Psalm 55:22 Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you.
He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You that Your only Son Jesus Christ died on the cross to bear our sins for us.
Thank You that He also is our Heavenly High Priest who prays for us at Thy right hand without ceasing.
Thy word says that we can come boldly to Thy throne of grace to find grace and mercy in our time of need.
At Thy Altar we will receive all the grace and mercy we need for our Lord Jesus will be there ready to take on our burdens and cares and give us the peace that passes all understanding to replace our worries.
I pray You will give peace and hope to all who are praying this prayer with me, that each soul will lay their burden at Jesus feet and be given Thy wonderful grace to replace it and a deep assurance in their heart that all will be well for You are in control and are working all things together for good to those who trust in You and love You.
Heavenly Father, thank You for loving us so much that You allowed Your only begotten Son Jesus Christ to be born as a man, so that He could become a living sacrifice to atone for our sins by suffering shame, humiliation, and death on a Roman cross. We can hardly fathom such a love that would die to save the souls of people who did not love You back. But Thy word says that while we were still in sin (rebellion against God) Christ died for us.
Lord, thank You for what You did for us, for through Your suffering You offer us eternal life with You forever when we receive You into our hearts. You love us as if we were Your only child to love and You promise You will never leave or forsake us.
Dear Lord Jesus, may each person reading this prayer not let thy suffering and dying for their soul have been in vain, but let them receive You into their heart as their Lord & Savior. For Thy word promises that "All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Thank You, Lord. We love You,
"Christ Washing Peter's Feet" by Ford Maddox Brown (19th C British Pre-Raphaelite Artist)
The Heavenly Servant
John 13:1, 3-10 (ERV)
It was almost time for the Jewish Passover festival.
Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go back to the Father.
Jesus had always loved the people in the world who were his.
Now was the time he showed them his love the most...
The Father had given Jesus power over everything. Jesus knew this.
He also knew that he had come from God. And he knew that he was going back to God. So while they were eating, Jesus stood up and took off his robe. He got a towel and wrapped it around his waist. Then he poured water into a bowl and began to wash the followers’ feet.
He dried their feet with the towel that was wrapped around his waist.
He came to Simon Peter.
But Peter said to him, “Lord, you should not wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “You don’t know what I am doing now. But later you will understand.”
Peter said, “No! You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “If I don’t wash your feet, you are not one of my people.”
Simon Peter said, “Lord, after you wash my feet, wash my hands and my head too!”
Jesus said, “After a person has a bath, his whole body is clean. He needs only to wash his feet. And you are clean...”
In this Scripture passage, Jesus is giving His disciples a powerful visual metaphor of His mission on earth, who He is and why He has come.
The Apostles will not understand the full scope of His mission until after His death on the cross and resurrection though.
"So while they were eating, Jesus stood up and took off his robe."
Here Jesus is showing that He laid aside His Heavenly Throne temporarily and in the words of St. Paul, "although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men." (Philippians 2:6-7 NASB)
"(Jesus) got a towel and wrapped it around his waist. Then he poured water into a bowl and began to wash the followers’ feet. He dried their feet with the towel that was wrapped around his waist."
Jesus, their Master and Lord, performed this humble task of washing His disciples feet, a menial chore that normally a slave or common household laborer would have done, in order to graphically demonstrate His mission from the Father.
He also wants to remind them that He is their example in all things. Whatever He does, they must likewise do. Be humble. Love one another. Serve one another. Why? Because He is their Lord and has asked them to, just as He is now on His earthly mission because His Father has asked Him to do it.
You can never have love without obedience in true worship.
Why does Jesus need to clean the disciple's feet? Because they are stained with sin.
Jesus is showing them that His mission is to cleanse people of their sins. What would have been the filthiest part of the body in a time when most people walked everywhere over rugged roads and basically wore sandals?
Jesus came to cleanse the filthiest part of each of us---our hearts.
Matthew 15:19-20 (NASB) "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man...”
Jeremiah 17:9 (NASB) “The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
Jesus came to cleanse away the stain of sin that each of us are born with and to make us whole, to redeem us from the curse of death and hell and to give us His own righteousness which we could not ever earn by being good enough on our own. Only Jesus Christ can wash our sins away.
Detail: Ford Maddox Brown Artist 19th C British
Peter said, “No! You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “If I don’t wash your feet, you are not one of my people.”
Jesus Christ told Peter that if He did not wash him, he could not be one of His people.
