My Vision of Community-Lent 7, 2020

Prayer Focus: Being Better Together

Lord God, forgive me. You know how often my heart prefers solitude. To go it alone. To be my own master without having to take into account anyone else. To long for the simple life of selfishness that seeks the satisfaction of only one person’s concerns: mine. The minute another person enters my arena, life becomes more complicated, more complex, and frankly, I have a tendency to see it as being less satisfying. The truth is You said that it’s not good for us to be alone. When we’re separated from the beauty of community, we’re like embers separated from the fire, we darken and cease to provide comfort and warmth in the presence of others. The truth is, Lord, I am always in community with You as I seek to follow Jesus Christ all day, every day. His concerns are supposed to be foremost in my mind and I do try to seek Your will continually. You are my Father in heaven. I want to bring glory to You through Your Holy Spirit as my ongoing advocate and counselor. I fall short. A lot. It’s hard to see clearly through the forest of personal preferences, preferred life styles, forged agendas, and layered objectives. Sometimes I can’t even see that I’m missing the mark of community. But You call me to see the beauty in it. The beauty in friendship. The beauty in the family of Christ. The beauty in relationship. It’s only sin that has broken what You designed to be perfect and harmonious. Help me, Lord, to know the way relationship can be when it’s without sin. When it’s all love and grace and holiness. When it’s perfection. Help me, Father, to see through and beyond all that is sin and instead to see You and others with Your eyes. Help me to know the value of community so great in Your eyes that You’ve made an eternity of its perfection possible through the sacrifice of Your Son Jesus. By His blood, You’ve created a kingdom and a priesthood from sinners. By His blood, You’ve made family from aliens and strangers. By His blood, You’ve washed away our sins. By His blood, we find forgiveness and restoration in Christ. Help me, Father, to live like Your child, bearing Your image, for my good and Your glory. Amen.

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.