Praying Titus 2:1-12 for Ourselves and One Another - 21 February 2021

 


[Evening Prayer guided by Titus 2:2-12]

Thank you that your grace, which brings salvation to all, teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and that your grace teaches us to live sober-mindedly, uprightly and godly in this present age. Therefore, we pray for ourselves and others across the chronological, economic, and sexual spans. May the older men (…) be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled. May they live and love and learn and lead in ways that are sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. O Lord, hear our prayer.

 Aid the older women (…) likewise to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. May they teach the younger women what is good, and so coaching them in sobriety of thought, action and reaction. O Lord, hear our prayer.

In their relationships with the older women, we pray for the young women (…) that they would learn to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. O Lord, hear our prayer.

Likewise, O Lord, walking with the older men, cause the younger men (…) to be self-controlled. O Lord, hear our prayer.

All of us who are ministers (…) give us the sense to show ourselves in all respects to be models of good works, and in our teaching to show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. O Lord, hear our prayer.

Though we may or may not be in situations like the bondservants of old, yet we ask you to assist us in righteous and godly submission to our superiors. And may our integrity be genuine, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything we may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. O Lord, hear our prayer.

All of these requests we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and our saving Lord. Amen

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" (Rev. Ed.) by John Fea. A Review

Image
  John Fea is a professor of history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. A university founded in 1909 by the Brethren in Christ Church. He originally published "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction" in 2011, and it was revised in 2016. This 328-page paperback is packed full with Colonial and American history, drawing from original sources to answer that question. It is a book written "for the historically minded and thoughtful reader who is looking for help in sorting" out this question, avoiding polemics (xix). Since we live in a sound-bite culture, Fea recognizes that it is difficult to have a sustained dialogue on this topic, but he makes a valiant effort toward having that sustained dialogue. The book reads fairly straightforward, and doesn't seem to get bogged down in the contentious mudpuddles or bogs. In the end, Fea seems to get his point across. To answer the reigning question if America was founded as a Christian...
Read more

Union with Christ - An Application

Image
  (This was my weekly letter to my congregation on Wednesday, 21 February 2024) This morning in my devotional reading, I was working through 1 Corinthians 8. Though I’ve read these words a huge number of times over the years, today one verse caused me to stop and take stock.  Paul wrote, “ Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). What struck me is a couple of things. First, in God’s saving work, we are – by grace alone – united (hitched, bonded, ingrafted) to Christ so much so, that what happens to us happens to him, and what is his becomes ours (think of Galatians 2:20, for example). As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “through union with Christ all that is his by incarnation becomes ours through faith” (“The Christian Life,” 110). Let that percolate in your heart for a while. Your fear, anxiety, tears, and so forth, he feels. And his “ Peace, be still ” is yours. Second, the way we treat one an...
Read more

"Ah, Lord! We are Animated by Anger and Anxiety, Fear and Fury..."

Image
I hesitate to put this out there because of the combative environment we are in at present. But I think some souls will take courage from this, and some will also join with me as we get to the end of this little composition. I am struck by the words of God in Zechariah 8. As he rehearses the waywardness and faithlessness of his people in the past, he clearly declares that he " set every man against his neighbor " (8:10). That got me thinking long ago. I started putting the pieces together and realized that one of God's acts of judgment is division, setting a man against his neighbor. That's what happened when he divided his people into the northern tribes and southern tribes (see 1 Kings 11:26-40). Because of Solomon's turning aside, allowing his wives to turn his heart away from the God of his father, David, the Lord brings about a rift in God's people. And this pattern of divisive judgment runs throughout Scripture. On the other hand, truthful unity is the g...
Read more