| New Book now Available Here is an anthology of over 1100 brief prayers and thought-starters, for each day of the year, with almost 400 original prayers by Bruce Prewer. Included is both a subject index and an index of authors-- an ecumenical collection of about 300 different sources. |
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| Title: Brief Prayers for Busy People. Author: Bruce D Prewer ISBN 978-1-62880-090-6 Available from Australian Church Resources, web site www.acresources.com.au email service@acresources.com.au or by order from your local book shop or online on amazon. |
FEBRUARY
18-24
Sunday 7
Matthew 5: 38-48
1 Corinthians 3: 10-11, 16-23
Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119: 33-40
Don’t you understand that you
yourself
are each a temple of God,
for within you
God’s Spirit
chooses to live.
O God, turn my
eyes from focussing on vanities,
give me a life that is set in your ways.
You are to be generous like
your Father in heaven,
who gives the sun to rise on both rogues and the
righteous,
and sends refreshing rain on both the just and the
unjust.
O God, teach me the heart of your statutes,
and I will then follow it to the very end
OR
As we arrive for worship, let
us remember that love
is not an optional extra for those in Christ’s train;
Say to all the congregation
of my people:
You shall be holy, even as I the Lord God am
holy.
This means you shall love your neighbour as
yourself,
for it is I who am
your God.”
O Lord, give us understanding, that we may want to
please you,
help us to fulfil your law with all our
heart.
Jesus said: I say to you:
Love your enemies, pray for those who
persecute you.
You therefore must be
totally loving,
just as your God is
perfectly loving.
Shape our motives so as not to only seek our own gain,
and deflect our eyes from this world’s
vanities.
We love because you have first loved us.
PRAYER OF APPROACH
God most holy,
God most loving, God most faithful; teach us to fear you without being afraid,
to serve you without being slavish, to worship you without being obsequious.
For you are indeed holy: You are perfect in grace, perfect in mercy, and
perfect in truth. Without you there are only shadows and broken images. With you
there is always light and life and holy joy. Wonderful is your name today and
for ever!
Through Christ
Jesus our Redeemer,
Amen!
TRUSTING GOD’S FORGIVENESS
Well aware that we are
sinners, yet sinners who have a Saviour, let us relax
our spirits in the grace of God.
Let us pray.
In our wilful wandering, in
cul-de-sacs where we have become stuck, and in dark times when we have missed
the right turn and know ourselves to be lost, there is a loving Spirit-Friend
who always comes looking for us
The Lord has mercy.
The Lord has mercy!
In our arrogance and our
pig-headedness, in our impatience and clumsiness, in our bad days of sulkiness
or open rebellion, there is always a loving Spirit-Friend who waits for us to
come to our senses.
Christ has mercy.
Christ has mercy.
In the hour of keen self
awareness and shame, in our regret for
injuries inflicted or love denied, in situations where we have failed God most
miserably, there is always a loving Spirit-Friend who forgives and restores us
to the peace of salvation.
The Lord has mercy.
The Lord has mercy.
God of inordinate patience,
we thank you for absolving both friends and enemies, for sending sunshine on
saints and sinners, and blessing with rain both the just and the unjust. We
thank you even we have been included in the amnesty of your saving grace and
the opportunities of the new age inaugurated by Christ Jesus.
Holy is our God, whose goodness endures for ever!
Amen!.
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
Dear God,
we know that you have asked us
to forgive our enemies
and pray for those who bully us.
Do you know how tough that
really is
for earthlings like us
to actually do it?
Okay, God, we hear you, you
do know.
Yes, Jesus at the cross
did pray for his enemies.
So what we really need
is more of his soul inside us,
to make us more merciful?
O God, help us to really want
that
with every bit of our energy
from our brains to our toes.
Please make us generous
forgivers,
just like you are.
Amen!
PSALM 119: 33-40
Teach me, O Lord, to see your
guide-pots,
and to keep on track to the very end.
Help me to understand your
family law,
that I may want to keep it whole-heartedly.
Lead me along the path you
command
that I may find your ways a real pleasure.
Instil your common sense in
my heart
and stop me looking for vain excuses.
Witness within my heart your
promises,
that I may find your ways awesome.
Divert me from dread, failure
and self reproach,
for I know all your guidelines are for my own good.
Above all I long to trust
your example,
to take the right way and know the good life.
B. D.
Prewer 2006
POEM
Matthew 5:38-42
I see that Man
without a coat
go walking by.
I stop him in the
icy wind
and ask him why?
He smiles and says “To go without
is quite okay,
there comes a third degree of warmth
that comes to stay.”
Those bruises on
both of your cheeks,
who struck you there?
And why although
they are so raw
you do not care?
He gently touched his right cheek
and said “That’s rough,
but till you give the left as well
it’s not enough.”
“The
sun shines freely on
both good and bad
the gentle rain from heaven falls
on wise and mad.”
“Learn
from your God the secret life
where love come free,
follow your God with generous love
and happy be.”
“The
God who counts your every hair
is perfect grace,
such love is now your ground and goal
so up the pace.”
