Monthly Archives: September 2013

Eternal God, we thank you for this day and we bless You, Lord, for being exactly who You are.  We bless You for being our Savior, Redeemer and Friend because You give us what we need and not necessarily what we want.  And what we need is You, we need You to simplify the complexity of this world into the beautiful simplicity of Your truth.  The truth that says all people are loved and redeemed by God.   So change the atmosphere around us with Your Holy Spirit and bring joy back into our lives.  Bring joy back into our relationships and our jobs…bring joy back into our words and actions so that we can experience You as never before.  See, no one can take away what we have experienced.  So let us experience the Deliverer, the Provider, and the Comforter.  Let us experience Grace and the God who is the friend of sinners.   Let us experience Your dream for us to live a life full and rich in the love of Christ so that we break the cycle of doing bad things.  Be our vision so that we can stop being just spectators of other peoples battles and instead we can be advocates for the human family of God. So what can we give to Eternity?  We can give a life lived in Your Holy Word.  We can love as we are loved.  We can seek justice for those who the world hates.  We can forgive as we have been forgiven.   And when the world tells us to quit, that we’ve done enough, remind us that it is always to soon to quit.  The message of God’s love needs to be heard and heard and heard again.  And we need to tell it to as many people so that no one misses the opportunity to hear the good news that they are loved.

Holy One, we come here today with all of our flaws, embarrassments and hang ups.  We come disconnected from a world obsessed with consumption and anonymity.   Let Your love break through the empty void of our lives so that You can reside in our hearts.  Heaven hear us now and lead us back to life.  Center our minds so that we can step into the story of scripture: the story of You, our Heavenly Father, and the unfathomable richness of Your love for us.  Speak to us beyond the sacred page so that we can apply Your truth in our lives: the truth that we are all loved so that we can love and the truth that we are all forgiven so that we can also forgive.  And even when we are buried under the mountains of our mistakes and regrets: Grace happens. Grace happened in a baby born in Bethlehem and grace happens in the kindness from one child of God to another. Lord, stir us away from temptation so that we can love as we are loved and let the love of Christ be the rich soil where our lives take root. So Lord, when the world abandons us help us to remember that we do not live on bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  (Deuteronomy 8:3). 

In the war of our minds, Lord, shine your light so that we can see past the darkness of this world and focus on You.  Give us the strength to stop hiding, to stop performing/pretending, and to stop going through the motions…Give us strength by leading us into Your presence.  And when doubt creeps in, remind us that You alone will comfort us in the most uncomfortable situations.  Just as You were there in the fiery furnace, You are here for us in every moment of our lives.  Give us wisdom to stop running away from You and instead let’s run to You abandoning all of the regrets and limitations of the past.  Let’s cling on to the hope and the promise of God’s salvation.  You meet us in places and times of our lives when we are so wrong and yet You make a miracle out of our messes.  Help us to step into Your miracle of life, into Your miracle of grace, forgiveness and mercy.  Be real.  Be here and be with us.  Print Your word on our mouths so that we can all be the light and salt of the earth that glorifies only You.  Let Your Word cut through every song, every piece of scripture, every word spoken and everything seen in this place.  Help us to experience the radical Grace of Almighty God as we have never experienced before by drawing us closer to You.  You are everything that You say You are and You will do everything that You say You will do.  Help us to trust in the One who will remember us even when the world has forgotten us.  Lord, bring us back to when we first believed.  Melt our hearts so that we know that this world and it’s limitations of death and sin do not win: The love of God wins.

Emmanuel, God with us, thank You for this moment in time where we can focus on You and what You have done and continue to do for us in this life. You bless us each time we breathe, each morning that wake up, and each time that we move forward for Your cause. Thank You for the gift of faith in Christ because our faith gives us hope and hope gives us all a new way to share in the dream that God has for our lives. Stop us from squandering our inheritance of grace by excluding our faith from others. Give us the wisdom to look beyond the human race and focus instead on the human family of God’s children. A family comprised of sinners made saints by grace alone. You Lord, provide for all of our needs but the world provides for our greed. It is not God that separates mankind; we do just fine in the department. And when we do this, when we exclude others from witnessing God’s love through our lives, then we bankrupt ourselves from loving others as we are loved. So rewrite the narrative for our lives so that we can be compassion, we can be mercy, and we can be love. We can be all these things because greater is He that lives in us than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:4) Lord, let our lives be a demonstration of Your dream for us all to live courageously and freely knowing that love paid the ultimate price and washed away all our sins. Let us invest into the dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; (Martin Luther King) “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all shall see it.” (2 Isaiah 40:4-5). Courage not fear is our way of saying we will follow the Lord and trust in His steadfast love.