With love, perseverance, and gratefulness; in humble submission to God’s will, knowing that, for the sake of Christ, He always hears our prayers.
Scripture
PHILIPPIANS 4:6
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
Commentary
JOHN BUNYAN
Before you enter into prayer, ask thy soul these questions: To what end, O my soul, art thou retired into this place? Art thou not come to discourse the Lord in prayer? Is he present; will he hear thee? Is he merciful; will he help thee? Is thy business slight; is it not concerning the welfare of thy soul? What words wilt thou use to move him to compassion? To make thy preparation complete, consider that thou art but dust and ashes, and he the great God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that clothes himself with light as with a garment; that thou art a vile sinner, he a holy God; that thou art but a poor crawling worm, he the omnipotent Creator. In all your prayers forget not to thank the Lord for his mercies. When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart. Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
Scripture
PHILIPPIANS 4:6
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
Commentary
JOHN BUNYAN
Before you enter into prayer, ask thy soul these questions: To what end, O my soul, art thou retired into this place? Art thou not come to discourse the Lord in prayer? Is he present; will he hear thee? Is he merciful; will he help thee? Is thy business slight; is it not concerning the welfare of thy soul? What words wilt thou use to move him to compassion? To make thy preparation complete, consider that thou art but dust and ashes, and he the great God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that clothes himself with light as with a garment; that thou art a vile sinner, he a holy God; that thou art but a poor crawling worm, he the omnipotent Creator. In all your prayers forget not to thank the Lord for his mercies. When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart. Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
Devotional
THABITI ANYABWILE
Hypocritical prayer is an oxymoron; hypocrisy and prayer just don’t go together. Anything that we properly call prayer should be divorced from hypocrisy. The Lord teaches us this in the Gospels when he talks about those who pray for an audience; for them prayer is a show. And if you’ve been praying any length of time, you know that you don’t need an audience for your prayers to be a show. Sometimes we’re watching ourselves pray. We’re admiring the eloquence of our appeal. We like the turn of phrase. So our prayer can go from being an act of communion with God to a demonstration of pride.
But real prayer is an expression of love. Real prayer is an expression of perseverance. It’s an expression of gratefulness.
Why love? Because in prayer we’re communing with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We’re praying to the Father in the name of the Son through the Spirit. And in the act of prayer, we’re meant to enjoy them and to get to know them and to commune with them. How can prayer be communion without love?
In prayer there should also be perseverance, steadfastness, press- ing in, continuously knocking at the door. This perseverance is necessary to prevail against our flesh. Our flesh wars against the spirit. And, boy, I tell you, when we pray, don’t we sometimes experience a wandering, distracting mind? When we pray, don’t we sometimes experience our frailty, our weakness, our fatigue? I’ve fallen asleep praying just as our Lord’s apostles did in the garden of Gethsemane. So we need perseverance, and we need that pressing into the things of God, that pushing out the distractions of the world, that crucifying of the flesh, again, that we might have this fuller communion with the Lord.
Finally, prayer ought to be an expression of gratitude. Let us count the blessings of the Lord. Let us mark his providences. Let us observe the divine interruptions that have broken into our lives, such that we might receive not only Christ but everything in Christ, and receive and experience it in surprising ways, in opportune times, in times later than we had hoped for or expected. The divine interruptions of God, which are blessings and distributions of his kindness to us, ought to cultivate gratitude in us. Our prayers ought to express that gratitude so that we’re conscious of the kindness and goodness of the Lord.
Even when we can’t trace God’s hand, as the saying goes, we can trust his heart because we know God is good, and we’re grateful for his goodness. That spurs us on in our prayer and perseverance, and it turns us again in love toward Christ our Savior, God our Father, and the Spirit our Comforter.
Prayer
Loving Father, we come to you in the name of your beloved Son. Give us perseverance in prayer, even when we do not immediately see answers. Let us believe that you will not keep back any good thing from us, and trust that you will withhold those things we seek that would harm us. Your ways are higher than our ways, and we entrust our requests to your sovereign kindness. Amen.
THABITI ANYABWILE
Hypocritical prayer is an oxymoron; hypocrisy and prayer just don’t go together. Anything that we properly call prayer should be divorced from hypocrisy. The Lord teaches us this in the Gospels when he talks about those who pray for an audience; for them prayer is a show. And if you’ve been praying any length of time, you know that you don’t need an audience for your prayers to be a show. Sometimes we’re watching ourselves pray. We’re admiring the eloquence of our appeal. We like the turn of phrase. So our prayer can go from being an act of communion with God to a demonstration of pride.
But real prayer is an expression of love. Real prayer is an expression of perseverance. It’s an expression of gratefulness.
Why love? Because in prayer we’re communing with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We’re praying to the Father in the name of the Son through the Spirit. And in the act of prayer, we’re meant to enjoy them and to get to know them and to commune with them. How can prayer be communion without love?
In prayer there should also be perseverance, steadfastness, press- ing in, continuously knocking at the door. This perseverance is necessary to prevail against our flesh. Our flesh wars against the spirit. And, boy, I tell you, when we pray, don’t we sometimes experience a wandering, distracting mind? When we pray, don’t we sometimes experience our frailty, our weakness, our fatigue? I’ve fallen asleep praying just as our Lord’s apostles did in the garden of Gethsemane. So we need perseverance, and we need that pressing into the things of God, that pushing out the distractions of the world, that crucifying of the flesh, again, that we might have this fuller communion with the Lord.
