PRAYER DEVOTIONAL
Lord, we have been sharing a mountaintop experience. For days now my passion has been for us to be together. Bible study, prayer, and music have given me a sense of being your child. In my mind I think….
This is real religion. This is what it is all about. The rest of the world can do what it "wants" or "must,” but we have each other.
But how could I claim genuinely to love You as a Father and let Your children, my brothers and sisters suffer as I sit by indifferently. If I do nothing l am neither following You nor letting You live in me.
Lord, give me the sense of Your sacrificial, caring love. I ask for my mission, my religion, my life to be lived for others.
Holy Spirit, please live in my life as you did in Christ’s. Jesus, help me to share with those who are in spiritual poverty that You have lived and died and left spiritual riches in righteousness on their account. Father, show me how I should manage the resources You have given me to aid my poorer brothers and sisters, from the ghetto child who lives on public assistance to the dark-skinned orphan with protruding stomach, let me see my part in meeting the need.
Lord, many are in prison all around me. Some are shackled by crack, heroin, or alcohol. Others are bound by guilt, hatred or bitterness. Some are locked away in a dark pit by their appetites. They cannot escape sexual lust, their fierce anger, their insatiable greed. Pleasure cracks the whip over more than a few who meet it by anything from junk food to society's plug-in-drug (TV). Lord, want to see the joy in their faces as I tell them You have made them free.
Let me take a vision of hope to eyes darkened by despair. Those who are sightlessly staring, glassy-eyed, at the passing tinsel of the world need to have their vision restored to see the glory of angels in their midst.
Satan has pushed some to the ground by bringing physical pain, or death of a loved one. He sends them down a precipice as he lures a spouse to be unfaithful, or snatches a child from the cradle of Christianity. He ties the laces of temptation, and explodes in laughter as his victim crashes to the grinding pavement of sin. Lord, let me lift up the fallen. Let me bandage the wounds. Let me work by them and give encouragement.
Let me proclaim that this is Your Year!! (Compare to Luke 4:18-20)
Scripture Study
Read James 1:19-27
1. What kinds of things make a doer of religion?
2. Why is visiting widows and orphans pure religion? v 27.
3. Are widows and orphans more deserving than drunks and prostitutes?
Read 1 John 4: 16-16
1. Does ministering to others only mean out time and a listening ear?
2. Would there be some people I shouldn't help with money?
Why or why not?
Action
1. Who are in the widows, orphans, and prisoners category that I might help this week?
2. What practically can I do to minister to these people?
Prayer
Lord, let me find worship not just in singing and praying but in caring for your family. Let me give to you by loving your children. In the cup of water I offer to the thirsty in wrapping my arms around the lonely nursing home patient let me show You my love. I will get off of the couch and talk to that neighbor across the street in Your name. I will offer the gift of my love by adopting the fatherless child. I want my religion to impact my world. Amen.
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