19 after the flood

Father God I pray that You continue to guard my heart and my mind in Your son Christ Jesus. When I look back at Noah I see that for the second time in history, every man on earth is worshiping You. It reminds me that there has to be a falling out to get to where we are. At some point we are unable to teach our children about You and to show them the love that You have shown us. You spoke directly to Noah and his sons. What causes us to lose what we already have? This is the spoiled fruit the results from a knowledge of You, Lord, without a heart for You. James writes "faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead". All of our actions are our witness to the world. Our witness of You, Lord. If our actions don't match up with our faith then the world will judge You. Father help us live a life changed by You. That the world will see that Your truth and love make all the difference. Your grace and mercy are beyond parallel. You are the only way. Help us, guide us Father that we would not stumble through this life like we are lost. That we would live with true direction.

for You have shown us the way

18 the great flood

Father I thank You that You are always there for us. That You are so accessible. That You are so faithful to those who trust in You. Throughout scripture You show us how You have delivered the faithful from calamity. Not that we, as faithful followers, are immune from suffering or hardship, but that through Christ our final judgment has already been determined. Scripture has also shown us good people going bad. You delivered Judah from the Assyrians under Hezekiah. You rewarded his faith and leadership. But then came his son Manasseh. In a short time Judah went from a revival of faith to absolute debauchery. Lord help us not to forget how fickle our hearts have been. Let us never take for granted the Holy Spirit that dwells within us since the day we were saved. Lord we thank You that through Christ we are now saved for eternity. But don't let us forget those who are not. The voices of those who reject You seem to be growing louder and louder. How much louder should Your saints be? Let the campaign of the atheist be an encouragement to fuel our crusade to redeem the lost.

for You are the truth

17 noah

Lord I pray that You would continue to grow me into a man with faith like that of Noah. Someone that hears Your commandments and obeys them without any regard. By the time of Noah the world was so wrapped in sin it had no place for You. One man stood out. Lord sometimes I feel like the world I live in is the same. I thank You that it is not. That there are true men and women of faith that You have put in my life. I pray that we would all follow Your calling in Matthew 28:19-20. That we would follow that command as faithfully as Noah. Noah built a huge ark in preparation for a flood no one thought was going to happen. Can we as Christians, in the same faithful way, spread the gospel in preparation for a rapture that the world doesn't believe will happen? Father I pray that you give us boldness to step out for You, wisdom to know the words to say, patience to understand Your timing, and encouragement to never stop spreading Your word. Not until every tribe, tongue, and nation sing Your praise.

for all are precious in His sight

16 cain and abel: the first murder

Father God let our focus remain firmly placed on You. You are the center and all things are in accordance with Your will. Cain envied his brother because he didn't seek You first. Because Cain fell short he began to hate his brother. I tend to fall for a similar trap. I see how far I fall short and I hate myself. I look at myself and think that I am not capable of doing any good. I am right. Alone I cannot do anything of lasting value. But I am wrong to feel alone. I am wrong to focus on me. You have promised to complete the work You have started in me. You are ever patient, ever faithful, abounding in love, mercy, and grace. You created every star in the sky and every molecule in the universe. You have the power to make what You will of anything, even me. Lord help me keep my focus on You that the world would not be too loud for me to hear You or too bright for me to see You. You rescued me from the pit of despair and redeemed me by the flowing of Your blood. Not by accident. Not by mistake. It is long time I started living on purpose. Lord help me to rejoice in all my days that I have am invited to live my life with You.

for You paid the price

15 death in adam, life in Christ

Jesus we rejoice in the life we have through the sacrifice You made to clean us of our sin. We know that we are fully incapable of living righteously on our own. We thank You for revealing Yourself to us, that we could begin to know You. That by the Holy Spirit our lives could begin to be shaped to follow after Yours. We still struggle, falter, and make bad choices but You are patient and You are forever faithful. Rather than creating a mindless race that blindly follows You, You created a species with free will. You granted us the ability to think for ourselves and have granted us a creative mind. But that creativity has mutated us into a prideful and stubborn beast. Lord help us make the most out of Your gift of the Holy Spirit. Help us make our voice smaller and Your voice greater in our lives. Lord help us share Your love and mercy and grace at work, school, home and wherever we may go. That we would see Your praises sung from the tops of every hill.

