For week four of Lent March 16-23 (only two weeks until Holy Week)

Ask God to make a daily prayer to be a “kingdom carrier” and show the love of Jesus wherever and to whomever you might be with during the day. “Our Father in heaven, your name holy. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. We ask You each day for things that we need to do your will. We thank You each day for daily bread for us and others through us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into Satan’s power but by your authority deliver us deliver us and them from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, power and the glory, forever.

Saint Nino

 Day One and Two:

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be captured as a child and be made a slave (like St Patrick was) but God uses you to bring the Gospel and save an entire group or nation? Read this story of the slave girl Nino who was used in this way to bring the Good News to the present day Georgia.

Spend some time thinking of present day Christian children made slaves and suffering for their faith in Middle East (ISIS); North Africa (Boku Haram).

Lord, we pray for the persecuted and suffering, especially children, for your comfort, strength of faith and deliverance and that through their suffering and martyrdoms You will save nations and peoples.

Ask God’s grace to use you in witness with miraculous faith and spiritual gifts like Nino and St Patrick for your neighbors or people around you in work/school/or and as you go.

  Mt 5: God blesses the poor who realize their need for him for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…Blessed are those who mourn… the humble… who… who hunger and thirst for righteousness… who are merciful… whose hearts are pure…who work for peace…Blessed are you when men persecute you and say all manner of evil falsely against you because of me. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven.

Day Thee Meditate again on Jesus invitation to follow him with holy detachment from earthly things, pride, self-protection and even relationships in comparison to love for Him 

Mark 1: 16 Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”[e] 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Mark 10:27-30 …with God all things are possible.”

28 Then Peter began to say to Him, “See, we have left all and followed You.”

29 So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, 30 who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.

      What stands out to you from these Scriptures? What effect or action is 

      stirring in   you?

Day four and five

Colossians 1:24-29I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ for his body, the church. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message [of the Gospel of the kingdom] to you… Christ in you so you… So we tell everyone..; which why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power working in me.

 Bill Livingston (friend and former missionary to China) once struggled with knowing that the young Chinese man he was discipling would pay a price which he probably would not for his faith. The call to follow Jesus and embrace the cross is a call to share in his suffering and sacrifice so that others may be saved seems illogical enough to us but to ask others into pain and trial even more so.

Yet, if we believe the Good News of the Gospel and know and love Christ, we are filled with love for Him and a desire to share in his suffering. We seek and ask and knock for Father to fill us with Holy Spirit so we may be in union with Him by becoming like him (fruit of the spirit Galatians 5:22-23) and be his witnesses in the power of the spirit (Acts 1:7-11).

Romans 5 Faith Triumphs in Trouble because we are filled with the love of God

5 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Write: Do you need to believe more in God’s love in your trials-that you share Christ’s suffering? And that by his love and spirit working through you others will also know his love and his life?