ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness
GOD IS WRATHFUL
Unlike human anger, God’s wrath is never capricious, self-indulgent, or irritable. It is the right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. Nahum 1:2-8
Nahum 1:2-3
2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.
The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies.
3 The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.
His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet.
Praise the God who vents His Wrath
In general venting is seen as a bad thing. When God vents his wrath, it is terrifying but ultimately good. God vents his wrath because he is fully just, fully love, and completely good. He is holy. Praise God for his wrath. Without wrath there would be no justice or love.
CONFESSION: Confess your sins to God and receive his continued mercy.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
THANKSGIVING: Giving thanks to God for his specific blessings in our lives.
“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100
SUPPLICATION: Bringing our requests to God.
- Bring your personal prayer requests to God.
- Ask God to convict your lost friends of their sin.
- Ask God to give people an awareness of their lostness and separation from Him.
- Pray for opportunities to share the gospel.
SCRIPTURE READING:
1 Corinthians 13 New Living Translation
Love Is the Greatest
13 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
Eternal life in our culture (both the Christian and general culture) is most often viewed as “lots of time.” When I die, life goes on and on. If we died, becoming what we are now becoming what would that look like? If a person is becoming more like Christ then eternity would mean eternal growth in goodness. If a person is not becoming more like Christ then eternity would be increasing darkness. Eternal life in Scripture is a “kind” of life not merely a quantity of life. It is life in the Kingdom of God that begins at conversion and continues indefinitely. How do these differing views of eternal life shape our lives now? One view is that this life is “more life after death.” The other view is that this life is “a different kind of life starts now and doesn’t end at death.” Which view is shaping your life?