Category: actions

God expects

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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.       Galileo Galilei

god expects

For a long time religion and science were at odds. At some times they still are. Some people find the theory of evolution and God’s creating everything to be in conflict. There is the fear that we will uncover some fact that makes God irrelevant. But I think God gave us not only our brains but also our curiosity about the world around us. I don’t think he is concerned about what we will discover.

Prayer: Amazing God, help us to use our minds and our curiosity to bring about your kingdom on earth. Amen

 

Our hands

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““I screamed at God for all the starving children, and then I realized that all of the starving children were God screaming at me.” 

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This reminds me of the old story about the man who heard about a flood on the radio and said God would take care of him. The water rose and he ended up on the roof of his house. A boat came by and offered to save him but he declined saying God would save him. A helicopter came and tried to help him from the roof. Again he refused saying god would provide.
The man drowned and when he reached heaven he demanded from God “why didn’t you save me?” God replied: “I sent a news report, a boat and a helicopter. What are you doing here?”

We expect our answers from God to be extraordinary and ignore the things in front of us.

 

Prayer: God of wisdom, forgive us when we are blind and don’t see the messages you send. Amen

 

Don’t create God

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You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”  Anne Lamott

We have to be careful about how we imagine God. We can’t expect God to think exactly what we think. After all, God is God. Jesus spent a lot of time telling us about God and the Kingdom of God. We need to spend more time reading the Bible.

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Prayer: Patient God, you know that we keep trying to create you in our own image. Remind us that it is the other way around. Amen

 

 

 

 

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The fewer the words, the better the prayer. Martin Luther

listen 2

 

Too often, when we take time to pray, we spend it all on telling God our problems, and our desires. Seldom do we stop—-in total silence and wait to see if we can hear God’s voice. We are so good at talking and not listening.

 

 

Prayer: Oh Lord, quiet our minds and our mouths. Remind us that we find you most in silence. Help us to close out the noises of our busy lives and sit quietly and wait. AMEN

 

My way

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Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.             Abraham Lincoln

my way

 

We are good at going our own way. We plan without listening for God’s wisdom and then wonder what went wrong. Maybe we should listen first and act second. God may have a different plan.

Prayer: God of patience, you must grow tired of our strong-mindedness and willfulness. Help us to spend time with you in prayer and to be still and hear your voice. AMEN

 

Cross to crown

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No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
William Penn

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Remember the old hymn that says “if you cannot bear the cross then you cannot wear the crown.” The Christian life is not easy. Sometimes it seems that way to us since we are at the end of an age when to be a Christian was the easy path. Everyone else (who mattered was Christian. Anyone who wanted to get with the in crowd went to church. You were accepted if you were Christian. Not so any more. The number of Christians is declining and we don’t have to go to church to be socially acceptable. It may even be becoming a detriment. What will you do then?

Prayer: Lord Jesus we have been complacent for too long. Help us to see that being Christian requires sacrifice. The cross is for us not the crown. Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did it!

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 Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

John Stott

father forgive them

 For many years we Christians blamed the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. It was easier to do this than to accept that had we lived in his time and place we could have been a party to his death. We are not blameless even now. We kill him again each time we don’t acknowledge that was are Christians, each time that we hurt someone else or don’t do something the we know is right. We kill him little by little.

Prayer: God of forgiveness, we are sinful people and we fall off the path all the time. Help us to think before we act. Amen

 

 

Take up your cross

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If He laid down His life for us, is it not the least we can do to lay down ours for Him? If He bore the cross and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for him?                   Dwight Lyman Moody

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What does it mean to “take up the cross?”  He adds “and follow me.” Am I really following him? He loved and related to all people. He ate with tax collectors (who were hated by the people); did not rebuke a woman who was unclean for touching him. He went against the grain for his time. How are we doing?

 

Prayer: Lord Jesus, so many are outcast s in our own time. Even naming them can set us off. Help us to follow you more closely and learn to love even the people we now shun. Amen

 

Keep going

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fail

 

We come up with wonderful plans for Lent. We decide to pray more, do more, give more. And then we slip. One day goes by without us doing what we planned. Don’t worry about it. Pick up the next day  and just keep on. We are imperfect. God is aware of our failings. He forgives us. Get up and keep going.

Use this prayer

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This is the prayer we used today at Ash Wednesday Service. It is a prayer we all should use.

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Most holy and merciful God,
we confess to you and to one another,
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinned by our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, O God.
We have shut our ears to your call to serve as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our past unfaithfulness, the pride, envy, hypocrisy, and apathy that have infected our lives, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to share the faith that is in us, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our neglect of human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our false judgments, our uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, we confess to you.
Have mercy on us, O God.
Restore us, O God, and let your anger depart from us.
Hear us, O God, for your mercy is great.