[Dailydevo] Daily Devotions Thursday September 14,2006

[Barry Ludwig]

Daily Devotions Thursday September 14, 2006

The devotions this week have been written by Shelley Klippel, Director of
Contemporary Music Ministries at Zion.

 

2 Corinthians 9:12-15 (The Message)

Carrying out this social relief work involves far more than helping meet the
bare needs of poor Christians. It also produces abundant and bountiful
thanksgivings to God. This relief offering is a prod to live at your very
best, showing your gratitude to God by being openly obedient to the plain
meaning of the Message of Christ. You show your gratitude through your
generous offerings to your needy brothers and sisters, and really toward
everyone. Meanwhile, moved by the extravagance of God in your lives, they'll
respond by praying for you in passionate intercession for whatever you need.
Thank God for this gift, his gift. No language can praise it enough!

 

Jesus calls each of us to be his disciples.  Part of this is extending to
those around us the mercy, grace and love that he has given us.  The
following is a direct quote from the website prayingeachday.org and points
to how sharing God’s grace with others feeds us as well. 

 

In parts of Africa, when people have a heavy burden to bear, they sometimes
place it at one end of a pole, and then tie a stone of the same weight on
the other end.  Then the pole or stick is carried across the shoulders, with
one weight or burden balancing the other.  Carrying two burdens is easier
than carrying one.

 

Dag Hammarskjöld, the Second Secretary-General of the United Nations,
expressed the same thing in a different way:  “What makes loneliness and
anguish is not that I have no-one to share my burden, but this—I have only
my own burden to bear.”

 

Let us pray.  Lord, when I am hungry, lead me to feed others.  When I am
thirsty, give me water to satisfy others’ thirst.  When I am sad, lead me to
bring joy to others.  When burdens weigh upon me, lay upon my shoulders the
burdens of other people.  Lord, when I am greatly in need of tenderness and
support, lead me to help someone in greater need.  Amen.

 

 

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