective, and spoiling my opportunities to influence others and love them as I should.
It's a massive prayer to live up to, and of course, praying it is not enough. It will require some positive action in terms of purposefully not searching for those things. I think sometimes its easy to let ourselves off the hook by saying that we are human, and they are natural desires which God gave us in the first place, and whilst that is true, I worry that its also an excuse to indulge a bit in self. I so want to get away from the tendency to do that, and my first step is going to be to start praying this prayer again.
Do you think this prayer encourages the right attitude?
5 comments:
Spot on!
Hey Kirsty,
U can always count on me to have an opinion!! Lol. But yeah, do I think this prayer encourages the right attitude- well I think that depends. I do believe it to be a good prayer and I do understand you completely when you say self worth should be God centred, I am wonderfully and fearfully made. However, I think it depends on the attitude you start out with. Take this line for example, “Deliver me…From the fear of being despised” Why? For what purpose? If it means stop me from agreeing for the sake of agreeing then I think that is a reasonable issue for prayer- but on the other hand- if people despised you then surely there is something in your life or attitude which is offensive. Now, i know you can argue that Jesus was despised- but not by everyone?!! I think if in your life everyone starts turning away from you, you have to consider why that is? I also think that this prayer in itself could become self indulgent. To not accept the gifts you have is false humility. And all false humility is is a bad disguise for pride. I think that selflessness is an after affect of love. I think genuine love of people means that you want them to be the best, whether that is better than you or not. You want them to be fulfilled, you want them to be loved and chosen and praised. But remember- other people want that for you!! I think to be aware of these issues is great, but you could save yourself a lot of time by praying simply for the ability to love all, purely, genuinely and selflessly.
Yeah. I think Jesus was despised by looads of people, but because he lived rightly not wrongly, and sometimes people will despise us for doing that too.
I personally do not think the prayer is talking about trying to pretend you don't feel you are worth anything, I think its more about trying to not even think about your own self worth - its about not even considering how stuff impacts you personally. But I think yuou are completely right in that actually, it does all boil down to love. Loving God and others perfectly would mean that the attitudes presented in the prayer would naturally become ours. Maybe though, learning to love others (whilst we will never get it perfect), is something we have to be active about trying to do, rather than just praying for a change of attitude and then hoping for the best. Maybe trying to cultivate the attitudes of this prayer actively is one way we could do that.
xxx
...and integrity comes into the scenario too.Just spent a few days on Retreat at Sunbury Court with the officers of the division - perk of my job I guess!We had opportunity to explore day to day holiness ( subject of a blog at some point maybe?) and during the course of our sessions words like -consistancy, honesty, integrity, wisdom, selflessness etc came up and up and up.How do we get to be holy? Not by ourselves, by the power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
I think that the prayer is a bit like the list on my blog, possibly a tool to measure our holiness, to raise awareness of our failings maybe, but to remind us that we are loved so much that we can freely ask God for his Holy Spirit. ..and that's not a indulgent self love, it's a love that means we can love others even more.
Hey,
Thanks for posting this. I've not seen this prayer for nearly 20 years and i have looked for it in that time periodically. I prayed it daily for months years ago and then stopped. That was Ok 'cos the Lord spent the following years answering what I had asked for. As i look back I can see the Lord working much of that out through many circumstances and it is great to see those words again.
I think that you could use this prayer in a wrong way if you have a wrong mindset. If you know who you are in Christ and have a strong foundation of His freedom in your life then you can use this prayer and it'll be a real blessing to you. If you are not starting to walk into real freedom then this may actually drag you down until you are ready for it.
Thanks for posting it anyway. awesome.
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