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“For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭15‬:‭11‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, You see the destitute, the forgotten, the lonely, the underprivileged, the homeless, the fatherless, the motherless. You see those who have so much blessing but they have a spirit of despair, an emptiness, disconnected, and unrooted. Too often we don’t see any of these people. We are blinded by our busyness, our rightness to be able to humble ourselves and open ourselves up to the our brothers and sisters. Our lives all draw from Your blessing and Your grace. If we look close enough at our own lives we will recognize our own needing of Your blessing, our own depravity.

Lord, may Your blessing flow and nurture all of our hearts and lives so that we all would see beyond the ourselves. That we would not look towards status and stuff but to see the divine image that is in each of us. Lord, help us to see people and not problems to be solved or avoided but people of blessing that are part of our community, that we are all valued members of the body of Christ. Guide us to bear each other’s burdens, to heal each others wounds, to honour the dignity and integrity that You have given to each person. Help us to obey You in our words and our actions so that others would be able to experience Your deep love and grace. So that people would experience Your transforming life living in them. We pray this in Your holy name, Amen.

“But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.””
‭‭Luke‬ ‭14‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Strange how the scriptures set a different standard than what we are used to.

Isn’t it interesting that the Biblical standard, the standard that God gave to His people isn’t being followed and people are complaining that there are problems with the world around us. This isn’t just about those who don’t believe in Jesus, in reality the world is happening just as they believe, it is those who do believe who should know better. These are the people that are really struggling because they have God’s word which they hold in high esteem but don’t know it as well as they think and definitely don’t know how to live it out.

When we read it and are challenged by our Holy Scriptures, we see instructions about loving our enemy, not expecting people to invite you to their party or be able to feed you at their gathering. We see verses about erasing debt which gets many people up in arms until they realize that is what Jesus has done for each of us. In that instance the people who aren’t willing to forgive are struggling to reconcile what they love about Jesus but aren’t willing to do themselves.

Interestingly one of the more common words in the New Testament is luo which means loose and is translated into various English words with similar but diverse meanings but basically loose is appropriate. If God is loosening you from your sin through Jesus, should you not learn to loosen the debt that others owe you also?

The Bible challenges our way of looking at ourselves, at others, and how we live in the world around us. God is calling us to a higher standard than the world is giving to us. It isn’t about following the free wheeling of the world around us because the standard that the world gives us is many times more constricting than the freedom that God gives to us in Jesus. Since God’s standard is not about pleasing others but about freeing and giving life and hope, He has given us His word to guide us and His Holy Spirit to strengthen us. God doesn’t give us a guessing game to play but a guide book to Holy living in a broken world in the process of being redeemed.

“They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭18‬:‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we struggle in times of tragedy when the unexpected hurts our very soul. You have created us with Your creative beauty that would ever be present and so quickly the bright beauty of life is quieted in the cold darkness of night. So much uncertainty that wages war on our hearts and minds, the questions of why, and if only, will never really be answered to our liking and cannot quench our desire for understanding and will not take away the cutting hurt of our hearts scarred by the realities of life and death.

Lord comfort the hurting families confounded by tragedy. Friends that wish for words that could turn back time and carry the weight of meaning that lasts a life time that cannot be lived as expected. The unspoken words that seemed so impossible only a short few days now becomes a the need of that can never be met again. Lord comfort those who have lost the peace of friendship, family, and community. Help us to appreciate what is right in front of us, to be able to see the beautiful blessings that bring fullness to our simple lives. Hurts and brokenness that will never be fully absent ever again but help them so that they may yet feel the warmth of love again. We are but human beings made in Your holy image, we need Your strength and hope in our fragile lives so that we might live and see and heal into the people that You will help us be.

Lord we pray for Your help as we navigate this life of joys and despairs. We pray this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.