for He is worthy

14 God exiles adam and eve from the garden

Father You are too holy and great to allow sin to dwell with You. If You were to mingle with darkness, how then could we know what is light? Since you are the absence of evil, selfishness, hate, and sin these things must all be absent from Your presence. So with the first sin Lord You cast us from Your garden removing us from the tree of life. You gave us many chances to follow Your decrees and seek You with all our hearts and century after century we failed You. You knew we could never earn our way back but You also knew that we needed to see it for ourselves. With every opportunity to focus our hearts on You exhausted, You sent Your Son. Jesus showed us how to live by His example. He taught what it meant to have a heart after Yours. That life was not focused on atonement for sin but about seeking You and allowing You to do good works through us. Only by the perfect atoning blood of Christ could we be made clean for You. And only by this could we receive Your Holy Spirit. Father let us never forget that You have had a heart for all people since before the beginning of time. That none of these events happened by accident but rather by Your divine guidance as this was the only way we could ever make it back to You. The serpent got us kicked out of the garden but he has no power to keep us out.

for You are mighty to save

13 God judges the first sin

Father it all began with one act of deception followed by an act of disobedience. We relive this scene in our lives every day. We know You know what is best for us. We allow ourselves to be deceived. We sin against You. We rationalize our actions and pretend it is not our fault. However we have one big difference from Adam and Eve. We have the knowledge that our sin has already been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. We know that You have paved a way for us to walk with You again. What was started in the garden was broken by the cross and will be fully restored with the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. But the serpent's hold on the present age is far reaching. He has fixed the attention of the world so firmly on sin that many don't believe you exist at all. Even more don't believe in Jesus. And the devil is at work in our hearts as well. Hardening us from the plight of the lost. Convincing believers that they don't really need to spread the gospel. That people have the right to believe what they want and we shouldn't try to interfere. We wonder how normal people can watch their government slaughter millions of people like in Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, etc, but we sit back and watch billions get marched off to hell and we also sit there and do nothing. "What can we do", we think. Father I pray these things to You knowing that I stray, but I pray that You keep me on a short leash. That our relationship would be so central to my life that I immediately feel when I am not in fellowship with You. Bend my heart to be a heart like Yours. That I may not sit idly by and watch the world die away.

for You so loved the world

12 the first sin

Father there is so much for us to see in that original sin that matches up with our lives right now. Satan is deliberate in his deception of Eve, and of us. He starts by saying something ridiculous that is clearly not true, asking if every tree in the garden is off limits. At this first point he doesn't really have a foothold yet. But then she replies. She says that if they eat, or touch the fruit from the tree in the middle they will surely die. But You never said or touch. By adding to Your command Eve gave the devil something to attack. Adding our own thoughts challenges the sufficiency of Your word. It made it that much easier for the serpent to poke holes in her story. Father guide my heart to rely on the truth that You have so generously given us. And help me to always focus on the freedom that You have given me to pursue a life dedicated to the growth of Your kingdom. Satan's triumph over Eve is his ability to get her focused on the one thing she shouldn't do rather than the multitude of great things she could do. Help me see life as a chain of opportunities to do great things for the glory and praise of Christ, rather than a list of things to avoid. Help me Father, to see the subtle beginnings of the devil's trickery and to be so far removed from his world that my eyes remain fixed on Yours.

for Your heel crush his head

11 rulers of God's creation

Father, Your name rings from every mountain. Yet the world stubbornly tries to deny who You are. Some see Your handiwork but don't see Your love. Some see You but refuse to believe Your word. And still many more deny You altogether. Father I pray that they would see how all of creation draws them together under Christ. That we are meant to be good stewards of Your creation to show the world the unmeasurable prominence that Jesus has in our lives. If I don't see Christ in the birds of the air or the leaves on a tree, how will anyone else? But You have revealed Yourself to us, in Your creation and in Your word. You have commanded us to rule over Your creation. To let Your love shine through us in our workmanship of this earth. To start with the brilliance of Your creation, which all can see, and use it as a spring board to bring them the gospel. Lord I pray that You would help me remove the bowl covering my lamp. Help me share You with reckless abandon. That they would know I value Jesus by the way I rep His name.

for there is one Way

10 the first man and woman

Father, how amazing it must have been to be there in Your presence. How unimaginable to be alive without sin nagging at their hearts. Father I pray to have that intimacy with You. To share with You everything in my life. Lord help me ignore the serpents that distract me from and deceive me about You. Lord I pray that you grant my heart peace. I know You have a woman out there that You have intended for me since before the beginning of time yet I still struggle with patiently waiting for Your timing. I can feel sometimes like there is a gap in my life. Help me fill that gap with You, Lord. You are the only true answer. I pray that You continue to grow me, shape me, mold me, to be the man You have always known I would become. Father I know in my heart that You and You alone know what is best for me. My plans, thoughts, ideas are just self serving schemes that have no ultimate gain for anyone. Lord I pray that You would help me take the focus off of me and put it back on You.

