Who are you serving?
Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds,
walk away from their only true love. ~ Jonah 2:8 (MSG)
Jesus said: No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. ~ Matthew 6:24 (CEB)
KEY IDEA:
The only pathway to success in life is to serve only God.
PRAYER:
God, I want to serve you and you alone. I am grateful for your kindness and mercy. I suspect, though, that I'm serving other masters, too. I let comfort and security function as primary shapers of my actions.
Help me to discern how this issue is working itself out in my life so that I can genuinely repent and serv you alone. I'm going to live a life shaped by your agenda for everything. 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 — my own 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)
