Blog Post Monday October 8th

A Prayer For Lives Lived Serving Christ By Serving Others (Colossians 3:23-24 {not in today's reading Jeremiah 31:3 & Hebrews 10:24-25})

I pray for each person who reads this Lord.  There are so many of us across the world in different circumstance, with different influences, different opportunities, different paths of life.  No matter where we each find ourselves, Lord, you have called us to live the moments we have today and every day as if we are living them for you.  I take that to mean to love people - both the easy to love and those who are difficult for us to love or perhaps that we may feel don't deserve our love.  It means to serve others - not just in ways we enjoy or that fit comfortably into our schedules but to serve when it might mean sacrifice or doing things we don't enjoy or just don't want to do.  It means to think of others and the ways we can encourage and build them up according to their needs and not our desires.  It means to face the struggles and trials in our day with the knowledge of who you are, Lord, and the grace to face it all so that we may be a light and testimony to who you are so that others around us may see our faith in the trials and be drawn to know more about who you are and the Love you have to give. 

Lord, help each of us to remember that when we give up our rights to be offended, our rights to hold a grudge, our dislikes and irritations, when we surrender our time, our wants and need, when we give up the honor we might feel is due to ourselves and surrender it to you, you will not leave us empty and in want.  No, you will fill us to overflowing.  Lord, we can live our lives working at all things as if we are working for you when we purposefully live for the promises of something more than this life, a reward beyond the boundaries of mortal successes and achievements, when we look to the promises of eternity with you and the hope and security it bring us.  That eternal promise was made not because we deserved it, not because we were faultless, not because it was easy to give or because of a God who was selfish but because you are a selfless God who loves with an everlasting love and has pursued and drawn us to you with a lovingkindness that is unlike any to be found anywhere else.

Prepare our hearts for every step we will take and may your spirit be a reminder of how you did not spare anything for us but you lived wholeheartedly for us, for our good and your glory.  When we remember this, Lord, let it spur us on to do good, to love and to encourage others. In your strength and joy may we truly serve you in all that we do and with all we encounter today.

AMEN