Prayer for Today, Tuesday, September 20

Loving God,

There are days when our prayers come easily because life is good. There are other days when the prayers get stuck in our throats because we are overwhelmed by trials and tribulations. May our strong prayers of praise and thanksgiving lift up those among us who cannot pray. May the prayers of others lift us up when we are frail and broken. God of all life. You are profoundly experienced in community. We pray You will forgive our rugged independence and help us realize You are most often present, revealed, and experienced in community. This we pray in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

Please continue to pray for Dorotha Immel’s family as we celebrate her life and bury her mortal remains today.

Terry Jones is having a surgical procedure today at Bass Hospital to determine the type of cancer that is in his lung.

Jim Goodrich is having an outpatient surgical procedure at a dermatologist office in OKC.

Gene Mason and Ruby Manahan are still hospitalized. Please pray for Terry, Jim, Gene and Ruby.

A belated congratulations to Chester and Doris Ross. They quietly celebrated their 65^th wedding anniversary on September 15^th.

There is a worship committee meeting tonight at 7:00 p.m. The Board meets tomorrow at 7:30 p.m.

The scripture for today is 1 Thessalonians 2:9-16:

You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

¹³We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.

Grace and peace,

John McLemore