My Vision of Fatherly Love-Lent 8, 2020

Prayer Focus: A Father’s Love

Thank You Father, that I am deeply loved by You even though I don’t deserve it. I praise You Father, that You know my frame, You know my weakness, You know how much I can bear, and that You never give me more to bear then I can do with Your grace to carry me. So I thank You for Your Fatherly love and Your compassion that feels the pain of my circumstances every bit as much as if it were happening to Jesus. I thank You, that as the pioneer and author of our faith Jesus experienced everything just as we do and yet was without sin. We praise You for His sinless life. We praise You for His perfect sacrifice. We thank You that He is able to see us through life’s difficulties, giving us strength and power to endure. I praise You Lord that though I am as dust of the earth–my body destined to die once– I praise You that You still love me. Even though I am as insignificant as can be, I thank You Lord Jesus, for the love of the Father that compelled You to the Cross. Not anything I bring as dust of the earth, but for the love of God’s image in humanity displayed perfectly by You throughout Your earthly ministry. I ask, Father, that You would strengthen me for the journey ahead, that You would encourage my heart when I’m downcast, and that You would lift my head in heavenly hope and fatherly encouragement. Surround me by other members of the body of Christ whom You have placed in my life and let me encourage them in return. During difficult times I praise You. During good times I praise You. I thank You that Your mercies are new every morning and that You love us with a Fatherly love and compassion. We are blessed, Lord, as Your Word says when we persevere under trials because we will receive the crown of life that You promise. Night or day, Lord, we can come to You because Jesus opened the way through the curtain so that we could approach the most holy place in prayer. We praise You and thank You for Your Holy Spirit who guides and teaches us, who helps us in our difficulties, so much that we can consider it pure joy and take the trials that we’ve experienced and turn them into a ministry of comfort for others. Thank You Lord, that You never leave our side. I thank You Lord. May all thanks and praise return to You as glory. In the mighty Name of Jesus Christ Your Son and my Savior. Amen.

===

If you’re already signed up on my Home Page sidebar to receive posts, you’ll get the 2020 Lent Devotionals automatically. Or you can “Like” Seminary Gal on Facebook and they’ll be delivered to your Facebook news feed. If you haven’t signed up, today is a great day to do so. Advent and Lenten devotionals remain among my most popular offerings. You don’t want to miss this encounter with God to prepare your heart for Easter! Understanding that prior years’ devotionals remain popular, you may want to have access to a full series ahead of time:

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.