"You Are God, the Father Almighty..." 18 December 2022

 

Since you are God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, we pray for your creation and creatures whom you made, and whom you sustain. Thank you for the rains we’ve received here. Please continue to supply the showers and rainfalls we need. Replenish our resources and reserves. Preserve our continent from fires and floods, plagues and pestilence. Please continue your kindnesses to our country and shine the light of your mercy on all nations to include Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and Moldova. Bring all peoples to recognize that in you we live and move and have our being. Bring kindness and care to be exhibited unilaterally. Calm the troubling voices and saber-rattling. We also implore your compassion for those who need our prayers, because their estate in life at present is precarious or poor (…). Lift up their heads from the dreariness or darkness that they may come to count it all joy when they meet trials of various kinds and come to know that the testing of their faith is to produce steadfastness (James 1:2-3).

 

Jesus Christ, the only Son of God by nature, and our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: descended into hell; The third day you rose again from the dead; ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; and from there you shall come to judge the quick and the dead. We pray for your Gospel, that it may prevail in all hamlets and habitations. Empower and enervate your messengers, ministers and missionaries to clearly, charitably and courageously proclaim your whole counsel, showing the magnificence of your saving work. May our nations become truly evangelized; and may your world rescue operation expand until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2.14). May heretics renounce their errors and be granted repentance;  and may the wayward and unbelieving, especially these we pray for now, finally submit to you, rely on you and be reconciled to the Father by you (…).


And, O Holy Spirit, since what Christ accomplished for us you applied to us, and bring forth the outcomes of Christ’s coming: the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting; we pray for all those who make profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, together with their children (BCO 2-1 and WCF 25.2) in every land, including this congregation, as well as Kelham Baptist Church, Kentucky Ave, Knob Hill, and Lone Star Baptist Church. May the Church of Jesus Christ thrive, be reinvigorated, and be increasingly reformed and recovered. And make us ever “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). And now, we join together to pray as Jesus taught, saying, Our Father…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“The Shift” - 2023 Movie. A Review

Image
  What do you get when you cross a dark dystopian storyline with sci-fi, alternative dimensions, theological and philosophical questions, and the biblical book of Job? You get The Shift , written and directed by Brock Heasley, produced by Ken Carpenter, and distributed by Angel Studios. This roughly one hour and 45 minute tale swirls around Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) as he moves from one realm of life, with it’s happiness and heartbreak, to another dimension that is a dismal existence clearly governed by The Benefactor (masterfully played by Neal McDonough). A viewer will be asking questions all the way through, and picking up clues and answers that pull the story together bit-by-bit. The story bumps up against an infinite set of alternative possibilities, of time, space, and versions of one’s self that will likely stoke a viewer’s imagination. But the heart of the narrative - besides love, grief, loss, trust/distrust - is around the place of evil, specifically, personal or human evil.
Read more

Community?

Image
  (This is from my letter to my congregation I sent out today, 30 August 2023) As one of my elders was leading us through Carl Trueman’s Strange New World in our adult class , I appreciated Trueman’s emphasis on community. And our discussions, especially the last two Sundays, were very fruitful as we thought out loud together about this subject. Therefore, I thought I would share something from David Brooks, an Op-ed columnist that leans into this discussion.   Brooks published a book in 2019 titled, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life”. In that work he was taking a gentle punch at destructive trends he has been seeing, and giving some helpful correctives. And so, he notes that “Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism” (34). He then shows how the loneliness and spiritual emptiness of individualism taken too far have become more prevalent in our time and the ways that they lead to very dark social consequences. These darker social consequences foster the need t
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 another, is
Read more