Prayer for Today, Monday, July 18

Merciful God,

We approach this day with eager anticipation. There will be opportunities to love, to play, to laugh, to cry, to work, to care for someone and to witness to our faith. Help us, O Lord, to embrace the opportunities to share Your love. Our thoughts go out to those who must work in this oppressive heat, to those who lack adequate shelter and to those who are limited in their ability to find relief. We pray for the farmers and gardeners who are struggling with the drought, and, O Lord, we pray for rain. In Jesus name. AMEN.
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Shera Shirley’s funeral will be Saturday at 10:00 a.m. with the interment of her ashes on Sunday morning.

Jacob Burrell’s memorial service will be on Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. in our sanctuary. Dorothy Bracher and her “crew” have graciously agreed to provide a meal for the family who has no church home, what a wonderful, gracious and generous gesture.

Please keep the Shirley and Burrell families in your prayers. Both deaths were quite unexpected. Shera was 55 years old and died during the night last Thursday in her home. Jacob was 23 years old and was killed in a single vehicle accident on I 35 south of Guthrie on last Friday morning.

Jameson Davis is having his wisdom teeth removed on Wednesday. He is understandably nervous. Please pray for Jameson and for a successful surgery.

Please pray for Luke Anton who begins a new job today.

For the next two Sundays I will be teaching “Disciples 101 (revised)” in the Multipurpose Room during the Sunday School hour. New members, prospective members, seekers, and long time members are invited to attend.

The first Board Meeting of the new program year is this Wednesday, July 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall. We will have a few brief reports and then spend some time continuing a discussion we began at the Board Leaders' Retreat about the internal culture of our congregation. We will be done by 8:45 p.m. or before. Please make every effort to attend.

The scripture for today is Romans 7:7-13:
What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Grace and peace,

John McLemore