Only the shed blood of Jesus Christ can wash away the stain of our sins.
Jesus Christ was the spotless Lamb of God sent to bear our sins on the cross as a blood sacrifice. He died in our place so that our sins could be forgiven. In Christ's demonstration to His disciples He had wrapped the towel of a slave around Himself and washed their feet as a slave would have. We are all slaves of sin apart from salvation in Christ. Sinless Jesus took off His beautiful Heavenly spotless sinless robe and put on our robes stained with the slavery of sin and bore them on the cross.
"For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ." ~2 Corinthians 5:21
Hebrews 9:22 "And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness."
On the third day God raised Christ from the dead. All who receive Jesus into their hearts as their Lord and Savior will be raised from the dead and given eternal life with Christ in Paradise.
John 11:25-26 (NASB) "Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
By washing their feet, Jesus wanted to leave His disciples with a powerful visual reminder of what His earthly mission was all about.
His humble, selfless act still speaks to us today about our need for His cleansing from our sins.
It tells us to follow His example of obedience and love to His Father and to serve one another humbly out of our love, obedience and worship to Him.
John 3:16-17 (NASB) “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Thy only Son to cleanse us from our sins.
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for laying aside Your Heavenly Throne for a season so that You could suffer & bear our sins on the cross & die in our place;
Thank You Holy Spirit for making Thy truth known to our hearts,
But you, dear friends, use your most holy faith to build yourselves up even stronger.
Pray with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Keep yourselves safe in God’s love, as you wait for the Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life.
~Jude 1:20-21
Prayer is not only one of our greatest spiritual blessings because it is our means of communion with our precious Creator and it unites us as believers, it is also one of our most effective weapons in our arsenal against the enemy of our souls.
As we use prayer along with studying the Bible which St. Paul calls the sword of the Spirit, we grow strong spiritually and closer to God. We also become a source of Christ's light to those around us.
The book of Proverbs says that the righteous is a guide to his neighbor. Our lives become a blessing as we follow Christ each day through prayer, bible study and obedience to His word.
The Lord Jesus rebuked Satan in His wilderness temptations with God's word when He said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)
St. Paul says we are to pray every kind of prayer and at all times.
Pray in the Spirit at all times. Pray with all kinds of prayers, and ask for everything you need.
To do this you must always be ready. Never give up. Always pray for all of God’s people. ~Ephesians 6:18
St Paul wrote that we must be careful how we think.
"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ..." ~2 Corinthians 10:4-5
Often the enemy attacks us in our thought life, discouraging us, filling our minds with accusing or condemning, depressing or hopeless thoughts. But Philippians 4:4,8 exhorts us to rejoice in the Lord always, no matter what our outward circumstances are and to think about good things in ourselves and others!
Philippians 4:4, 8
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
God is light and God is love. He is looking at all those good things in you and me in that list in Philippians 4:4-8 or He would not have inspired Paul to have us to think about those things.
God tells us to be like Him in His word.
St. Paul wrote these scripture verses under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit--a man who was often severely beaten for his faith, put in cold, dirty prison cells and left to languish, and persecuted mercilessly.
I imagine that he might have often been tempted to feel sorry for himself under such conditions but his epistles are the writings of a victorious warrior for Christ!
I too want to be a victorious warrior for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I pray the declaration prayer in the scripture picture above to take captive every thought that exalts itself against the wisdom and knowledge of God and I ask the Lord to make my will line up with His.
I pray to be led by His Holy Spirit always for His word declares in Romans 8:14 that all who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
Amen and amen!
1 Thessalonians 5:16-22
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies.
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
Abstain from every form of evil.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, teach us to pray without ceasing, thank You, Lord, we love You, in Jesus' name, Amen.
"Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted,
or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day;
we are being slaughtered like sheep.”
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ,
who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—
not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below—
indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us
from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
During the Middle Ages, pious Christians believed that if your life was beset with afflictions and trials it was a sign of God's great favor.
The New Testament mentions suffering at least 33 times. The apostle James wrote,
"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." (James 1:2-4 NLT)
St. Peter wrote, "Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world."
~ 1 Peter 4:12-13 (NLT)
Sometimes when we are facing difficult circumstances or any sort of trial, we may feel all alone, as if we have been abandoned by God or that He does not love us as much as He loves others.
Even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself cried out in His pain on the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:45)
Pain has a way of isolating us, whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual pain, it makes no difference. It makes us feel alone and abandoned.
