ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness
God is Infinite
God is beyond measurement— we cannot define Him by size or amount. He has no beginning, no end, and no limits.
Romans 11:33
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
Speak words of Praise to the God who is infinite.
Praise God because he cannot be confined. Praise God that he is everlasting. He has always been. He will always be. Praise God that he is limitless. He feels no exhaustion. He is without measure.
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 the Heaven Father to protect and rescue women and children enslaved in the sex trade.
- Ask God to speak as you read and meditate.
SCRIPTURE READING:
2 Corinthians 6 The Message
Staying at Our Post
1-10 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,
I heard your call in the nick of time;
The day you needed me, I was there to help.
Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.
11-13 Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!
14-18 Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:
“I’ll live in them, move into them;
I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
Do you love the world? I don’t mean nature, the material planet. I also don’t mean humans, another way of talking about the world. I mean the world described in Scripture as actions, attitudes, and values in opposition to God. It may be an inappropriate love of comfort, or prestige, or the applause of others. It may be an imbalanced love for possessions or really anything that becomes priority in your life. God’s said that he “will walk among us and be our God and we will be his people.” Therefore, or since this is true we are to “come away to him and be separate.” As we do then he will be a Father to us and we will be his sons and daughters. This is clearly not a call to “leave the world.” It is a call to live in the world with a heart set apart for God. This is much, much more difficult than just “jumping in” and doing whatever those around are doing. It is also more difficult than attempting to hide from the world. This is what God wants for us. That we would live among those who are far from God and yet in our hearts remain his “set apart” people. That we would live in a world full of idols but that our hearts would be free. This is not about putting ourselves in tempting situations. We are to flee temptation. But we cannot flee the temptation from loving the world by leaving the world. That would be impossible. We must fully lean on Jesus’ grace as we live fully engaged with the world. Ask God to reveal the ways in which you love the world then confess that sin to him and let him continually cleanse it from you.