Dear God, yesterday, I read this blog post called “Out of Place” by Fred Smith. One of the things Smith mentioned was how frustratingly inconsistent you can be. Why are you so undependable? Why are you so inconsistent?!?

Now, for anyone who hasn’t read Smith’s piece, he is referring to your anger followed by our mercy as your inconsistency. And it’s true. You prove over and over again in the Bible that you are ready to be turned and change your mind. Even Jesus in Matthew 15:21-28 changes course when talking with the Gentile woman about healing her daughter. Yes, this might have been his plan all along–to test her–but it still shows this thing in your nature that you are just ready to love on us when we are ready for it. You are ready to forgive us. You are ready to be in complete relationship with us. You went to great extremes to do that for us, even sending a piece of you to live, suffer, and die. Amazing!

But that’s good for me. Do you have to do it for the people who make me angry? I joke with my staff that they get frustrated when I am soft with other people, but they don’t mind it so much when I’m soft with them. Yes, I too can be inconsistent with others.

Father, I guess one of my prayers this morning is that you will help me to be more inconsistent. Help me to be quicker to love and forgive. Help me to turn from my anger on a dime. You have modeled forgiveness for me. You have modeled it for my own spiritual and emotional health. You know it is part of your perfect nature and it needs to be part of my nature as well. So help me to get that just one step closer to being that man today. Do it all for your glory to come into this world through me and through your church. Help the whole world to see your church as gloriously inconsistent.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen