ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness
GOD IS ETERNAL God has always existed. God does not have a beginning. He will have no end.
Isaiah 40:28
Have you never heard? Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
Praise the God who is Eternal
Before time began God was. Before the mountains stood God was present. Leaders, celebrities, fashion, and technology comes and goes but God will always be. Praise God because he always has been and he will be forever.
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.
- Pray for River Youth group.
- Ask God to save students who may not know Christ.
- Pray that students would grow in their discipleship to Jesus.
- Pray for yourself as you read the scriptures.
SCRIPTURE READING:
1 Corinthians 13 Christian Standard Bible
Love: The Superior Way
13 If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. 13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
What matters most at the end, matters most now. Love for God and others will matter most at the end, they matter most now. Let’s again contemplate our own death. Unless the Lord returns in your lifetime, you will die. If he does return in your lifetime or if you die the outcome is the same…this life as it is will come to end. Since your life as it is will come to end how should you think about the things that make up your life? How should you think about your time, your possessions, your worries, your physical life? If you lived in line with eternal values today…would anything change? Would you do something different? Would you say something different? Would you think or feel something different? Live today with eternity clearly in mind. Wherever you don’t see love operational in your life you are certainly not seeing eternity in your life. Instead of just trying to be more loving, try to see time from the view of eternity. As we do this we are probably going to live with more wisdom, which will include demonstrating more love.