“For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.””
‭‭Romans‬ ‭9‬:‭15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Jesus challenges the people that He was dining with to have compassion on someone who was sick. This seems like it would be an obvious decision yet the practise was not to work on the sabbath, including healing some one. Jesus doesn’t just go ahead and heal the man, He asks the Pharisee and his guests whether they would help their own son or even one of their animals if they had fallen in a well. The imagery of separation and loneliness is apt because essentially this is what is happening to the man who is sick. He would have been looked down upon and possibly austrazized. Healing would not have just helped His physical health but also his relational, psychological, and spiritual health.

The healing would not just have challenged the healthy people, it would have also challenged the person who was sick because it would have demonstrated God’s healing love for Him even though everyone else had told him God did love him or the idea of him being of any significance to God could very well have been absent from him. Yet when we look at the larger picture that is being painted by Jesus in Luke 14:1-24, it ends with those who were too good to heal on the sabbath, also being to busy to listen to God’s invitation. The parable and the incidents each have their individual messages but when we see them as part of a larger message we hear the warning that Jesus has for His listeners, “You are loved and called by God but if you don’t listen to God’s calling God will call others to take your place.”

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭5‬:‭10‬ ‭ESV

Let us pray.

Lord of life who has endured suffering of body from the torture of Roman soldiers, who has endured the suffering of the soul as You cried out from the cross with the words of despair, “My God my God, why have You forsaken me?” A deep separation from the one who has always been part of His life. Our lives do not always reflect the grace and perseverance that You have shown us through Your loving life. We don’t always recognize where You are leading us. When times are difficult and our emotions seem to be running in ways that we are not used to we struggle to make sense of them and the world around us but we fail. Our grasp on control is limited, and our desire for security limits our faith at times. Help us to have faith in You and remember that when we struggle, you have struggled, when we face suffering, You have suffered. When we are tempted by despair we can trust that You who has risen from the grave, can sustain us through this journey of life. You have not promised us comfort or to be problem free, but You have promised us that You have overcome, even death. That You will never leave us, even in our weakness. In You we have hope, love, forgiveness, and life, and the faithfulness live towards eternal life. We pray this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.

“What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭14‬:‭15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Let us pray.

Lord of unity help us to not only be of one mind but also that our whole being would be unified in You. In our busy lives we can feel so divided, divided priorities, divided loyalties, even divided on our beliefs.

I feel as though my failures out weigh and out perform my faithfulness to You. My soul is feeling tired. Lord grant me rest. Rest in Your courts. Rest beside the still waters of your living stream.

Lord we don’t know when our striving will end but we ask for help to focus on what You see as important and not on what is but a passing fancy. Help us to examine our clouded hearts so that we might rediscover our first and deepest love and learn how to live deeper in You.

Lord help us forgive others and ourselves for not living up to the standards You have laid before us. Hold us tightly in Your loving arms so that we might know the security of being with You. In Your way of life, we find true life and grace and hope. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭14‬-‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The above scripture from Paul reminds us of the importance and sometimes the difficulty that we have giving good gifts. Too often we listen to the wrong influence and want to repay one hurt with another. Jesus reminds us from Luke 11 to make sure that we are giving gifts that are life giving and a blessing instead of giving curses. It is difficult when you feel like you have been hurt, the pain, shame, at times it can be overwhelming. One of the gifts that God gives is that we do not need to get even. Vengeance is not ours to take. God gives the gift of justice so that we do not need to stoop to evil’s level.

Timothy Keller points out that when we use what is evil to do what we think is good, evil still wins because we become that which we knew was evil. God does not want us to become evil. The blessing of God is that we might all experience His transforming grace which frees us from the treachery of evil. When we trust in God’s justice, it is not trusting in God to get even for us, it is trusting that God can handle that which we cannot without defiling Himself or anyone else. God’s justice is not rooted in getting even, it is rooted in reconciliation. If this were not the case, we would have no hope. Remember we have all fallen short of the glory of God. The gift of God is not just the freedom from sin but Jesus dealing with sin itself , not just the personal sin but also the sin that has corrupted and broken the world around us. With this freedom we have the blessing to work for a world that is made in God’s image of love, of grace, of forgiveness, and of justice.

