Adapted Prayer by John Wesley
O God, seeing as there is in Christ Jesus
an infinite fullness
of all that we can want or desire,
May we all receive from him,
grace upon grace;
grace to pardon our sins,
and subdue our iniquities;
to justify our persons
and to sanctify our souls;
and to complete that holy change,
that renewal of our hearts,
Which will enable us to be transformed
into the blessed image
in which you created us.
O make us all acceptable to be partakers
of the inheritance of your saints in light.
Amen.
Wesley Covenantal Prayer
Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, 1936
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
Scripture Reading: Ruth 3:14-18 NIV
14 So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, “No one must know that a woman came to the threshing floor.”
15 He also said, “Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.” When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and placed the bundle on her. Then he[a] went back to town.
16 When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, “How did it go, my daughter?”
Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her 17 and added, “He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’”
18 Then Naomi said, “Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today.”
Adapted Prayer by John Wesley
O LORD God Almighty,
Father of angels and men,
We praise and bless your
holy name for all your goodness
and loving kindness to humanity.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and for your unceasing generosity to us
throughout our lives;
But above all, we bless you for your great love
in the redemption of the world
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
We bless you for bringing us safe
to the beginning of a new day.
Grant that this day we fall into no sin,
Neither run into any kind of danger.
Keep us, we pray,
from all things hurtful to body or soul,
and grant us your pardon and peace,
So that, being cleansed from all our sins,
We might serve you
with quiet hearts and minds,
and continue in the same until our life’s end,
through Jesus Christ,
our Savior and Redeemer.
Amen
Adapted Prayer by John Wesley
Now, to God the Father, who first loved us, and made us accepted in the Beloved;
to God the Son, who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood;
to God the Holy Ghost, who sheddeth the love of God abroad in our hearts,
be all love and all glory in time and to all eternity.
Amen.
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
1 BAM
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
Foreigners, orphans, and widows are not only the mandate…
(Deuteronomy 27:19 “‘Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’”
… they may be, in this presentation by Wade Burleson, the message.
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
Pastor Wade Burleson makes a point of how our Kinsman-Redeemer Jesus, like Boaz with Ruth, protects the privacy of our desperation, like Ruth, though no fault of our own. (NOT protecting, BTW, the trail of predators. Not to be confused.) Important point!
Which is exactly why I write/publish fiction, as in “Legal Grounds”:
Fiction meant that the stories I had observed, heard about and read in the news, could be communicated without once more putting victims under a microscope. They had already been stripped down literally to nakedness in a cage with a hungry wolf of a predator. If they reported, they had to relive over and over again what had happened with words, never knowing what the response would be, from “Lying sl*t!” to “I believe you, now how can I help?” How they dressed was insinuated, as well as how they felt: “You must have enjoyed that…”. The stories would ring true, I decided, but not put a life out there to be picked apart once more by predators, predator enablers, labelers (“forever doomed and damaged”), as well as some in the helper industries that use victimization for endless capital growth (the rippling effect of trauma that goes on to eternal co-dependency down through the generations, some would say).
Novelists that use anonymous stories for social discourse, reflection, understanding, and change informed my writing. Charles Dickens used fiction to shed light on the debtors’ prisons and their effect on children in England. Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty to inspire welfare and kindness for all, man and beast (horse) alike. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery transformed adoption from acquiring a hired hand to bringing a child into the family to love and enjoy.
After his read, a books editor of a local newspaper told me, “Be encouraged as more of these types of novels-as-witnesses are published. Those writers are not your competition. You are a cohort that stands together to inform. This happens. What will we do?”
Thank you, Pastor Burleson, for making this important point, and modeling this in your church. Our Kinsman-Redeemer has no need to make a showpiece of each person He delivers.
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
Ava,
I love your analogy of Dickens and social reform to buttress your point.
BTW – just purchased Legal Grounds on Amazon. Look forward ti reading it.
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
Wade Burleson,
Pastor Burleson,
Fully appreciate your ministry, your teaching. On the commute today, I was thinking about how you described Boaz protecting the dignity of Ruth and likewise Jesus protecting the dignity of each one of us as we “go through” stuff – not in any way a fault of our own. (There’s a place for dealing with our sins, but some suffering has NOTHING – 1 Peter 4 – to do with our sin. We bring our need to God & He is the ultimate Gentleman.)
God bless.
Notice: Undefined variable: button in /home/guswo2wr8yyv/public_html/tww2/wp-content/plugins/quote-comments/quote-comments.php on line 127
Wade Burleson,
Pastor Burleson,
Still ruminating on your Sunday teaching re: Ruth.
Enjoy the book; difficult circumstances but Jesus is greater, far greater. That’s the message. He wins. It’s the 1st of a series. “Things” get worse. However, spoiler, Jesus always wins. For real.
Like a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctor from Kentucky commented in Monrovia during their civil war, “I didn’t know human beings could do such to each other.” Jesus is greater. Like Corrie ten Boom said, There is no pit so deep but that God’s hand reaches deeper still. Jesus.