Sermon on the Mount Prayer List

- 5.3 – help me to be humble today

- 5.4 – help me to be aware and mournful about the condition of the world today

- 5.5 – help me to be meek today

    5.6 – help me to crave true righteousness and help me to learn what this is

- 5.7 – give me an opportunity to be merciful towards someone today

- 5.8 – help me to be pure in heart and mind today

- 5.9 – give me an opportunity to be a peacemaker today

- 5.10-12 – help me to live in these ways today; give me peace and patience as I experience the inevitable disfavor.

- 5.13 – remind me of the usefulness of salt, remind that salt must come into intimate contact with what it is to affect, and remind me that you call US the salt of the earth!

- 5.14-16 – help me to live in these ways today and remind me that I represent YOU!

- 5.17-20 – help me to better understand your ways, bring someone into my life to guide me, and help move about today in harmony with your kingdom

- 5.21-22 – help me to curb my anger in all situations and help me to not use my words to destroy

- 5.23-26 – I confess that there are broken relationships in my life, help me to make reconciling these my number 1 priority

- 5.27 – help me not to lust today

- 5.29-30 – help me to take my failings seriously and not rationalize them away

- 5.33-37 – help me to simply be a man of my word and help me to live consistently so that my word has credibility

- 5.38-42 – help to forsake the normal ways of the world – revenge, protecting what “is” mine, and giving just enough to stay out of trouble. Rather, give me strength to NOT seek revenge; help me to NOT go to painful measures to protect what “is” mine because I want to believe that everything is yours anyway; and help me to love and serve others extravagantly today.

- 5.43-48 – give me an opportunity to love an enemy today, real or perceived

- 6.1-4 – give me the humility to serve others without an agenda and to deflect all glory to YOU

- 6.5-7 – help me NOT be a religious showboat

- 6.10 – help me to be COMPLETELY subservient to YOUR will

- 6.11 – help me to be CONTENT with what I have today

- 6.12 – forgive me of my sins and give me an opportunity to forgive someone that has sinned against me

- 6.13 – give me the wisdom to recognize temptation and flee from it instead of flirting with it

- 6.24 – help me to worship YOU only today and not the false of god of the economy

- 6.25-34 – help me NOT to worry today; rather, help me to appreciate the sustenance YOU give – use the birds of the air and the flowers of the field to remind me of this

- 7.1-5 – help me to NOT judge others today; rather, remind me to use the energy that I consume in doing something reserved for YOU to work on the sins of my own life

- 7.7-8 – give me strength, wisdom, and reminders to ask, seek, and knock!

- 7.12 – help me to take the Golden Rule seriously, and let it rule all of my interactions with others

- 7.13-14 – give me courage to NOT follow the crowd but to pursue life found on the narrow road and through the small gate

- 7.24-27 – give me wisdom, strength, and courage as I build my foundation

Searching

Most of the people I know are searching for some truth...they want answers and they want to find something they can build a life on. This search is common throughout human history - who are we? where did we come from? what is our purpose? what is our destiny?

Our Monday night small group has been walking down this trail for several weeks now and last Monday we pondered this question:

Why are humans so quick to jump on to and cling to the latest truth claims?

We came at this question from a Christian perspective, heavily influenced by St. Paul's words from Romans 1:

"For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God."

We also discussed this question with some humility because each one of us has been guilty of being influenced by the "truth of the day." Here is what we concluded in answer to the question:

• We prefer our autonomy, we don't like having anything in authority over us.
• And if there is no authority over us, we are free to pursue our selfish desires with no rules.

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A few days later I listened to this story from a "This American Life" podcast. To summarize, a college professor with a family decided there must be more than this, what he could touch and see; if there weren't more then the beautiful universe would be diminished. So he abandons his wife and children and job at the university to try to establish contact with extra-terrestrials. He firmly believes that there is intelligent life "out there." After years of effort, frauds and near-misses he still believes that something is out there - something big, over-arching, transcendent - in his words, "what we might call God." He said that he believes ET could exist BUT believes that God could not because, again his words, "it sounds too fantastic."

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Might this bring a third excuse to the table? Do we reject the idea of a loving God because it is too fantastic, too good to be true?

Fe

May 4, 2012

Fe
or, as the deer...

With half the day on Wednesday, May 2 and two full days (13 plus hours each) on Thursday and Friday under my belt, I sent a text to Brenda on Friday night and said with confidence, "I'm not going to make it. I'm not sure I have the physical or emotional strength to finish." She told me to suck it up...

I wept again on Friday evening. After supper there was a devotional in the gym presented by a Harlingen pastor. The service was in Spanish but I was able to pick up enough to know what was going on. The faith of these young men was striking, my estimate was that eighty to ninety percent of them worshiped with a real devotion that night.

I have had the privilege of singing the song, "As the Deer" with brothers and sisters of the faith for many years now. This Friday was the first time I sang it with kids whose only possessions were a set of tattered, dirty clothes and a new set of issued clothes that included basketball shorts, underwear, t-shirt, socks and a pair of sandals...AND NOTHING ELSE. Their hands were lifted in praise during these lines:

"You alone are my strength, my shield;

To you alone may my spirit yield.

You alone are my heart's desire 

and I long to worship You."

I have a good friend who has spent a good deal of time in Honduras, he told me a few months ago that he believes we (US Christians) have too many safety nets in place to be able to experience a deep, rich faith. I agree.