My Vision of Jerusalem- Lent 35, 2020

Prayer Focus: Old Jerusalem, New Jerusalem

Lord Jesus, Scripture doesn’t record Your weeping often. You wept over the pain Lazarus’ death left in its wake. And You wept over Jerusalem, Lord, they were so blind to the peace You were bringing! Lord God, as we’ve been warned that death hangs heavy in coming days due to this virus, I pray that Your peace would hover over us and protect Your people. I pray that those who do not know You would seek Your face and find comfort and eternal peace with You. Remove the blinders off the eyes of Old Jerusalem, I ask Lord, that Your salvation would be made manifest among the chosen people of Your heritage on earth. May I never forget that salvation is from the Jews and that You, Lord, came to fulfill the Scriptures given to the Jews over the many years through Moses and the prophets. May I never neglect the olive tree into which I’ve been grafted as a wild branch. May the time of arousing the consciousness of the Jews of our day come upon us swiftly and the New Jerusalem You have promised come to fulfillment as You are faithful to what You have promised and fulfill every last word of Scripture. Help me to fight against hatred of certain racial and ethnic groups knowing that the New Jerusalem will have many tribes and nations and tongues. Help me to have an open heart toward those Jews still waiting for their Messiah, having expectations layered over what Your word says, expectations that cloud their thinking. Lord, I’m watching and waiting for the full number to be redeemed and Your imminent return. I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe in Your bride, the Church who You will return to claim. I believe in Your power. I believe in Your deep historic love for Israel and that Your love for Gentile peoples then and now has never been diminished because of it. Thank You that God so loved the world. Thank You for the sacrifice of Your Son Jesus Christ, willingly He laid down His life to pay for human sin though He had no sin of His own. We praise You and glorify You and look forward to the New Jerusalem. In Christ alone. 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.