Daily Devotion for July 19, 2019
Prayers
Scripture
Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
The lovely voice of soprano Sandrine Piau gives a quiet and lovely moment of praise to the glory of God.
(Note: Composers frequently repeat, omit, or put phrases out of order.)
Gloria Patri,
(Laudate pueri, Dominum:
Sicut erat in principio,
Prayer for Renewal in Christ
My Father, if Your mercy had boundaries, where would be my refuge from just wrath? But Your love for me in Christ is without measure. Thus, I present myself to You with sins of commission and omission, against You, my Father, against You, Adorable Redeemer, against You and Your stirrings, O Holy Spirit, against the dictates of my conscience, against the precepts of Your Word, against my neighbours and myself.
Enter not into judgment with me, I pray, for I plead no righteousness of my own, and have no place to hide my iniquity. Pardon my day dark with evil.
This morning I renew my repentance. I vow to love You more fervently, to serve You more sincerely, to be more devoted in my life, to be completely Yours; Yet I soon stumble, backslide, and have to confess my weakness, misery and sin. But I bless You that the finished work of Jesus needs no addition from my doings, that His atonement is sufficient satisfaction for my sins.
If future days be mine, help me to amend my life, to hate and abhor evil, to flee the sins I confess. Make me more resolute, more watchful, more prayerful. Let no evil fruit spring from evil seeds my hands have sown; Let no neighbour be hardened in vanity and folly by my want of watchfulness.
If this day I be ashamed of Christ and His Word, or show unkindness, malice, envy, lack of love, unadvised speech, hasty temper, let it be no stumbling block to others, or dishonour to Your name. O, help me to set an upright example that will ever rebuke vice, appeal to goodness, and evidence that lovely are the ways of Christ.
To Be Free of Anxiety
Set free, O Lord, the souls of your servants from all restlessness and anxiety. Give us that peace and power which flow from you alone. Shield us from all perplexity and distress, that upheld by your strength and secured on the rock of your faithfulness, we may abide in you now and evermore.
Meditation
“Allow God to make you strong, and use His strength, not your own. (Ephesians 6:10-12)”
Benediction
And finally, may the grace of Christ our Savior, and the Father’s boundless love, with the Holy Spirit’s favor, rest upon me, and all of us, from above. Thus may we abide in union, with each other and the Lord, and possess, in sweet communion, joys which earth cannot afford.
Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.
Proverbs 11:25-26 (The Message)
The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed;
those who help others are helped.
Curses on those who drive a hard bargain!
Blessings on all who play fair and square!
Acts 27:1-7 (ESV)
Paul's Fourth Voyage
Paul Sails for Rome
nd when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan Cohort named Julius. And embarking in a ship of Adramyttium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica.
The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia.
There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Cnidus, and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete off Salmone.
Notes on the Scripture
Although we call this “Paul’s Fourth Journey,” it differs from the first three in fundamental ways. It is not entirely voluntary; Paul’s only choices are a trial in Jerusalem or a trial in Rome. He is still in custody, a prisoner. He does not have control over his itinerary; he could not choose, for example, to stay in Ephesus for three years. And the primary purpose of the voyage is not to spread Christ’s word. He is, rather, being transferred to a different trial venue by the Roman authorities.
But there are also similarities to his earlier voyages. He will preach and spread Christ’s word to new lands, to people who would not have heard him otherwise. Also, he is, in fact, traveling a long way to a place he has never been, Italia (Italy), easily the farthest he has even been from Judea or Antioch; so most writers think of it as the fourth journey or voyage of Paul. Luckily, Paul seems to be getting lenient treatment from his guard, more like a passenger than a prisoner in chains.
We bump into the difficult term “Asia“ again. Technically, Roman Asia was a province in northwest Anatolia (the great landmass of modern Turkey), in the vicinity of Ephesus. That cannot be the meaning here, however; the Roman province of Asia is a long way away and not on the way to Rome. So Asia is used, as a general term, to refer to the land between Judea and Greece.
