My Vision of God’s Protection-Lent 13, 2020

Prayer Focus: Protection, Not Punishment

Thank You, Father, for the protection You gave mankind, that You didn’t allow us to eat from the tree of life and live forever in a sinful state. Help me to see this as discipline and protection … and not as punishment. Living forever in a sinful state would be almost as bad as hell. Drive that point home to me. Strife. Forever. Crime. Forever. Pain. Forever. Misery. Forever. Divisions. Forever. Hatred. Forever. The only thing missing would have been death and replaced by living forever as a living hell. Therefore, in Your Wisdom, Lord, You gave us consequences and protection, gifts both, from Your hand of mercy. Yes, death has been a consequence that followed as “surely die” that You forewarned. But even so, death has always been in Your eyes, an enemy to be defeated with Your unassailable battle plan, defeating death Yourself. And for us, Lord, You have provided a way back to Yourself and to eternal life from the very beginning even as we experienced banishment from Your holy presence. We praise You that You are merciful and forgiving! We praise You for Your wise and wonderful plan for salvation! We praise You for the sinless perfection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior in whose Name we pray. Amen

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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.