However, God assures us in His word in Psalm 139 that we are never alone, that He is ever present with us.
He promises us that He will never forget us in this beautiful verse from Isaiah:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,Yet I will not forget you."
(Isaiah 49:14-15) NKJV
We also have the comforting assurance that even if no one else is praying for us on our journey, there is One up in Heaven who is always praying for us, night and day.
He knows each one of us intimately for He created us, He knows our every need and all of our hopes and longings.
His prayers that He prays for us are always answered. He will never give up on us.
No one else may know my name, but Jesus Christ, our Heavenly High Priest, knows me.
He loves each of us so much, that He has engraved a picture of us on the Palm of His hand.
"See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me."(Isaiah 49:16) NKJV
He cannot, nor will He ever forget about us.
We may imagine that He has forgotten us sometimes but God's word assures us that the One who is praying for us night and day is always thinking about us.
"I am poor and weak, yet the Lord is thinking about me right now!" ~(Psalm 40:17 ERV)
The Psalmist wrote, "How precious it is, Lord, to realize that You are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day Your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, You are still thinking of me!" (Psalm 139:17-18 TLB)
The One who "ever lives to make intercession" for us is constantly thinking about us, praying for all of our needs.
He is at the right hand of His Heavenly Father, the Bible says, pleading for us.
And nothing will ever be able to separate us from His immeasurable love toward us.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for giving everything to us when You gave us Your Son Jesus Christ to be our sacrifice to redeem our souls from the penalty of sin and death. Thank You that Thy word promises that Jesus is our High Priest forever and able to "save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." (Hebrews 7:25 NKJV)
Thank You for such wonderful promises from Thy word.
Father God, we love You and praise You for forgiving our sins and for giving us eternal life in Christ, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Thy gift of life and for every blessing You pour out upon us each day. Help us to cherish each moment You give us here on earth and the loved ones and friends You bless us with. Let us every day offer You a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for each precious life in our family.
When tempted to complain or find fault with others, help us to remember how very short our lives here are and that tomorrow is never guaranteed to any of us.
Help us take every opportunity to tell the special people in our lives that we love them and pray for them as we give thanks for them each day. Thank You, Abba Father, in Jesus' name, Amen.
"Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray." ~James 5:13 (NKJV)
"Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." ~2 Timothy 3:12 (NKJV)
"For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison..."~ 2 Corinthians 4:17 (NASB)
"If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him..."~ 2 Timothy 2:12 (KJV)
"For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth.” ~1 Peter 2:19, 21-22 (NKJV)
"My friends, don’t be surprised at the painful things that you are now suffering, which are testing your faith. Don’t think that something strange is happening to you." ~1 Peter 4:12 (ESV)
"These troubles test your faith and prove that it is pure. And such faith is worth more than gold.
Gold can be proved to be pure by fire, but gold will ruin. When your faith is proven to be pure, the result will be praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ comes."
~1 Peter 1:7 (ESV)
"So be humble under God’s powerful hand. Then He will lift you up when the right time comes.
Give all your worries to Him, because He cares for you." ~1 Peter 5:6-7 (ESV)
"Yes, you will suffer for a short time. But after that, God will make everything right.
He will make you strong. He will support you and keep you from falling. He is the God who gives all grace. He chose you to share in his glory in Christ. That glory will continue forever. All power is his forever. Amen." ~1 Peter 5:10-11 (ESV)
Heavenly Father, thank You for Thy word that assures us that You are with us when we suffer and that the suffering will end. You are perfecting our faith and Your word assures us that You will never give us more than we can bear. Thank You that You are ever faithful and You hear our every prayer. Thank You that whether You call us to go through the fire or the raging flood Your word assures us that You will be holding us in the flames and not a hair on our head will be scorched; you will carry us over the stormy waves and we will not drown for You will hide us in Your heart and we need never fear no matter how dark and desperate our circumstances may seem. Though unseen You will carry us through to victory through every season of suffering in our lives as we abide in You and trust in Your faithfulness.
Your love for us will never fail. Thank You Lord. I love You! In Jesus' name, Amen.
"God Hears": Comforting Scriptures: Unto The Least of These: Suzanne Davis Harden: Photo Credit/Google
"Christ Prays For Us" ~ 5" inch x 7" inch, Double-Matted Fine Art Print. Copyright © 2015 Suzanne Davis Harden All Rights Reserved.