Finally, prayer ought to be an expression of gratitude. Let us count the blessings of the Lord. Let us mark his providences. Let us observe the divine interruptions that have broken into our lives, such that we might receive not only Christ but everything in Christ, and receive and experience it in surprising ways, in opportune times, in times later than we had hoped for or expected. The divine interruptions of God, which are blessings and distributions of his kindness to us, ought to cultivate gratitude in us. Our prayers ought to express that gratitude so that we’re conscious of the kindness and goodness of the Lord.
Even when we can’t trace God’s hand, as the saying goes, we can trust his heart because we know God is good, and we’re grateful for his goodness. That spurs us on in our prayer and perseverance, and it turns us again in love toward Christ our Savior, God our Father, and the Spirit our Comforter.
Prayer
Loving Father, we come to you in the name of your beloved Son. Give us perseverance in prayer, even when we do not immediately see answers. Let us believe that you will not keep back any good thing from us, and trust that you will withhold those things we seek that would harm us. Your ways are higher than our ways, and we entrust our requests to your sovereign kindness. Amen.
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"Gratitude" Brandon Lake
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Josiah Queen - Can't Steal My Joy feat. Brandon Lake
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"Love of God" by Phil Wickham & Brandon Lake
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Graves Into Gardens
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although Ge had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53
For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although Ge had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53
Forwarded from Thieves Of Wonders️️️ (Scott Metcalf)
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Beautiful Things - Phillip Guyer
Forwarded from Thieves Of Wonders️️️ (Scott Metcalf)
“To the little boy at the science museum, I don’t know who you are, but thank you for being amazing. You let my son play and engage with you. You helped him pick up balls from the floor when you saw that he could not. You didn’t ask what was wrong with him or why he couldn’t walk, you just saw him.
Kaden is a lot like you, he is very curious and wildly smart. He wants to know how everything works.
Thank you for helping him turn the lever when you noticed he was too weak to do it himself. You will probably never see this but just by being you, you make this world better.”
And this is why, I think… the world’s gonna be just fine.
~Kaden’s Cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Kaden is a lot like you, he is very curious and wildly smart. He wants to know how everything works.
Thank you for helping him turn the lever when you noticed he was too weak to do it himself. You will probably never see this but just by being you, you make this world better.”
And this is why, I think… the world’s gonna be just fine.
~Kaden’s Cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Forwarded from Thieves Of Wonders️️️ (Scott Metcalf)
By the time she was 85 years old, Joy Ryan of Duncan Falls, Ohio, had never seen the ocean or mountains. Now, she's 93 years old and has seen every corner of the U.S. – after visiting all 63 U.S. National Parks. Joy went on the epic journey with her grandson, Brad Ryan, who was first inspired to travel with is grandmother in 2015.
"When I learned she had never seen the great wildernesses of America – deserts, mountains, oceans, you name it – I thought that was something that would haunt me if I didn't intervene in some way," Brad told CBS News
Brad decided to take her to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and that trip sparked an idea. "The more I read about the parks, I saw how close they were to one another - we could make this giant loop, it became an obsession," Brad said. "all I could think about was, 'I've got to see Grandma Joy at Old Faithful, I've got to see her at the Redwoods, I've got to see her at the Grand Canyon. I just have to have those memories for my own long-term happiness. I think we're two peas in a pod when it comes to just our desire for travel, adventure, connection.'"
The pair started their plans.
While the pair have found themselves on many adventures during their travels – whale watching in the Channel Islands and seeing larger-than-life trees in the Redwood Forest – their best moments happen in the car. "We hit the road together and we start talking about our lives," Brad said. "And she told me things in her 80s and 90s about her life, some of the difficult things that she's been through, that she's never spoken to anybody in her life. I was able to open up to her about some of the trials and tribulations of my own life. That's what, I think, is so powerful about the open road, is that you only can drive so far before those memories start to creep forward."
Joy, who has three children and four grandchildren, can still keep up with Brad when they're hiking mountains. Her secret to staying active? "Well, I guess it helps to be optimistic. And you have to have the will to do it. And I've been lucky health-wise that I'm able to do that," she said.
"When I learned she had never seen the great wildernesses of America – deserts, mountains, oceans, you name it – I thought that was something that would haunt me if I didn't intervene in some way," Brad told CBS News
Brad decided to take her to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and that trip sparked an idea. "The more I read about the parks, I saw how close they were to one another - we could make this giant loop, it became an obsession," Brad said. "all I could think about was, 'I've got to see Grandma Joy at Old Faithful, I've got to see her at the Redwoods, I've got to see her at the Grand Canyon. I just have to have those memories for my own long-term happiness. I think we're two peas in a pod when it comes to just our desire for travel, adventure, connection.'"
The pair started their plans.
While the pair have found themselves on many adventures during their travels – whale watching in the Channel Islands and seeing larger-than-life trees in the Redwood Forest – their best moments happen in the car. "We hit the road together and we start talking about our lives," Brad said. "And she told me things in her 80s and 90s about her life, some of the difficult things that she's been through, that she's never spoken to anybody in her life. I was able to open up to her about some of the trials and tribulations of my own life. That's what, I think, is so powerful about the open road, is that you only can drive so far before those memories start to creep forward."
Joy, who has three children and four grandchildren, can still keep up with Brad when they're hiking mountains. Her secret to staying active? "Well, I guess it helps to be optimistic. And you have to have the will to do it. And I've been lucky health-wise that I'm able to do that," she said.
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*Esther Walker
"This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in Him."
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD."
Lamentations 3:21-26
"The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing."
Zephaniah 3:17
"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."
~God (Jeremiah 31:3)
"I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty."
2 Corinthians 6:18
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Romans 8:14-16
"This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in Him."
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD."
Lamentations 3:21-26
"The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing."
Zephaniah 3:17
"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."
~God (Jeremiah 31:3)
"I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty."
2 Corinthians 6:18
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Romans 8:14-16