"O Lord, Creator of the Earth" - Evening Prayer, 9 May 2021


 O Lord, Creator of the earth, you never grow faint nor get weary, your understanding is unsearchable. You give power to the weak, and to those who have no might you increase strength (Isaiah 40:28-30). It is to you that we come and offer up our prayers and petitions. We ask you to be with your Church here and throughout the world. Being simultaneously justified and sinful, we cry out to you to guide us by your Holy Spirit and Holy Scriptures, keep us from turning to the right hand or to the left, that we may be more intensely and intentionally yours as we continue to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil. O Lord, hear our prayer. 

Lord Jesus, head over all things to your Church, we implore your guiding care and wisdom for our General Assembly as we prepare to meet at the end of June. You well know the big issues we will be tackling. Preserve us as we seek to be faithful to you over cultural and societal expediencies, so that our voices and desire for fidelity will carry the day. May our denomination continue its pursuit and heritage of biblical and covenantal loyalty. O Lord, hear our prayer. 

Our hearts are heavy burdened for those who have never trusted in Jesus Christ and his saving work, as well as those who once declared their faith in Jesus but have since wondered away (…). Generate in them a living faith and a faithful repentance, drawing them to our Savior. And show us our evangelistic role in your calling them to you. O Lord, hear our prayer. 

Look on the nations of this world, giving them the desire and ability to cast off unjust wars, barbarous brutality, and inhuman violence; that the peoples of the nations may live in safety, your Church be unmolested, and the Gospel allowed to run swiftly throughout the world. We ask you to keep these United States of America from crumbling into selfishness, greed, idolatry, and tyranny; preserve our country from falsehood and evil from within and without. O Lord, hear our prayer.

Finally, we entreat you to provide help, peace, health, sound minds and sound bodies to these who are harassed by various ailments and afflictions (…). O Lord, hear our prayer.

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