Community Prayer

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Comment by Jolene on January 12, 2011 at 3:35am

Matthew 6:1-6

The World Is Not a Stage
 1 "Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding. 2-4"When you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in action, I'm sure—'playactors' I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that's all they get. When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.
Pray with Simplicity
 5"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
 6"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.

 

 

The quiet, the steady, the workers for the Lord. Those that don't demand attention or the main stage. Just a cast member doing their work for the Lord. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 11, 2011 at 4:00am

John 13:33-38 (The Message)

 33"Children, I am with you for only a short time longer. You are going to look high and low for me. But just as I told the Jews, I'm telling you: 'Where I go, you are not able to come.'

 34-35"Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other."

 36Simon Peter asked, "Master, just where are you going?"

   Jesus answered, "You can't now follow me where I'm going. You will follow later."

 37"Master," said Peter, "why can't I follow now? I'll lay down my life for you!"

 38"Really? You'll lay down your life for me? The truth is that before the rooster crows, you'll deny me three times."

 

 

We always wonder Lord why so many suffer, where there is so much pain and loneliness in the world. Lonely is not your plan, your plan is for us to put ourselves above the pain and suffering and to show your love through our lives. Help me Lord to be grateful, not selfish. Be giving not expecting. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 10, 2011 at 4:38am

Genesis 12:1-9 (The Message)

Genesis 12
Abram and Sarai
 1 God told Abram: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's home for a land that I will show you.

 2-3 I'll make you a great nation
      and bless you.
   I'll make you famous;
      you'll be a blessing.
   I'll bless those who bless you;
      those who curse you I'll curse.
   All the families of the Earth
      will be blessed through you."
 4-6 So Abram left just as God said, and Lot left with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot with him, along with all the possessions and people they had gotten in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.

    Abram passed through the country as far as Shechem and the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites occupied the land.

 7 God appeared to Abram and said, "I will give this land to your children." Abram built an altar at the place God had appeared to him.

 8 He moved on from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent between Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. He built an altar there and prayed to God.

 9 Abram kept moving, steadily making his way south, to the Negev.

 

To have faith enough in you God to follow your words and trust your whispers. It seems so easy and so many have you led to greatness. I will follow Lord, give me the way. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 9, 2011 at 4:57am

Psalm 121

A Pilgrim Song

 1-2 I look up to the mountains; does my strength come from mountains?
   No, my strength comes from God,
      who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.

 3-4 He won't let you stumble,
      your Guardian God won't fall asleep.
   Not on your life! Israel's
      Guardian will never doze or sleep.

 5-6 God's your Guardian,
      right at your side to protect you—
   Shielding you from sunstroke,
      sheltering you from moonstroke.

 7-8 God guards you from every evil,
      he guards your very life.
   He guards you when you leave and when you return,
      he guards you now, he guards you always.

 

Lord we know you never sleep you are always with us, watching waiting. Hearing our every prayer. We should have no worries or cares because you shoulder our burdens. You have given a blue print for life a map that is just for us, and are walking each and ever step with you. Amen.

Comment by Jolene on January 8, 2011 at 4:53am

1 John 1 (The Message)

 

1 John 1

 ^1-2From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we're telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.

 ^3-4We saw it, we heard it, and now we're telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!

Walk in the Light

 ⁵This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there's not a trace of darkness in him.

 ^6-7If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth—we're not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God's Son, purges all our sin.

 ^8-10If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we've never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.

 

Lord you teach us to trust like a child, to open our heart and allow you to shine through us. We can all shine with your light Lord. All we need do is believe except and shine. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 7, 2011 at 4:55am

Romans 5:6-11 (The Message)

 6-8Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

 9-11Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!

 

My words today seem weak in the light of your scarific, I should be shouting to everyone near of your great Love. You died to save us when we aren't even worthy. You took our pain before we asked. You know our motive before the words hit our lips. And you know our human failure far to well. Thank you Lord for loving me. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 6, 2011 at 5:39am

John 4:7-26 (The Message)

 

 ^7-8A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, "Would you give me a drink of water?" (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

 ⁹The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)

 ¹⁰Jesus answered, "If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water."

 ^11-12The woman said, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this 'living water'? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?"

 ^13-14Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."

 ¹⁵The woman said, "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!"

 ¹⁶He said, "Go call your husband and then come back."

 ^17-18"I have no husband," she said.

   "That's nicely put: 'I have no husband.' You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough."

 ^19-20"Oh, so you're a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?"

 ^21-23"Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

 ^23-24"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

 ²⁵The woman said, "I don't know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we'll get the whole story."

