Truer to Our God

So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your Name.
✙ Psalm 63:4
✙
Yesterday, the selected text led me to wonder about the nature of life. And the answer the Bible provided was that to live is to be loved by God—not just for the brief years of my biological existence, but from everlasting to everlasting. But while life on earth endures, I am called upon to bless God, to thankfully praise God, and to bring all my concerns to God. That's my purpose in this life.

My appreciation of prayer is one of the things that changed during the pandemic. Though unable to meet in person, we had a church prayer meeting every weeknight via zoom. Though much of these meetings consisted of chit-chat, a major portion was also taken up in prayer. We brought all things to God, and some of what we brought seemed to be too much to ask for. But many of the circumstances we prayed about were, in fact, changed. We witnessed miraculous healings and rescues at sea. But prayer didn't just change others, it changed us. It drew us together and it made us less timid in what we asked for.

Joy, gratitude, answered prayer—these are part of our share of the inheritance that belongs to God's children. Covid has been a horrible and difficult time. But it has also been a time when the church has been forged into a more faithful body: Faith-full in that we are more filled with faith than before, and faithful in the sense that we are truer to our God.
✙
May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.
✙ Colossians 1:11-12 (NLT)
✙
Prayer after thinking about today's devotion:
✙
Give us courage, O God, to hope and to risk disappointment. Teach us to pray expectantly, and when our prayers seem to fail, bring us to pray again and again; for you are our God, who acts and will act again.
✙ A New Zealand Prayer Book (Anglican)
✙ 
After your own thanksgivings & petitions, close with the Lord's Prayer.
Losung Losungen Tageslosung Moravian Daily Texts Watchword Watchwords Lehrtext Lehrtexte Teaching Text
Text selection ©2020 Evangelische Brüder-Unität