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭12‬:‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

When Jesus said “ask and you shall receive,” we get excited. However, we need to confront this with the reality that Paul states in 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul has been asking for a change or a healing, we don’t know exactly what that means but the response is that God’s grace is sufficient for Paul. Paul doesn’t get the relief that he is wanting but he does get the promise of God’s love and strength.

Why do we get disappointed when we don’t get what we want, and we get so much more. Paul reminds us that at the heart of who we are we need a relationship with God who strengthens us in our weaknesses. Job when he was faced with the loss of his family, his property, and even social standing, he was asking why God would allow this but when he had the opportunity to ask Job didn’t. Having God speak to him seemed to appease the questions and while the tragedy was great, Job was comforted being with God.

The problems that we face are real, we can’t simply push them away but we can bring them to God. Jesus promised that His yoke is light. Jesus didn’t just say comforting words He took the problems upon Himself on the cross. The gift that God gives us is not to eliminate our problems or to solve our disappointments but to help us to draw near to Himself so that we might be overcome them and the situations that led us into them. He draws us closer to the truth of His life giving love that enters into our times of problems, into our disappointments, into hurts and loneliness, our misery and helps us to hope again.

““So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Chances are that when we read the above scripture verses we get excited and start thinking that all I have to do is name it and claim it. This would be in line with the prosperity gospel that some people believe in. While I do believe that there are elements to this in the scriptures, the simple name it and claim it idea does not pan out in the entirety of the Scriptures. In fact it does not pan out even in the coming verses.

If we see this as just being about getting what I want or what you want then all we have done is read two verses out of context of the rest of the section let alone the rest of the Scriptures. This section is about God’s relationship with His people and yes providing for His people but it is about blessing and relationship, not about selfish ambition and accumulation. This relationship is blessed through the giving of the Holy Spirit.

When we look closer at the section of scripture that we read yesterday from Luke 11:5-13 we see at the end of the section that Jesus gives us the question that we are to ask.

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!””
‭‭Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

What we are to ask for is the Holy Spirit. This might seem trite but when we realize that the gift of the Holy Spirit leads God’s people into a deeper relationship with God, He empowers us, He helps us to understand, brings us together as the body of Christ, He even helps us to understand God’s will and to ask the real questions that we need to ask.

God wants to bless His people, not with stuff that we will either idolize or forget about, but with His eternal love that leads us in life to Himself. The gift of the Holy Spirit is not God cheating us out of what we are asking for, it is God helping us to live mature lives, with spiritual maturity and then we can start to ask, not out of selfishness, but out of love.

“I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭45‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Let us pray.

Lord of all creation, You see the birds of the air fly their courses in the sky above. You watch as they veer from on direction to the next. On the ground below, You see the smallest of creatures scurry from hole to hole hiding among the grasses that tower above them. Even the fish in the deepest ocean are not invisible to Your observing eyes. If none of these are missed by You we know that even in our travels to far off destinations, You are watching us. Whether the distances are great or whether we are just travelling to our daily work, Your eyes see us. Truly nothing separates us from Your amazing love.

Lord we pray for protection for those who are travelling. May You watch over them and guide them. Keep them safe and bless them as they work to help others, to meet new friends, to experience Your grace in a new and fuller way. Help each of us to trust Your providence as we strive to walk in Your ways, living for You, and helping others to see that they too are loved. Grant us peace as we seek to be renewed, enlivened in the fullness of Your life giving love. Hold us so that we would not feel alone in a strange place or a strange time in our lives.

We have heard of Your faithfulness that has led generations to change the world. We have heard of generations who have received Your blessing and lived out Your commandment to love You and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Help us to be faithful to You as You have been faithful to ourselves, and to our ancestors before us.

Lord we pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.