My Vision of Image-Lent 1, 2020

Prayer Focus: God’s Image and His Image in us

Lord God Almighty, we praise You and thank You that we have been created in Your Image. We praise You and we thank You that Your Image is perfect. We praise You and thank You that You created us both male and female to be in Your Image. We praise You and thank You for Your goodness to us. Help us to see Your Image in our fellow man. May seeing Your Image in others help us to be better people… to offer grace where grace is needed, to love unconditionally as a reflection of the love You have for us. Always help us to recall this great love You had in sending Your Son Jesus Christ to die on a Cross for our sins. We’re sorry, Lord, for the many ways that we have let You down, for our sin nature that we did ourselves by rebelling against You. Forgive us, Lord, for the sins we have committed as a culture. Forgive me, Lord, for the sins I have committed. Forgive me for the sins that I know about and for the ones that have arisen from my nature that remain hidden from my eyes. May Your Holy Spirit convict me of the things I’ve done which grieve You. May Your Holy Spirit encourage me to see Your Image in myself and to see Your Image in others. And most of all, Lord, to see You for who You are. We offer praise and thanks to You on this Ash Wednesday. The ashes remind us that You did not have to condescend to save us, but it’s an expression of the magnitude of the love You have for us as Your Image bearers. Remind us of the sin we have committed in our thoughts, our actions, and in our attempts to hide from You. Most of all, please remind us—deep in our souls—of the great love You have shown to us by offering forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord. May our gratitude rise to You as praise and all glory. 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.