Six Weeks of Prayer: Monday, October 16, 2017

| Posted By Charles Gaston

A great line from the hymn Praise my Soul the King of Heaven says Jesus is “slow to chide and swift to bless.” May the church be marked by this biblical truth. All too often, the propensity of the church is to condemn – the opposite of what Jesus came to do. The church’s primary mission is not behavioral modification, or to diagnose all that is wrong with the world. The church is about lifting up Jesus who came into the world in order that we might be saved by his death and resurrection.

The world does a good job on its own condemning people; the church should be a refuge for the condemned. Jesus does not differentiate between sinners, nor should we prefer certain kinds of sinners in our church. No – the church is in the business of seeing people saved, not condemned.

Praise the Father for sending his Son into the world in order that sinners like us, condemned and dying, might be raised to new life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17)

PRAYER

O God of all the nations of the earth: remember the multitudes who have been created in thine image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of thy holy Church, they may be brought to know and worship thee as thou hast been revealed in thy Son; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.