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Lent is an ideal time to renew our commitment to communicatewith God in prayer. The Lenten sermon series is designed to help us find inspiration for our own prayers in “The Prayer Life of Jesus.” February 21 – Jesus Prayed AloneMark 1:29-39February 28 – Jesus Prayed During Special TimesLuke 3:21-22March 7 – Jesus Prayed When He Needed HelpLuke 6:12-16March 14 – Jesus Prayed with a Thankful HeartMatthew 14:19-21March 21 – Jesus Taught Others to PrayLuke 11:1-4During the week that follows each sermon, we invite you to usethe enclosed devotions as a further reflection on the themeand as a supplement to your own prayer time. Week 1 – February 21-27, 2021Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35Lent?is a part of spring, a season of new beginnings and rebirth. It is a time of prayerful preparation, a time where we focus our hearts and minds on the coming mystery of the cross and the empty tomb. It is a journey where we follow Jesus from Galilee to Golgotha and beyond. It begins with a day of penitence symbolized by ashes and ends just before the resurrection celebration of?Easter Sunday.I grew up among Roman Catholics and giving up something, denying oneself a pleasure, fasting from meat on Fridays was a standard practice. It was a bit foreign to me. Only with time have I come to understand what lies behind these simple rituals. Lent is a time for putting aside the sins (and failures) of the past in the light of who we are yet to become by the grace of God. Might I suggest as an individual or together as a family that one take something on, a daily prayer time, Bible reading or devotion, delighting in a sunset (or a sunrise), stocking a blessing box, saving a quarter per child each day (alms). You certainly can give something up. How about worry, judging, envy, pride etc.? In either case, the point is to draw closer to God as Jesus draws nearer to the cross. Lent is about focus, discipline, service, surrender, letting go of things or habits to better understand our own excess. A somber time certainly but joyful as well.Pastor Anita's sermon theme for Lent?is “The Prayer Life of Jesus,” and she has stressed prayer as a spiritual discipline for us all citing 1 Thessalonians 5:17: "Pray without ceasing." May we set aside a specific time each day, before school or work, before meals, at bedtime to talk and to listen to each other and to our Lord and Creator. Words may not be necessary but gratitude for our blessings is. Do not be afraid to let your heart cry out. Spiritual writers see prayer as a way of living in the Presence, even enjoying that Presence and the privilege each one of us has to touch God. I pray you will, too.Labyrinth Prayer??????????????? I walk to focus on You.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? I want to be close to You not distant.??????????????? Life may be confusing but Your path is not a maze.??????????????? In silence, my heart slows and my mind empties.??????????????? Time stands still and place is unimportant.??????????????? I know You are here even in the shadows. ??AMEN.Bill DemerestWeek 2 – February 28-March 6, 2021Jesus Prayed During Special Times When all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:21-22Two years ago at age seventy-one, I closed my architectural office here in Summerville. Among my goals were to get better at watercolor painting, lose some weight, and try to get a bit back in shape in order to improve my health.I grew up in California and always had access to the Pacific Ocean at Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. A local pool was also available in our town and I became a life-guard as soon as possible. Our high school even had a pool. During my working career, however, I just never found time, nor did I make time to pursue swimming. Since I enjoyed swimming so much, after my retirement I joined the Cane Bay YMCA. The Cane Bay facility has a large pool. It’s heated and it’s a salt water pool. The combination of all of these factors makes lap swimming an enjoyable exercise experience for me.After the first month I found myself in a comfortable “zen” state. The water was warm and my strength was returning. One day while in this “zen” state I realized that this was a perfect place and a perfect time for prayer. There were no visual distractions. There were no noise distractions other than the sound of some calming bubbles, my breathing with every fourth stroke, the sound of my leg kicks, and the motion of my arms. I was overcome with a sense of peace and in a place that seemed to provide a conduit or connection to God for me. I started out then by reciting the Lord’s Prayer as I swam. The verses of the Lord’s Prayer seemed to coincide with my swim strokes and with my breathing. The more that I prayed, the more relaxed I became in the water and time just seemed to fly by in this “zen” state of prayer. I realized that this method greatly improving my prayer life.After a few months of this my swim / prayer time gradually turned to a simple conversation with God. I would thank God for the blessings that He had given me. I began to pray for my family, for friends, for those in need, for those who are suffering, for our church and for our country. Often, I found that I was just simply speaking in my mind to God. A sense of peace came over me as I discovered this new form for my prayer life.Jesus seemed to always find a place and a time to pray. If we follow His example, perhaps each of us can find the right time and place of solitude for prayer such that we might simply just have a conversation with God. My prayer / pool time has enriched my life. I pray that you find your own prayer place and time.John DumasWeek 3 – March 7-13, 2021Jesus Prayed When He Needed Help (Luke 6:12-16, Exodus 32:12-14, John 17:20)It is breath-taking to think of Jesus at prayer! The whole Lenten study of the prayer life of Jesus is almost like treading upon sacred, secret ground. What did Jesus say to His Father? What did The Father say to Jesus? After all, Jesus was God in human form, yet He felt the urgency of constant connection to God. That is too complicated for most of us to wrap our heads around. The prayer in Luke concerns Jesus lifting up His decision about the selection of the twelve apostles. Those twelve men would be blessed with the responsibility of carrying out and carrying on Jesus’ ministry. Can you just imagine the