I thought of all
my stingy ways
and hung my head,
he knelt, looked up into my eyes
and my shame fled.
B.D. Prewer 2006
SERMON BE PERFECT
Matthew 5: 48
Leviticus 19:2
I have two texts for you
today.
(Hey, don’t worry! That does
not mean you get two sermons. Just one will do.)
Text 1 is from the Gospel of Matthew: You must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. (5:48)
Text 2 is from the Old Testament of Leviticus: You shall be holy, for I
the Lord your God am holy. (Lev 19:2)
How does that word “holy”
sound in your ears?
The word translated “holy”(quodesh) is used often in the
O.T. Dig into this word’s origins and qodesh seems to combine two overlapping
meanings: different and complete or perfect. That is holiness. Compared with us, even with the best
women and men, God is utterly
different and utterly perfect.
What quality was it that
constituted this qodesh? The special quality is difference
and perfection?
Firstly, some of those
ancient Jews developed the word to mean something close to the meaning of taboo, Something
spooky and powerfully dangerous, to
be only approached with extreme care. Get too close and you might get yourself
zapped. Remember the ‘ark of the covenant?”
Second, others developed the
word to mean a fierce ethical purity.
A goodness that exceeds all human goodness. A goodness
that is sublime. Get close to this holiness and it will expose all human
sinfulness. You will be overawed and fall down in homage before such perfect
goodness.
Our old
Testament text for today calls for this second brand of holiness. You shall be holy, for I
the Lord your God am holy. Then it spells out what that will mean in
practical, ethical terms:
Look after the needy. At harvest time, leave enough
pickings of fruit, and some barely to be
gleaned, for the poor and the migrant.
For I am the Lord your God.
Do not steal, cheat or lie.
Don’t swear oaths that you have no intention of keeping.
For I am the Lord.
Do not oppress or rob your neighbour.
Pay a casual day worker immediately (he and his family
needs to eat that same evening)
Don’t make fun of the deaf behind their back, nor stick
out your foot and trip up the blind.
For I am the Lord.
Don’t make unjust judgements; neither pander to the rich
nor be unfairly influenced by
the poor.
Don’t gossip or slander others.
For I am the Lord.
Don’t nurse hatred in your heart, but try to reason with
your neighbour.
Don’t bear a grudge or take vengeance, but love your
neighbour as yourself.
For I am the Lord.
That, my friends is what it
means to be holy. To be like your God.
You will notice how Leviticus
follows every warning with the words: I
am the Lord.
These high
ethical goals flow directly from the unique nature of your God; a God who is
holy, who is different and perfect in goodness.
NOW TO THE WORDS OF JESUS
Do I need to remind you that
Jesus was a Jew? A Hebrew through and through?
You must be
perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
His words echo the one from
Leviticus.
The Greek of Matthew’s Gospel
uses the word teleiois, perfect. Which means fully developed,
ripe, fulfilled, complete, consummated, attaining its perfect end. It is the
same root word that in John’s Gospel is spoken by Jesus at his death: “It is finished!”
In Matthew it occurs after
the first segment of the “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus has taught us to go to
the spirit of things behind the law, to search our hearts, examine our
motivation, to learn to do the right thing for the right reason.
By this, Jesus has goaded us
to go further than ever before, to reach beyond not only our natural
inclinations but even beyond the letter of the noblest OT teaching.
He has asked us to turn the other cheek, go the second
mile, give our coat and even the
shirt off our back.
He wants us to show mercy; to forgive our enemies, and to
pray for those who
persecute us.
Only by going down this
ethical path can we be true children of God. Christ reminds us that God is
impartial in his outpouring of goodness. He does not play favourites.
The merry old sun rises each morning and shines its life
giving warmth on both virtuous
citizens and
villains,
The refreshing rains fall on the fields of both those who
live justly and those who are
crooked in their
dealings.
Impartial
generosity it at the heart of the perfection of God’s nature. To be a true child of God will mean living with the
same generous attitude and action.
Here we are given a
definition of holiness which soars above the highest hill tops of the Old
Testament, taking giant steps upward towards holy peaks.
To be a holy person has
nothing in common with the self righteous bigot. Naught in common with those we
refer to as “the holier than thou” people. Self aggrandisement (even if thinly
covered in a layer of chocolate-like piety) is an abomination in the eyes of
our Lord.
To be perfect as God is
perfect is to reach towards the full height of humanity by loving others, even
caring about those who abuse us.
The open handed person, the
generous spirit, is the key to true Christian perfection. This is the sign of
authentic holiness, the earthly reflection of the hidden Holy God.
IS THIS POSSIBLE?
It may seem too much. An impossible dream. Far too spiritual for flawed and
leaden-footed, earth-bound creatures like us.
Of course it is impossible in
one leap. What is more, it is ‘not on” if we think only in terms of our own
strength. But nothing is impossible in the realm of God’s daily grace.
There is another insight from
the Bible which can be is an encouragement at this point. The Bible has a high
regard for our essential nature. It insists that we have the image of God
within us; that at the deep roots of our being, there is something very God-like
about us.