 ²⁶"I am he," said Jesus. "You don't have to wait any longer or look any further."

 

 

Lord that would be so awesome to talk to you face to face like we one day can. I want to always drink from your everlasting well. The well you promised the womaqn the well available to each and every one of us. Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 5, 2011 at 5:47am

Isaiah 31:1-5 (The Message)

 

Isaiah 31

Impressed by Military Mathematics

 ^1-3Doom to those who go off to Egypt thinking that horses can help them,
Impressed by military mathematics,
   awed by sheer numbers of chariots and riders—
And to The Holy of Israel, not even a glance,
   not so much as a prayer to God.
Still, he must be reckoned with,
   a most wise God who knows what he's doing.
He can call down catastrophe.
   He's a God who does what he says.
He intervenes in the work of those who do wrong,
   stands up against interfering evildoers.
Egyptians are mortal, not God,
   and their horses are flesh, not Spirit.
When God gives the signal, helpers and helped alike
   will fall in a heap and share the same dirt grave.

 ^4-5This is what God told me:

   "Like a lion, king of the beasts,
   that gnaws and chews and worries its prey,
Not fazed in the least by a bunch of shepherds
   who arrive to chase it off,
So God-of-the-Angel-Armies comes down
   to fight on Mount Zion, to make war from its heights.
And like a huge eagle hovering in the sky,
   God-of-the-Angel-Armies protects Jerusalem.
I'll protect and rescue it.

 

What a wonderful thing to know that God is always at work, always watch and when the time is right will swoop down and save and protect his people. Amen
   Yes, I'll hover and deliver."

 

Comment by Jolene on January 4, 2011 at 4:04am

Matthew 22:34-40 (The Message)

 

The Most Important Command

 ^34-36When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?"

 ^37-40Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

 

 

Lord so simple yet so hard for us to follow. We love you but forget you are the center of our world. If you are the center everything else falls into line behind it like it should. Help me Lord to keep you the center of my life, my axis  Amen

Comment by Jolene on January 3, 2011 at 4:55am

 

1 Samuel 1
Hannah Pours Out Her Heart to God
 1-2There once was a man who lived in Ramathaim. He was descended from the old Zuph family in the Ephraim hills. His name was Elkanah. (He was connected with the Zuphs from Ephraim through his father Jeroham, his grandfather Elihu, and his great-grandfather Tohu.) He had two wives. The first was Hannah; the second was Peninnah. Peninnah had children; Hannah did not.
 3-7 Every year this man went from his hometown up to Shiloh to worship and offer a sacrifice to God-of-the-Angel-Armies. Eli and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, served as the priests of God there. When Elkanah sacrificed, he passed helpings from the sacrificial meal around to his wife Peninnah and all her children, but he always gave an especially generous helping to Hannah because he loved her so much, and because God had not given her children. But her rival wife taunted her cruelly, rubbing it in and never letting her forget that God had not given her children. This went on year after year. Every time she went to the sanctuary of God she could expect to be taunted. Hannah was reduced to tears and had no appetite.

 8 Her husband Elkanah said, "Oh, Hannah, why are you crying? Why aren't you eating? And why are you so upset? Am I not of more worth to you than ten sons?"

 9-11 So Hannah ate. Then she pulled herself together, slipped away quietly, and entered the sanctuary. The priest Eli was on duty at the entrance to God's Temple in the customary seat. Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and cried—inconsolably. Then she made a vow:
    Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
   If you'll take a good, hard look at my pain,
   If you'll quit neglecting me and go into action for me
   By giving me a son,
   I'll give him completely, unreservedly to you.
   I'll set him apart for a life of holy discipline.

 12-14 It so happened that as she continued in prayer before God, Eli was watching her closely. Hannah was praying in her heart, silently. Her lips moved, but no sound was heard. Eli jumped to the conclusion that she was drunk. He approached her and said, "You're drunk! How long do you plan to keep this up? Sober up, woman!"

 15-16 Hannah said, "Oh no, sir—please! I'm a woman hard used. I haven't been drinking. Not a drop of wine or beer. The only thing I've been pouring out is my heart, pouring it out to God. Don't for a minute think I'm a bad woman. It's because I'm so desperately unhappy and in such pain that I've stayed here so long."

 17 Eli answered her, "Go in peace. And may the God of Israel give you what you have asked of him."

 18 "Think well of me—and pray for me!" she said, and went her way. Then she ate heartily, her face radiant.

 

Dear Lord how easy we find it to critize others we do not understand. Help me today to hold my tongue. Offer you up prayers of request of my critics and allow me a day to be a good servant. Amen.

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