for the love of the sovereign one

9 God rests

Father there are a lot of ways to view Your creation and the time line You created it in. But none of those things matter. It is pointless for us to try to create limits to how we think You made the universe. The point is that You created the universe exactly as You wanted to, to reveal to us the supremacy of Christ in all life. And You reached a point where You had finished creating all the things You would create. And You saw that it was good. But like it would be throughout all of history, man found it easier to be given rules than to have a relationship. Not that man could live by the rules but rules have allowed us to distance ourselves from You. Christ showed us that there is no day off from righteousness. There is no rule that outlaws love. The kind of love You have shown us. Love that helps a neighbor. Love that feeds a family. The rules existed to show us that rules can't work. We can't will ourselves righteous by our own good works. That puts the focus on us and the nature of self focus is opposite of Your teaching. We thank You that You became flesh to show us the way. That You knew from the point of creating Adam that You would need to redeem us. And You did it all anyway, knowing we would stray.

great is Your faithfulness

8 mankind: the image of God

You created us to be Your likeness on earth. To represent Your unbounded love. To spend time with us, walking through the garden. We are created to be the steward of the earth. Looking after Your creation with careful consideration. Knowing that it has all been designed by You and is therefore precious and wonderful. Lord that even applies to us. That is a hard statement for me to make. I really don't feel like I am very good. Most of the time I feel like I am down right awful. But You are patient and You are faithful. You rescue me from the pit of despair and draw my focus away from myself. You remind me that although I am destined to fail on my own, that I AM NOT ALONE. We have been created so that Your work will be done through us. Is being done through us, right now. Our witness is not something we can turn on and off. In all that we do we are Your witnesses. We need to remember that often times the strongest witness is a life that appears unchanged by Your grace and mercy. A life that fits in with this world. Lord I pray that You guide us to rebel against the values and images of this world. Lord I pray that You remind us quickly, correct us quickly, at the first choice that begins to separate us from Your path.

in the mighty name of Christ

7 creation: the cattle on a thousand hills

Lord I look out my window and see a world created by You and for You. Every particle, every atom, every molecule, every organism, every grain of sand exists to acknowledge the supremacy of Christ in all the universe. All of it is meant to reflect a small part of Your image. You are invisible to us now but through Your creation You have allowed us to glimpse tiny portions of Your glory. Sometimes Lord I think I get to a mindset that I need to make You the center of my life. The truth is You are the center of my life, all life, and all things created in the universe. Your centrality is not affected by me in any way. This is the same for all of creation. You are the center of every unbelieving heart. The fact they they do not acknowledge You does nothing to change that. But their rejection of You and their attempt to find another center creates a separation. A separation that can only be healed by repentance. You cannot bless things that challenge Your place in our lives. Lord I pray that I clearly see You at the core of all things. That my will would be bent to reflect that vision.

created for Him, redeemed by Him

6 creation: all creatures

You created an intricate balance of living things, each one as amazing as the next. All having a purpose and playing a part in the life cycle of the earth. Whether by food chain or through symbiotic activity all of Your creation fits together like a master puzzle of infinite complication. Yet there is so much simple beauty. The billions of organisms You have created reinforce the truth that You are a huge God and You alone are God. You create matter from nothingness. You pour life, that is Yourself, into that matter. There is no amount of studying that I can do to duplicate Your work. It hurts my heart that so many have closed themselves off from You because of their beliefs about Your creation. The world has made so many excuses to not have to believe in You. Darkness tries to hide from the light for it fears what You will reveal. The prince of this world is crafty and resourceful but limited in power. Father the expanse of Your creation humbles us. Let us never forget Your majesty. Let us never forget that the purpose of all of Your creation is to make Yourself known to every individual, that they would know the truth about Christ so they can spend eternity with the one true God.

for He is great and mighty and Love

5 creation: sun, moon[,] and stars

This light You have created is an embodiment of You, Father. Your light has penetrated the darkness of my soul and freed it, reclaiming me as Your son. Try as it might the darkness cannot overcome the light. Paul writes, "for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth." Sometimes Father I hide from Your light. I get distracted by the "fruitless deeds of darkness". I find myself in a cold and disturbing place. But no matter how dark a place I find myself in, Your light penetrates and brings me back. You expose the sin and lies and fill me with Your truth. Your grace bestows a light in me that shines for others to see. Your word convicts me to let the light shine. To make everything visible. To bring the message to the darkness. For it is so dark they cannot see the path that leads to You. They need the light You shine through us if they are ever going to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus the Christ.

