Serve Christ
You must honor the Lord and truly serve him with all your heart. Remember the wonderful things he did for you! ~ 1 Samuel 12:24 (NCV)
He (Jesus Christ) gave himself for us. He died to free us from all evil. He died to make us pure—people who belong only to him and who always want to do good. ~ Titus 2:14 (ERV)
Lord Jesus, when I remember the wonderful things you have done for us I want to commit all of my time and energy to you, and to doing the things which are important to you. I want to serve you only. But what I want to do and what I actually do are sometimes two different things. I don't understand how it is that I could love you so much and still get involved in things which are contrary to you. Please forgive me and continue to pry my fingers free me from the evil which I grip. Do be patient with me. I am growing in the right direction -- even if it is slowly. And I am going to honor and serve you with all my heart. It may take awhile for me to work up to that but that is my goal. There is nothing greater that I could do with my life. And I'm going to continue moving that direction. I pray this in your name, Christ Jesus, because I know that this is what you want. Amen.
*ABOUT THE
DAILY TEXTS
The Daily Texts have been published by the Moravian Church since 1731. In 2015 I started posting these Bible verses for my spiritual formation students at Pacific Islands University. In the process of responding to the verses, I found the rhythm of looking for a common thread and writing a prayer based on that key idea to be helpful for my own soul. The prayers are more or less modeled on the TRIP method, which is what I ask my students to do in their journaling. ~ Brad Boydston
TRANSLATIONS
ABP = Authorized Boydston Paraphrase -- a freestyle biblical adaptation -- somewhere between paraphrase, commentary, and sermon
CEB = Common English Bible (©2011, the Common English Bible)
CEV = Contemporary English Version (©1995, American Bible Society)
MSG = The Message (©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)
NIRV = New International Reader's Version (©1996, 1998, Biblica)
NIV = New International Version (©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011, Biblica)
NLT = New Living Translation (©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, Tyndale House Foundation)
