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 existed. Before the mountains stood, God was present. Leaders, celebrities, fashion, and technology all come and go 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 Christian Challenge as they meet tonight. Ask God to strengthen student’s faith as they gather and help them grow in community.
SCRIPTURE READING:
James 5:12-20 – The Message
12 And since you know that he cares, let your language show it. Don’t add words like “I swear to God” to your own words. Don’t show your impatience by concocting oaths to hurry up God. Just say yes or no. Just say what is true. That way, your language can’t be used against you.
13-15 Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
16-18 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
19-20 My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
If you are in trouble, what should you pray? Should you ask God to remove the trouble or the source of the trouble? I don’t see why not, seems reasonable. We are in good company when we do: Paul did it, and Jesus did it as well. But remembering what James wrote in the first chapter, what else do you think James would recommend in regard to how we pray during times of trouble? Here are a couple of verses to refresh your memory:
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” James 1:2-4
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” James 1:12
With those passages in mind, what are some other kinds of prayer we should offer to God when we are facing trouble? Are you in the habit of praying these kinds of prayers, or do you largely pray for relief? Again, don’t feel bad for asking God to remove trouble from your life. But as you ask God for relief, make sure you ask him for his larger purposes to be accomplished. Those purposes include us becoming more like Christ over time. That process will inevitably involve hard circumstances. We don’t want to miss God’s purposes in trouble just because we are anxiously focused on getting out of the trouble.