Prayer for Today, Wednesday, July 27

Dear Creator God,

Forgive us, O Lord, for our reluctance in sharing our faith. In many ways we seem to have lost our mandate to “make disciples”. Help us understand, Dear Lord, that our culture is begging for a connection with the Divine, yet the path for most is not clear. We are well suited to invite and welcome people into a place where the environment fosters an encounter with You, or at least that’s what we think. Stir us, Dear God, to open our eyes, to move beyond disagreements, to truly welcome the stranger in our midst, to provide a model of deep spirituality, and to witness to Your grace. Touch us, we pray, through our worship, study, service and fellowship, so that we will want others to have the same experience, an encounter with You. This we pray in Jesus’ name, AMEN.
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Please pray for the family of Novella Weber. She died on Monday, July 18, in Tampa, Florida, and her funeral will be in our chapel this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. She was 100 years old. Novella came to Central as a high school student. She left with her family to go to Ft. Worth when Champlin transferred her husband in 1956. She came back to Enid and Central in 1980 after his death and stayed until 1995, when she moved to Florida to be near her son, Gary.

The scripture for today is Romans 11:1-10:
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?“Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.”But what is the divine reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.”And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and keep their backs forever bent.”

Grace and peace,

John McLemore