Touch this wayward heart with matters of vital importance, Lord. Sink truth deep into the mire of a crowded soul. Your truth, though uncomfortable at times and inconveniently personal, is not one I wish to avoid. Aid me in my reactions, Lord. Rid me of the carnality that makes my heart abhor the contact of spiritual truth. Forgive my habit of avoiding applicable conviction by running to the shadows of religious practice and holy history. The history that most concerns You is within the folds of my life boundaries. Let me not hide from Your personal gaze by expanding those boundaries to the irrelevancy of worldly religious events. How easily a frightened, rigid heart set in its ways deflects the arrow of conviction. May a fear of legalism not excuse me from seeking to live holy to Your Name. Teach me how to avoid convenient ways of neglecting a long gaze in the mirror of Your Word. A gaze meant to refine when properly examined. May the external and ritualistic manifestation of my life be as a result of a pure, simple, and spiritually enhanced experience of my relationship in Christ. By Your Spirit, change me Lord. By Your strength, mold me. I know change is necessary and refinement a privilege. Let me not fear becoming a distinguishing figure in the story of Your Good News. To be set apart is an honor. Lead me along a path of distinction, Lord, to the glory of Your Name. Under the mighty sanctity of Your Word in James 1:22-24 and the authority of Christ, I pray.

But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
James 1:22-24, ESV