Category: Daily Prayer

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. John 12:1-2

We don’t often think of Jesus having close friends, other than perhaps His disciples, but Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany are mentioned frequently in the Gospel. Jesus needed the love and support of friends as much as any of us. Through this relationship He demonstrated the importance of being connected to others and to God.

God so wants to be part of our lives! He wants us to accept the love He has for us, and also accept the responsibility that connection requires. Just like having close friends requires time and attention, so does our relationship with God. Making time for Him is essential to our faith and our ability to share the Good News with others.

Find time to spend in conversation with the Lord through prayer and searching the scriptures. Your life will be enriched and you will be blessed!

God of love, we want You in our daily lives. Make us faithful in our spiritual practices that we may be closer to You and to our brothers and sisters. Amen.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Everything Paul has taught us this week points to this. You could also say everything the Bible says points to this. God loves us so much He is willing to do amazing things in order to reach us and bring us back.

This passage (2 Corinthians 5:16-21) shows that in Christ we are a new creation, and the things of the past can be left behind us. When we accept the forgiveness and love He offers, we can become part of what He is doing in the world. Jesus came to be our model that we might learn to be like Him and continue His work.

What are you doing to be part of this kingdom mission? We must pray for strength to complete the hard tasks that face us and love to be able to work together. Jesus expects us to put Him and others first, ahead of our own wants and needs that the Good News of salvation might be shared with all the world.

Wise and wonderful God, we are lost and broken without Your healing forgiveness. Let us see that we are your children, forever connected to You and our brothers and sisters, invited to be new creatures through Christ’s sacrifice for us. Amen.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

God sent Jesus to carry our sin that we could be made clean and reconnected to Him. Such a sacrifice is unthinkable to us. We might be willing to give our lives for our loved ones, perhaps for a noble cause. But Jesus came to give His life for the whole sinful world, for everyone, for all time. In Romans 5:7 we read “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us”.

God was willing to give up His only son. Jesus was willing to give up His very life. What are we willing to give up in order to be saved? What draws us away from be reconciled with our loving Father? We need to acknowledge our sin and leave it with Jesus, doing as He commanded us to “go and sin no more”.

Gracious God, through Christ’s sacrifice for us we are made whole again, ready to be part of Your plan for creation. May our lives be changed, and in turning to You may we find our purpose – to share Your love with all the world. Amen.

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

(2 Corinthians 5:20)

Christ’s ambassadors – what a glorious and humble calling! Jesus loves us, and trusts us enough to carry on His ministry here on earth. We are His partners in saving the world, not through any merit or strength of our own, but through His grace to reconcile us to God.

In this new relationship we have roles and responsibilities depending on our gifts and our call. All of us have something to offer for the work of the kingdom, and Christ is counting on us to accomplish our mission, individually and collectively. Let God work through you that our brothers and sisters might know Him better.

Gracious God, we are called to be part of Your plan, the tools You use here on earth to work Your will. May we be willing and useful in the spread of the Good News. Amen.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

Christ came to make us all new, washed clean from sin and called to a life of faith and love in Him. Through His sacrifice our past deeds are forgotten; our rescue is undeserved but He reaches out to us just the same.

This was the basis of His lesson to Nicodemus, the Pharisee in John 3:3 – “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Being a new creation in Christ means a new way of seeing and reacting to the world, being both the messenger of the Good News and the body of Christ to all we meet.

Loving Lord, thank You for coming after us with grace and power to save us. Bless our work here in Your name to reach others for You, that they may know Your love as we do. Amen.

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
(2 Corinthians 5:19)

God forgives our sins through the sacrifice Christ made for us, and calls us to be part of His saving work. What an amazing thing! How can we ever hope to carry on the ministry that Jesus began on earth? That’s the confidence He has in us – teaching us the lessons, showing us how to live and expecting us to share that knowledge and love with all the world.

We know we can’t do it alone. Only through His abiding presence, the Holy Spirit to inspire us are we capable. Only through being in fellowship with our brothers and sisters to praise and worship Him do we find strength for the task. God calls us, weak and error-prone, to be His witnesses and His tools for saving a broken world.

Heavenly Father, it is an unbelievable and wonderful thing that You include us in Your work on earth. Make us worthy servants, carrying Your truth and love to everyone. Amen.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18)

God could have separated from us long ago citing “irreconcilable differences” due to our sinful nature. Instead, as Paul writes, He “reconciled us to himself through Christ”, taking action to bring us back into His love and to return as productive members of His family. He loved us so much He was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to redeem us from the evil into which we had fallen.

More than this, Paul says we are not just retrieved, we are re-purposed for the work of the kingdom, given the “ministry of reconciliation” to go share with others the joy of God’s gift and Christ’s sacrifice for us. We have been tasked to go to all the world to ensure that no one is left unreached by the Good News.

Let us take our responsibility seriously, learning and passing on the gospel we have received – Jesus is Lord and He has saved us from our sin!

Amazing God, You searched for us when we hid in our sin, and washed us clean to be part of Your continuing redemption of the world. Make us bold to go those who are in need, to serve them as Christ first loved and served us. Amen.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. (2 Corinthians 5:16)

God wants us to see His love for creation in each one of us. Everyone we meet is a unique reflection of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; with gifts given specifically for God’s purpose. Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth encourages the believers there to see everyone as God does.

Christian author C. S. Lewis says in his book The Weight of Glory “you have never talked to a mere mortal”. If we relate to everyone the way we would if Christ himself were in front of us, how much better and loving would our conversations be?

See the image of God in everyone and act accordingly – live as part of His kingdom every day!

Loving Lord, help us to be caring, active members of Your family, at work for You in all we do. Amen.

And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:3-4)

Paul teaches that Christ was with the children of Israel in the desert, providing for them. God has been constant in His love and care for us since the very beginning. However, God is also constant in His commandments to obey Him.

Sometimes we think there is an Old Testament God and a New Testament God because it seems the relationship between God and people changed. While our understanding may change, God never does – “He was and is and is to be, and still the same” the old hymn tells us.

Constant and consistent God, help us to understand the plans You have for us and to follow the commandments You have given from the beginning – to love You and each other with all our hearts. May we be Your representatives to all the world. Amen.

We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

(1 Corinthians 10:8-10)

This is another hard passage to hear, recounting the disobedience of the people after the escape from Egypt and the punishment that followed (Numbers 21, Numbers 25). We are apparently slow learners and continue our disobedience to this day.

God is a loving father, but He wants what is right for us, and wants us to learn this. In Genesis 3 we hear of Adam and Eve being driven out of the garden due to their sin. God loves us all dearly, but He won’t let sin stand unpunished.

We must learn that even though we sin, God will accept our confession and repentance to restore our connection with Him. Through the sacrifice Jesus made for us, we can be made new and return to our loving Father.

Gracious God, we come to You in sorrow for our behavior. Forgive us and bring us back into a right relationship with You. Amen.