Deus Misereatur

This was what I presented today (24 September 2014) at the Capitol Bible Study. -----  “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”  Adults and Teenagers do this. When our supervisor calls us on the carpet for muffing a project, or failing to meet some major dead-line, we respond, “Yes boss; I know.” When parents start telling teenagers how to do this chore properly or that task more efficiently, they almost always reply: “I know.” It’s funny, we “know” – but the mistake or misstep shows that at another level we did...

Jesus, the cool-as-a-cucumber, emotionless, impervious Savior; that’s the impression most people have of him. You hear this notion float to the top in our prayers, where we inform God of our anxious frettings, and then quickly apologize for having let the nervous-cat out of the bag, thinking that God frowns on such frivolous fussing. But look at these verses. Here is Jesus, “ the eternal Son of God,” who “became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever ” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 21) in the Garden of Gethsemene, and what is his emotional state? “And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled . And he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful , even to death . Remain here and watch." And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed ( . . . ).” We read that Jesus takes along his three closest companions, and the atmosphere is charged with deep angu...

{Feel free to use this in your congregational, family, and personal prayers-Mike} Adoration and Intercession:  Paul Miller reminds us in his book, “A Praying Life”, that the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father”, draws us to the encouraging conclusion that “[y]ou are the center of your heavenly Father’s affection. That is where you find rest for your soul” (34). That’s what our shorter catechism says, in a bit different way, “to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence, as children to a father, able and ready to help us” (Q and A 100). Let us now draw near. O our God and Father, who turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, and a fruitful land into a salty waste; and yet you also turn deserts into pools of water, parched land into springs of water; who, when your people are diminished and brought low through oppression, evil and sorrow, raises up the needy out of affliction, making your families like flocks, making the upright to s...