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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.

Prayer for the Morning

You are ushering in another day, untouched and freshly new, So here I come to ask You God if You'll renew me too?

Forgive the many errors, that I made yesterday, And let me try again dear God, to walk closer in Thy way.

But Father, I am well aware, I can't make it on my own. So take my hand and hold it tight, for I can't walk alone.

To Know God’s Word

Holy God, let me read and know your Word without distorting it with my feeble thoughts. Lead me away from the false truths of the world, from whatever values are currently popular in my society, from the harangues of other people who follow their own theologies and philosophies; lead me to your plain and eternal truth. Let me come to you as a child, emptied of the wisdom of the world, so that I may be filled with the truth of the eternal Word.

Mason Barge 7/24/2017

Benediction

Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that you direct my way unto you, and make me and all of us to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you; to the end that we may establish our hearts unblameable in holiness before you, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

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.

Obedience

Genesis 44:14-34 (abridged) (ESV)

Joseph Demands that Benjamin Stay in Egypt

When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph’s house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground. Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?”

And Judah said, “What shall we say to my lord? What shall we speak? Or how can we clear ourselves? God has found out the guilt of your servants; behold, we are my lord’s servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.”

But he said, “Far be it from me that I should do so! Only the man in whose hand the cup was found shall be my servant. But as for you, go up in peace to your father.”

hen Judah went up to him and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself. My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’

Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’

“When we went back to your servant my father, . . . my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me, and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’

“Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, . . . Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.”

Notes on the Scripture

Judah’s words in the second paragraph are fraught with meaning, for when he asks “How can we clear ourselves? God has found out [our] guilt . . . both we and [Benjamin],” he is unknowingly referring to the great wrong they actually did commit: their hatred of young Joseph and their crimes against him.

Judah pleads for mercy for reasons of compassion, that leaving Benjamin captive in Egypt will kill their father. And Judah redeems his sin, because he offers his own life for that of Benjamin and, symbolically, for that of Joseph. It is the opposite of the acts of his youth, for rather than violence against one of Jacob’s sons (by Rachel), motivated by envy, pride and greed, he now offers his own life for the other of Jacob’s sons by Rachel, our of love for his father.

Page from a French prayer book, c. 1600.

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“Drawing God Closer to Us”

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