for His death crushed the sin that enslaved the world

4 creation: land & seas, plants & trees

I have seen the power of Your creation. I have flown over the grand canyon and have seen how water can carve through solid rock. I was in New Orleans the week after Katrina and saw the flooding. These things are small compared with Your majesty. The earth and the sea are Your creation and they bend to Your will. And the seemingly smaller aspects of Your creation are no less amazing. Photosynthesis. The delicate balance of an ecosystem, yet the ability You have given it to adapt and change and strive. Every piece has a purpose. The cycle goes on and on. Humans have done much to destroy Your beautiful creation but the creation lives on. We are called to be good stewards of this planet but You alone are master over it. And Your creation is meant to be admired and appreciated and cared for. Much time and energy has been wasted turning environmentalism into a political issue that polarizes this nation and others. The simple fact is that You made this world. It is precious to us. I don't need a cause or a coalition to love and respect Your creation. I am in awe of Your greatness, Your wonder, Your unfathomable depths. I long to share eternity with You.

for His passion was for our salvation

3 creation

Father you created this universe to reflect Yourself. Your wonder. Your beauty. Your unfathomable power and glory. You knew that for a long time we would be limited by large bodies of water, but that in time we would figure out how to make boats and eventually ships. We could start to cross larger and larger bodies of water. The earth was starting to not seem so big. More recently automobiles have made it easier to travel across land. What once took months can now take a day or two. Soon after automobiles came airplanes. Land, sea, mountains all become easy to travel across and the amount of time it takes keeps getting shorter and shorter. Your earth hasn't become any smaller but man's awe of Your hand in it has. It takes a hurricane or other massive natural disaster to remind us that we do not have command over this world. We are a proud, arrogant species. We even managed to find a way off this rock. How proud we were to make it to the moon. We have landed probes on Mars and sent cameras out great distances in our galaxy. But no matter how much we accomplish, it all sheds more light on how immeasurable you are. All the space exploration of the last 50+ years has shown us that we may think we have a good grasp on our little corner of the universe, but we are so tiny compared to the whole of creation. No matter where we are or what we feel we have accomplished, Your creation engulfs us. You knew from the beginning that we would try to establish our independence. That we would strive to prove that we can best the universe. You made sure that there is always another layer beyond our grasp. Let all the peoples of the world praise You and know You as the one true God.

for You died that we may live

2 let there be light

Lord you are the one true light. You give of Yourself that we may not always be in darkness. This is a dark world and although are hearts belong to you, our bodies dwell on this earth. We venture into this world for we seek Your Kingdom. That others would come to know Your glory as it has been revealed to us. So many who live in darkness just as we once did. So many lay in waiting for that one person that You have in mind to put them on the right path. In the darkness the path remains hidden. We must reflect Your light for them to find their way out of the darkness of this world and into the everlasting light. And we know this. Yet still we put the light under a bowl. We show the world that we can stow You away when it is awkward or inconvenient. We all teach a lot more effectively than we give ourselves credit. Every time we give in to the values of this world we teach others how little You mean to us. Every time we think more of ourselves than those that do not know You, we teach the world that we worship a god that is small. A god that only cares for some of the sheep. You are not small. You tend the entire flock. Your will is that all will come to know you in this life.

for the glory of His name

1 in the beginning

It seems unfortunately too seldom that we praise You for being You. We ask You a lot of questions and we request a lot of things but how often do we take a look around and marvel in what You have already done. That since before the beginning of time You knew I would be sitting here this morning thinking about this. You created everything. Every little molecule on this planet...in the universe. But You didn't stop there. You have had Your hand in everything since. Heartbroken by the fall, You have shepherded us through a world twisted and bent by the evil one. An evil one that cannot see or acknowledge that he only exists because You allow him to. For the evil one does not spend much time thinking about Your greatness. When he looks at the beauty you created it wounds his pride and frustrates him. It challenges him to destroy it. For it is a reminded that there is a true God much greater than him. Let that always be a comfort to us. Let that be a rallying cry. Thank You Lord that you are the greatest. Thank You that you are the creator of all. Thank You that You haven't gone anywhere, rather work from inside us to redeem the entire world. Let us never forget that we are infused with Your Spirit. Let us never forget why You have us here.

In Christ's name