tingling in the souls of those twelve men as Jesus laid their names before His Father? Wow! Surely it made the hair stand up on the backs of their necks! That was a form of intercessory prayer –- to pray specifically on behalf of someone else. Moses was so close to Yahweh that he took the bold step of interceding for Yahweh’s chosen people, the Israelites. Their sin had been great and Yahweh’s anger had burned hot against them; but Moses pleaded (reasoned?) with Yahweh not to consume the Israelites. Yahweh “repented of the evil which He thought to do to His people.” Another Wow! How would history have been changed if Moses had not interceded on their behalf? Abraham dared to intercede for the few believers dwelling in Sodom. Likewise, the story of Peter’s friends praying for him, resulting in angels coming to release Peter from prison, shows the power of fervent intercessory prayer. For me, though, the most beautiful instance of intercessory prayer was on my behalf. It lies in the Book of John:Jesus has told His apostles that He is going to His Father and that God will send another Counselor “to be with you forever.” Then Jesus begins praying to God His Father just hours before going to the cross. He prays for His apostles, that God will protect them from temptation (“the evil one”). “Sanctify them in the truth . . . I have sent them into the world.” Following those words, Christ then prays “not for these only, but for those who believe in me through their word.” That is you and me! Jesus was interceding for you and me, and all believers down through the ages, even as He was preparing to die for us. That is personal. That is for me a Fall-on-Your-Knees-in-Gratitude moment! Frances ViaWeek 4 – March 14-20, 2021"My life (all our lives) goes on in endless song, above earth's lamentation.? Above the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing.? It sounds an echo in my soul, so how can I keep from singing?""Needing a friend to save me in the end, where could I go but to the Lord?""O Love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee, I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.""Jesus, Savior, pilot me, over life's tempestuous sea..."A long time ago, an anxious student came into my office to share with me some very troubling concerns that were weighing on her heart.? At the conclusion of our time together she said something I've never forgotten ad never will:? "I can tell you my most awful secrets."At the heart of my prayer life, and I believe that this is true for us all, is the hope, trust, the blessed assurance, that there is?nothing?that we can bring to God in prayers that will shock and estrange Him - that His love goes beyond the highest mountain and reaches to the lowest Hell.? We may sometimes fear that if we reveal how we?really?feel to our Father as the young woman did that afternoon in my office, we may endanger our relationship with Him.? But then the words of Jesus in verses 2-4 of Matthew 11 resonate:? "Father, reveal who you are.? Set the world right.? Keep us alive with three square meals.? Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.? Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."? (This is Eugene Peterson's translation in?The Message).Each of us, as a unique individual, will have her or his conversations with the Lover of our souls.? We open ourselves, no holds barred, to the Father who loves us beyond our imagining and in that Love, He reveals who He is.I'll draw down with two quotations, the first from a prayer offered by the Priests of the Sacred Heart, the second from the mind and heart of Frederick Buechner:"In every need let me come to you with humble trust saying:?Jesus, help me!""There's nothing to worry about, and there never was!""Love lifted me, Love lifted me, when nothing else could help, Love lifted me."At journey's end, and even before, there will indeed be a Light in the window and a "Welcome Home" sign on the door.? At the heart of our prayers, no matter what, is this Blessed Assurance, this realization, deeper than our feelings:? "In the end, everything will be all right, and if it's not all right, it's not the end."Jud DeckerWeek 5 – March 21-27, 2021Jesus Taught Others to Pray (The Lord’s Prayer)Jesus gave his disciples a great gift when he responded to their request that he teach them to pray with the pattern of prayer we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. Many have noticed a neat symmetry in the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. The first three are marked by the second person singular—“you,” “your”—and the last three are marked by the first person plural—“our,” “us.” The first section focuses on the glory of God—God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will—and we are “invited, even commanded, to take an interest in God’s cause,” as theologian Karl Barth has said. But notice the order—it is God’s cause first, and always first. And as we order our prayers in this way, we find that praying for God’s cause first has implications for those things we would pray for ourselves. “We are not only there for God’s cause; we must bring forward our own cause also, while making it fit into God’s.”Some of our modern ways of praying follow this pattern as well. Many of us are familiar with the acronym ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), or PATH (Praise, Apology, Thanks, Help). These prayer patterns appropriately begin with praise and adoration of God, followed by confession in which we acknowledge our failures to live lives pleasing to God, then thanksgiving for God’s many blessings, all before addressing needs we or others may have. If prayer is conversation with God, with whom we are invited to have a relationship, then understanding who we are and who God is in that relationship is critical. Since the earliest sin involved humans not wanting to be completely dependent on God, to assert their own will into the equation, then acknowledging that God is God and we are not will always be the first step in our prayer life. When we pray, “hallowed be thy name,” “thy will be done,” “thy kingdom come,” we are saying, “it’s not about me, about my will, about my kingdom; it’s about God’s.” Our Father, who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy Name.Thy Kingdom come.Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever,Amen.Anita Herbert ................
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