To be sure, this image may be
covered in dirt like a lost coin; it may be corroded, or bent. Yet the image is
not completely effaced. Some of it remains. Through our Saviour Christ, God
clearly reveals that image and sets about reclaiming that image.
To be told that we are to
become perfect like God is a command to become what we really are. To become our true selves.
It is not like asking a blind
man to become an astronomer, nor a pygmy to become a basket ball star, or a
deaf person to become a violinist. It is not asking a fish to fly or a
butterfly to swim in the depths of the ocean. Our Lord calls us to start
becoming what we really are, to commence living as the children of God.
Nor does God expect it to
happen perfectly at the first try.
One of my pre adolescent
grandsons liked watching the Australian Open tennis on TV. He decided he would
become a tennis player. His parents payed for him to start
tuition. He did not get beyond the third lesson. It seems his racket did
not flow through the air as it did when Leyton Hewitt struck a ball, his arm
did not ping the ball into the far corners of the court like Roger Fedderer, and his lobs flew over the rear fence. I am sorry
to say, he was soon discouraged and gave it away.
Far too many Christians are
like that. They expect too much too soon. They let failures get to them.
Discouragement is a big encouragement to the devil’s angels. Should
discouragement sink into despair, then it is a sheer delight to the dark Enemy
himself.
The command to deal
generously with the enemy, must also be applied to
ourselves. We are at times our own worst enemy.
Our Lord Jesus knows we
cannot become champions overnight. Being a Christian means
trying, often failing, yet gladly accepting the grace of God, and then going at
it once more. It also means occasionally succeeding. Surprise! We really
do get it right sometimes. We find Christ’s work in our souls is not in vain;
the true image of God within us can begin to reclaim its glory.
As one sinner who knows what
it is like to often fail, yet occasionally succeed, I offer to you (another
batch of sinners) the words of our two texts:
You shall be holy, for I the
Lord your God am holy. (Lev 19:2)
You must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is
perfect. ( Matthew
5:48)
We have two options.
Either
we lower our eyes to a mole hill, where it will be easy
for us to sit
and criticise the world around us.
or
We lift up our eyes to the
heights where Christ calls us to be,
and go for it! Yes go for it!
With whatever love and hope
and faith we possess, let’s go for it! Daring to risk failure, go for it! In
the name of Jesus, go for it! In the name of the Spirit, go for it! In the name
of God, go for it now!
THANKSGIVING
A brief general thanksgiving
The Lord be with you etc...
We give thanks
and rejoice, loving God;
We rejoice in all
your holy mind has planned and in which your holy heart yearned,
in all created things over which your Spirit
broods like a mother,
in all you’ve achieved through your seers
and poets and law givers;
We rejoice in the
light with which you filled that holy Child born at Behlehem,
in the sanity you offered through his
healing hands and healing words,
in the grace you unleashed through the
bitter yet wonder-full cross,
in the resurgent new life you set loose on
Easter morning;
We rejoice the
fire you kindled in the heads and hearts of the apostles,
in the long succession of believers who have
brought the gospel to us,
and in the glory which you promise will one
day perfectly come to be.
Therefore
with......
INTERCESSIONS
Our prayers reach much wider
than our capacity to give practical aid. This should; not inhibit us from
praying on a grand scale.
Let us pray for others.
Holy Friend of the earth, if
we could take the entire world’s needs and sorrows to heart,
we would become crushed by their enormity.
As we begin the pray for
others, guide us to discern those things we can achieve, and give us the wisdom
to leave the remainder in your providential and redeeming hands.
Loving God, with our small
assistance or without it, please bless those hordes of people who are hungry,
homeless, without family or homeland.
With our assistance or
without it, please bless the injured and the diseased, the handicapped and
those who suffer grievous mental or emotional illness.
With our assistance or
without it, please bless the lonely people, whether they stand isolated in
large crowds or whether they timidly hide away from others.
With our assistance or
without it, please bless the pained souls who exist without any faith or hope,
especially those who today contemplate suicide.
With our assistance or
without it, please bless the dying and those who sit with them,
and the dead and those who weep for them.
With our assistance or without
it, please bless all those people of good will, who try to rectify the world’s
ills, and sometimes get abused for their trouble.
God our most Holy Friend, be
to all of us a strength in weakness, a light in darkness, a peace in anxiety, a
courage in upheaval, and a robust joy in our happiness, Through Christ Jesus
our inspiration and guide.
Amen!
From “Australians at Prayer”
B. D Prewer
and Open Book Publishers.
SENDING OUT
Throughout the long day, may
you know the solid ground of God beneath your feet.
When you go to sleep, may the
Spirit mend your body, mind and soul.
As each new day dawns, may
the grace of Christ be at your side.
Amen!
Go on your way, knowing that
through Christ
all good things are now yours.
Amen!
THREE BOOKS BY BRUCE PREWER
THAT ARE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
BY ORDERING ONLINE
OR FROM YOUR LOCAL CHRISTIAN BOOKSHOP
