Author Archives: odes4hg

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.

Today we give thanks to You Lord Jesus Christ for You are our Savior, our Redeemer and our Friend.  Breathe life back into the dry desert of our hearts for You are the great I Am. You live in this moment and so should we.  Stop us from holding on to what happened or what might happen.  Instead focus our thoughts on the here and now so that we can truly be Your hands and feet in this world.  We are all children of God living in His household.  To keep all of God’s gifts for ourselves and to ignore the other members of God’s family does not bless the world it curses it.  So Lord, reveal Your truth to us today in Your Word for our lives so that we can fully participate in the glory of Your resurrection rather than just observing it.  Break our hearts for what breaks Yours because as long as there are still people being unjustly persecuted, who are hungry, or who are sick then the ministry that Christ started is not over.  And even though we think that it would be so much easier to ignore the problems of others we must remember that the others could be our grandparents, parents, children, us or even be Jesus.  Let us remember that in the darkest times of our lives “it is not the shouts of our enemies that hurt us the most but it is the silence of our friends” (Martin Luther King Jr). How will the next generation know how to follow Jesus?  It’s simple: By watching us.  By learning from the example that we leave for them in this life.  Did we hate or did we love?  Did we stand up for the forgotten or did we look the other way?  “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear.” (Verna Dozier, The Dream of God, 1991)  And You, Lord, have told us “Do not fear, for unto us, in the city of David, a Savior was born” (Luke 2:11) who changed the world and changed our hearts.  So as we receive Christ today at this altar let us remember that He also goes with us into the world that He loves.  And remember that there are those who are so hungry that they can only receive God in the form of bread.  So let us give to the One and to the many.

Almighty God, we are all scattered here ready to receive Your Word for our lives today.  Clear away all of the distractions and bend our ear to listen for Your Spirit.  Break into the excesses of our lives so that we can stop playing games and start living the life that You would have us live.   We have much to learn Lord, so we ask that You cultivate, tend and nurture our minds so that we can be emptied of the garbage that prevents us from learning from Your Word.    Stop us from succumbing to fake affections and idle conversations so that we can recognize that we are all barren in some ways.  We are barren because of whatever life has thrown at us and we are thirsting for acceptance and love.   And You give us all that we need.  You accept us.  You love us.   And because You love us, we should love each other.  But we cannot love each other unless we love and respect ourselves.  So grow our faith in You and reveal Your truth so that we can understand that God does not make mistakes.  We are all sent to this earth for a purpose.    Our faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit allows us to have hope.  Hope allows us to live knowing that no matter what happens God is in our side.   So when the thorns of doubt creep into our lives and attempt to convince us that we are a mistake and that God is an afterthought.  Let us remember, “for God so loved the world that He sent His only Son” to show us and to show the world what God has always known.  We are loved.  We are redeemed. And we are cherished by the One who has and will always love us.  It’s His truth that marches on.

Loving God, we thank You for being exactly who You say You are and doing exactly what You said You would do. You have created us in Your image and have redeemed us by the grace and loving sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus Christ. You are real. Your love is real so we need You to make our love real to. Make our love real when we pretend and hide behind the right words with no accountability or follow through because if we have real love for Almighty God, then we must have real love for one another. We cannot love God, whom we have not seen, and hate those who we do see. And as we desperately accept Your forgiveness, let us also forgive others by letting go of who was right or who was wrong because whatever we believe about Almighty God needs to be demonstrated in the relationship that we have with one another. Right beliefs should cause right actions. Right religion will manifest itself only from right relationships with the Creator and with each other. So Lord, give us the strength and the faith to stand up. To stand up for love. To stand up for the elderly. To stand up for the poor. To stand up for the sick. And to stand up for the broken hearted. Help us to stand up for our brothers and sisters in this very room whom the world has forgotten. Help us to stand up for the cause and ministry of Jesus Christ so that our light will shine so that we can glorify our Father in heaven. Shine in our lives Lord “so that we can see that to follow You is less about avoiding sin and more about courageously and actively doing God’s will” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) so that we can do what the world will not do for us: Love God, love ourselves and love our neighbor.

Almighty God, thank You for the gift of this life: A gift that we take for granted at times. Empty our minds of selfishness and arrogance so that we can receive Your Word for our lives today. Stop us from placing people into teams of either us or them, the righteous or the Samaritans, the good or the bad. We are so quick to relish in the notion that we are in fellowship because we are believers but we also forget that we are in fellowship because we are also sinners. We forget that our neighbor is anyone beside ourselves because we think too much with our eyes and we are easily fooled. We fail to realize that to love our neighbor as ourselves is to be free. Free from hate, free from guilt, and free from the past. You, Lord, humbled Yourself and stepped into our shoes, into our humanity, to give us the opportunity to reach the full potential of our human condition. So bring our faith back to life in the gift that You have given us: The gift that we are all made new in Christ Jesus. And make the distinction definitive and clear that this is a gift from Almighty God and not a reward that we have earned. As we stand on this side of the resurrection we see that there are no perfect people but there is a perfect God. So let us be still and know that You are Lord of all and that You are with us in the good and in the broken seasons of our lives. Take hold of our lives Lord and make a new legacy where we can stand together united as one family in God’s household where we are all advocates for those whom the world doesn’t love. No matter what doors are locked shut to us in this life there is nothing that can separate us from the everlasting and unyielding love of Almighty God. Send us forth as You sent Your Son so that we can love the One and love the many.

Confessing our mistakes is the beginning of the healing process. Forgiving others as we have been forgiven is the next. Lord, destroy the idea that we have in our mind that our sin is somehow less sinful than the sins of others. You told us that the most important commandment is to Love our neighbor as ourselves, not judge them as we should be judged. But Lord, we forget and we hold onto grudges. Help us to let go this baggage that weighs us down from experiencing Your presence in our lives. The good news is that it gets better. It does get better because of the intercession of Jesus Christ who gives us never ending grace from Almighty God: A grace that surpasses all understanding and reaches beyond the confines of time. You have forgiven us no matter what went wrong in this life. And it will be an even better place here on earth when we extend that same grace and forgiveness to our neighbor that was gifted to us by God. We are all prodigal children scared to be rejected by the One that we ran away from. Yet You, God, are always running towards us, desperate for us to open our eyes and to receive You. Help us Lord to go back to the simplicity of the gospel. The truth that You, God, are love in every form and that You do not offer us just a piece of grace but You give us grace in abundance. So when we think that what we do in this life is not important, then remind us just how much influence we have on the lives of others. We never know who might experience love, who might learn from love, or how they experience love. We can just “love.” So let’s drop the stones of condemnation and judgement for others as we would want those stones to be dropped for ourselves and our sins.