Category: Prayer items

Help me, Lord, to receive your love, that I may make you manifest in loving well, both myself and my neighbour.

Commentary

The answer Jesus draws out of the lawyer, from the well-known commandments of God, appears simple. However, the command to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind will be a constant challenge, requiring a lifelong determination to learn, reflect and seek radical change in ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit. The instruction to love our neighbours “as ourselves” demands equal consideration. To love and value ourselves as God would wish demands intimate relationship. Is God saying that we cannot love our neighbour fully unless we love ourselves? It seems so, which is an immense challenge for so many of us. Do we recognise that we live in the glory of the love of God, whose compassionate gaze is always upon us. We are God’s beloved creation, made in God’s image, and adored. God’s commandment to love, calls for deep commitment and means abandoning ourselves entirely, offering our hearts and minds to serve God’s will. God’s grace to us is never ending. Ask, says God, and we will receive such grace to follow Christ’s example, the one who offered himself up completely and said, “Not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42) demonstrating great love to all humanity, including his enemies. We do not get to choose our neighbours. Sometimes we must cross difficult barriers to serve them, rather than walking by. Loving means being attentive to their needs, accepting who they are, with humility, encouraging their hopes and aspirations. Christian unity demands the same humility – in Christ, we are one. Let’s learn to celebrate difference and glory in Christ’s unifying life, death and resurrection – inaugurating a new way of living available to all.

Reflection

Beloved, my heart is for you. I created you, I know you. Your name fills me with delight. My every action, reaction, thought, emotion and prayer for you is founded on love at its highest. Receive my compassion, bask in my gentleness, delight in my joyful kindness. Let me cherish you let me die for you may my heart become your heart. A renewed heartbeat, flowering within you, unfolding its gentle, love-soaked vision; a courageous, unswerving hope bursting with grace. Dear one, allow heaven to manifest in every human encounter, tenderising it with love’s dignity and promise.

Prayer

Lord, give us the grace to know you deeply, in order to love you entirely. May the gift of your Holy Spirit enable our eyes, ears and minds to receive the unconditional love with which you love us. Purify our hearts that we may always be ready to love our neighbour, however different, as ourselves. Through the self-giving life of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Help us, Lord, to have a life turned towards you

Commentary

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” This crucial question asked of Jesus by a lawyer challenges every believer in God. It affects the meaning of our life on earth and for eternity. Elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus gives us the ultimate definition of eternal life: “… that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Knowing God means discovering and doing the will of God in our lives. God’s dream for us (cf. Jn 10:10) finds powerful expression in the words of Saint Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”. Violence, greed and exploitation distance us from one another and from Jesus as “the Way” that leads us to the Father, our ultimate destiny. Speaking from a society that has been torn apart and traumatised by violence and identity-based conflict for the last eight years, the churches of Burkina Faso offer us a message of hope in the promise of Christ’s all-embracing love.

Reflection

The reality of life in Burkina Faso may be very different from our own, but we can identify significant parallels in the challenges facing Christians in each context. Consider the following reflection offered by Church leaders in Ireland: “In our approach to the past we have a moral responsibility to acknowledge the corrosive impact of violence and words that can lead to violence, and a duty of care to those still living with the trauma of its aftermath… Christ’s teaching, ministry and sacrifice were offered in the context of a society that was politically divided, wounded by conflict and injustice… In these encounters, as exemplified in the meeting with the Woman of Samaria (Jn 4:1-42), we see that Christ does not seek to minimise differences, but rather to establish connection through gracious listening, replacing exclusion and shame with the hope of new beginnings.” (Church Leaders’ Ireland Group, In Christ We Journey Together, 17 March 2021)

Prayer

God of life, You have created us to have life, and life in all its fullness. Help your wounded Church to be a source of hope and healing. As we follow Jesus’ way with determination, may we lead others to you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our minister, Revd Kevin de Beer, has been on leave now all of February and March. As we continue to pray for him and the entire Manse family, we invite you all to join in this prayer for Kevin, Cheryl, and the kids. Thank you all so much.

Dear Lord, Thank you for our pastor. I pray that Your Holy Spirit would lead and guide him in all the duties that he is called upon to do. Lord, keep him ever open to hear Your voice and give him a heart that seeks to draw ever closer to Your heart of love, day by day.

May he rest in You and draw all His strength from You. Give him a passion to lift up the Lord Jesus in every aspect of his ministry. Prevent him from the ‘busyness’ of his pastoral duties, and may he learn to rest in You and to wait on Your leading, and Lord, keep him close to You in thought, word and deed I pray, so that he may remain pure in motive and attitude as well.

Guard and guide his home life, his wife, and his children and keep each of them united in their love for You and for each other. Prevent any resentment from developing when duty calls, but rather may his home and family become a place of encouragement and refreshment for his soul. May it also be a place where You remain as the central figure.

Keep our pastor and his family from the assaults of the enemy and from the criticism that follows a man who seeks to be Christ-focussed. Guard and guide them from being tempted toward the lust of the world and the lust of the flesh or from developing any prideful attitudes.

Lord, give our pastor integrity and grace in all his duties, and may he delight himself in the Lord so that his life and example is a wonderful witness to others, so that You may be glorified through his ministry. In Jesus’ name, I pray,

Amen.