Devotion
We All Need Healing
Frances Taylor
Jesus wants to heal us. What kind of healing do you need? There are days when I wake up with a terrible sinus headache. There are times when I grieve for and with others. There are times when I wonder if I have been a good parent, a good daughter, a good friend. There are also times when I'm not sure that I have been the person God has called me to be. In all of these times, I turn to prayer – and in the case of the headache, medicine! I do believe that my prayers will be answered, even if I don't always recognize the answer. Just as those who came to Jesus for healing in the Gospels, we come to Jesus looking for physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological healing.
When my parents were very ill, I didn't really know what to pray for, I left it in God's hands, and the healing for them came in their being welcomed into eternal life. For me, it came in the peace of knowing that they had lived their lives believing in God's love for them. When dealing with physical suffering, the healing might come in giving us the courage to deal with the pain. Whatever our need may be, Jesus is by our side, walking with us because he knows our pain, our doubts, our fears, our insecurities. Just as he looked to his Father for answers, he invites us to do likewise and just as Jesus' requests on behalf of all those who came to him in today's Gospel were granted, so will his requests on our behalf be granted as well.
Prayer
Lord, thank you for your healing presence in our lives. You are the source of all our blessings. You answer all our prayers. Amen.
Night Prayer
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Inspiration
Sin rules our lives until we accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. When we invite Him into our lives, our old sinful heart dies, and God creates within us a new one, where sin no longer rules our life; God does! Our thoughts and actions begin to change because we no longer desire a sinful lifestyle. We joyfully devote our lives to serving Him and inviting others to understand His promise of salvation.
Prayer
Dear Lord, we are sinners born again and recreated to live according to Your will. We are grateful for Your love and the peace we experience by abolishing our old sinful self. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
Devotion
Satan Has Been Defeated
Frances Taylor
Salvation and power have come with Christ and Satan has been defeated. Sin and death have been conquered by the actions of one man, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, both human and divine who came into the world to bring the Good News of salvation by living, dying and rising for us. As Christians we claim to believe this but our actions sometimes deny it. Unfortunately, people seem to resurrect Satan all the time. We allow him to lead us away from God, forgetting the way to the Father that is love, and giving in to Satan's path of hatred, anger, pride, lust, chaos and destruction.
Satan, of course, doesn't present these as bad things, he makes them seem attractive. He presents sin as goods to be desired, as things to make us happy or give us pleasure. It can be hard to stay on the path that leads to God when the world seems to be crowding us and pushing us off of it. How easy it is to forget the sacrifice that bought our freedom! Which of us ...
Morning Prayer
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Inspiration
It is right for us to defer to others and to rejoice with others when they have cause to rejoice over some blessing in their life, instead of sorrowing before them over some problem in our life. It is right also to weep with those who weep, showing compassion and feeling for them in their grief instead of "dancing joyfully before those who mourn" as if insensitive to their sorrow.
Prayer
Give me a discerning spirit, Lord, to know when to rejoice and when to weep. Let me show concern for others and their situation and life events instead of just focusing only on my own. Let me show true compassion and genuine joy in the right way and time to others. Amen.
