Devotion
Being a Witness of God’s Love to Others
Frances Taylor
I'm going to start with the family! If your family is anything like mine, you will have at least one person who doesn't speak to another person. Sometimes that one person wants YOU to choose sides. What do you do? Then there's the neighborhood. Feuds happen. What is your response? Moving on to the workplace, do you treat all your fellow workers with equal kindness and generosity? Your family, neighbors and maybe co-workers know that you are a Christian and that you go to church. For them, you are an example of the faith that you – that I – profess and there are expectations. We are all God's beloved children. He doesn't play favorites and doesn't expect us to either. Jesus gave us this command: love one another. I don't hear any exceptions in this Gospel passage. Sometimes a simple smile can change a person's day. We are usually good when there is a crisis. We send sympathy cards or a meal to someone who experiences a loss. We might help babysit for someone who has a family emergency. But in the everyday, it's how we show respect, courtesy, kindness – love – that lets others know that we care. There's an old story about a monastery where the monks are told that Jesus is one of them. They begin to treat everyone as if he were Jesus and before long, people flocked to the monastery because of the love they witnessed among the monks. Well, Jesus is among us. He lives in each of us. If we begin to treat everyone as we would treat Jesus, what wonders we might see in our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and our church.
Prayer
Lord, please forgive me for the times that my example is not a witness to your love. Help me to be a better witness of your love and forgiveness within my family and among my neighbors. 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.
