367 people in our community are currently praying with you.

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.

Call to Sunday Worship

O  Lord, I beseech you mercifully to hear my prayers, and the prayers of all your people who call upon you; and grant that we may both perceive and know what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill them; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Prayer to Walk with Christ This Week

Dear Heavenly Father, I am learning to understand what your word says. Yet so often I simply hear it or read it and think about applying it, but get no further. I want to do it and intend to do it Lord, but it is gone from my mind so easily. I am deceiving myself if I simply hear it and do not make it a part of my life.

Please help me today, and throughout the coming week, to take one truth and apply it to my circumstances. Let your Holy Spirit nudge me and remind me throughout every day. I know that as I apply what your word says I will find freedom. Please show me what I need to focus on right where I walk today, Father. Help me to be intent on practicing what you reveal to me. I know there is blessing in doing things your way. I give you my will today and this week, to want to do what you show me. In the name of Jesus,

For the Forgiveness of Sins

My Jesus, I place all my sins before you. In my estimation they do not deserve pardon, But I ask you to close your eyes to my want of merit, and open them to your infinite merit. Since you willed to die for my sins, grant me forgiveness for all of them. Thus, I may no longer feel the burden of my sins, a burden that oppresses me beyond measure.

Assist me, dear Jesus, for I desire to become good no matter what the cost. Take away, destroy, and utterly root out whatever you find in me that is contrary to your holy will. At the same time, dear Jesus, illumine me so that I may walk in your holy light.

by St. Gemma Galgani, 1901

Benediction

I  pray that I may be blessed every step of my path this day by the great God of light. May your sun shine upon me; as the moon moves the tide, may your Spirit move my emotions with every grace and magic; may my heart sing with the voice of your angels and my hearth be warm; and may this and every blessed day You have given me be filled with joy.

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.

Psalm 37:14-15 (NKJV)

Amos 5:18-24 (ESV)

Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light;
as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Notes on the Scripture

ncient Israel awaited the "day of the Lord", when God would come down and destroy Israel's enemies. But the time of Amos (and his more famous contemporary Isaiah), although a time of peak prosperity for Israel and Judah, was also a time of growing secularism. Devotion to the Lord was becoming ever more perfunctory. Many ignored their religious obligations totally. And increasingly, people failed to provide for those in need, the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned.

In this baleful passage, Amos asks the people of Israel why they act so eager for the day of the Lord to come. Everyone thinks that, simply because they are Jews and possibly engage in the outward trappings of religious life, they will be part of the God's victory.

If this sounds familiar, it should, because it is terribly close to Western society today. The media preach to us that nice people all go to heaven when they die. But what does the Bible say about idolaters and the self-satisfied?

The western world uses the Christian knowledge of heaven like a bedtime story for a frightened child. A television network has launched, in October, 2016, a sitcom starring Kristen Bell, who wakes up after death and wants to know whether she is in “the good place” or “the bad place.” She is actually in “the good place” — because she was apparently a “pretty good person” — and immediately begins to taste such heavenly delights as being able to get as drunk as she likes without getting a hangover. Her reaction, when she wakes up without a pounding headache? “This place rules!”

This television character is what passes for theology among much of our populace. A great number of the unfaithful spend their lives in unconfessed sin, and yet they believe that their death will lead them to eternal peace. This is the great folly of American and Europe today; for the end waiting for the unfaithful is terrible.

The subject of God's wrath and the hell that likely awaits most people after they die has become an unpopular subject in mainstream Christianity. But it serves us well to remember, from time to time, that the Bible does not change simply because we ignore parts of it. Damnation of the wicked and the unfaithful is terrible to contemplate and very real.

Daily Inspiration

“ Fabulous Life-Stories ”

Current Memory Verse     Remember the Bible

Print Today’s Devotion