Father,
We have looked to you for salvation and glory and honor and immortality, but you have not yet saved us completely. Trouble and death still await us. Yet the Spirit you have left with us has made the hope of that coming day so tastable, that we are glad now because of what we know we will receive from you then. Even those of us who are fearful and so powerless in this life that we can hardly keep ourselves alive, you will, on that day, make our faces shine with immortal glory after the likeness of he who saved us. Fill us with an uncanny, otherworldly joy because of that future day, that becomes an undeniable testimony of our hope.
Please please bless the evangelistic work of our missionaries. We thank you for those who have come to know you through the ministry of the Villanueva’s at the airport and ask that you would watch over them as they grow and are discipled. Please continue to bless Mario with your Spirit and keep him bold and winsome and encouraged and may your name be more known and honored because of him. Please bless the work of the Gabriels in Ireland. Give them wisdom and insight and skill to be able to build relationships with the neighbors and so be able to better exemplify Christ to them. Strengthen Kevin in his new role as elder of the church to be a faithful shepherd of those you have entrusted to him. Bless the McDonalds. Give them a time of strengthening and refreshing rest. Please especially attend to Georgie physically and renew her strength. Please give Paul clarity about the specifics of how you would have him carry out their continuing ministry in Serbia.
Please help us each individually to be promoters of peace. Even if we avoid the obvious sin of deliberately sowing division between others, it is still so easy to sin with our words. Help us to be self-controlled in the way we speak about others. You know that we don’t have equal affection for every person and maybe some brother or sister even feels like a threat. Help us to be all the more careful in the way we speak about them, and to them, and so to show them love. Give us the skill and insight to strengthen the peace between others in a way that doesn’t sacrifice what is true and compassionate.
Any honest consideration of our lives makes our sinfulness clear to us. We thank you that you have not left us to carry our guilt, just trying to ignore it as best we can. You have given us the cross so that we can look there after seeing our sin clearly and be free. And though having looked to Jesus we know and love you, we continue to sin even after our first repentance. We thank you for continuing to forgive us and for giving us an advocate who speaks to you in our defense. We thank you also for the work of your Spirit that convicts us and assures us, and strengthens us so that we sin less and become more like you whom we love.
May you be honored in all that is done here this morning. May our songs be pleasant to you. May you be pleased as the truth is taught through the reading and exposition of the scriptures. Help us to be receptive hearers, that we would not be hearers only but doers of the word. Help us to love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In our fellowship, help us to speak truth with each other, always seeking others' interests ahead of our own. We ask that you would specially encourage those who serve in the nursery who enable us to gather here.