Tag Archives: Holy

Forty Days of Praying the Word of God: Day 20

“Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Matthew 6:9-10

Father, in heaven. Seated on Your throne. Unmoved, unchanging. Surrounded by the angels crying “holy!”. You are the undisputed King of all creation, holder and keeper of eternity. There is none like You, and before You every knee will bow and every tongue will acknowledge You. (Romans 14:11) I pray we will not lose sight of our Father, in heaven. I pray that we will remember that You are enthroned above the earth, and that we are small and You, o God, are great. Instill in us a reverence again, Lord, and a right understanding of Your sovereignty, power, and majesty. May we stand in awe of You and be filled with wonder over our Father in heaven.

I pray that the name of our God would be holy on our lips, that we would not cause it to be profaned, or common. I pray that Your people will speak Your name with reverence and honor, and I pray that we will speak it to every sickness, every disease, for there is healing in Your Name. (Acts 3:16) No other name saves us, and no other name causes demons to shake. There is power and authority in Your Name, and I pray we will remember. I pray that Your Name will not become just a name, but the whole of the reason we approach the throne of God at all. I pray that Your people will regard the holiness of Your Name and that it will be honored among those who do not know You.

Lord, I cry out for Your Kingdom to come today. I pray that in my home, Your Kingdom will come. In my workplace, Your Kingdom come. In Your Church, Lord, Your Kingdom come! Come, Lord, and rule and reign here today, in me. In my heart, may Your Kingdom come. Make us a Kingdom people, God, a people not of this world, a people who will not settle for earthly kingdoms.

Oh Father, as it is in heaven, let it be here. Your will be done on the earth. In my life. In my marriage. In my heart…Your will and not my own. I pray that in Your Church, Your will be done. In this nation, and the nations of the earth, Your will be done. I pray Your people will have the courage and the humility to die to their own will, to their own plans and designs and dreams, and cry out with sincere hearts for the will of God to reign over us. I pray that we will choose to trust Your will above our own, to trust that Your will is good and right.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Forgive us Lord, for when we have spoken such a prayer by rote, as just words to say, and not as a total surrender of our own will. I pray that the weight of this prayer would press upon us until we gladly release all things to the supremacy of Your will.

In the Name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Forty Days of Praying the Word of God: Day 9

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

1 Peter 1:14-15

“They shall be Mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up My treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.”

Malachi 3:17-18

Lord God, I pray for holiness to spread through Your people. I pray for a spirit of obedience to rise up within us that will say no to our former passions, our former way of living and speaking and thinking, and say yes to Your ways that are all together different. Father, may Your Church walk in holiness as never before, drawing a holy line in the sand which we will refuse to cross. I pray You will come against every unholy relationship among us, break up our friendship with the world, and call us once again to “come out from among them”.

Your have distinguished Your people from all other people of the earth. We are covered in the blood of Christ, set free from sin, given hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone, rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the Kingdom of Your Son. We are different, because we belong to You. I pray the distinction will become unblurred, Lord. I pray that Your Church will take up the call to be “other than”, instead of “similar to”. I pray that we will love the lost and speak truth to the lost, but that we will not lose our distinction from them.

Holy Spirit of God, we are the Lord’s treasured possession. Make us holy. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

holy moments

I spent some time in worship the other night, alone in my living room with my (current) favorite worship songs, and the book of Revelation. Holy moments with God. Here is what it looked like as I wrote in my journal – 

“Majestic. Holy. Fire. With eyes that burn, You pull the cry of “Holy!” from everyone near You. All of heaven worships You. They see what I cannot, and their cry at what they see is “Holy!”. How can my cry of worship be anything other?”

Both during and after my time of worship, these words kept coming to me – “He is on His throne. Seated in the place of absolute sovereign power and authority.” And there are two sides to that coin.

God is the one enthroned in the place of power and authority. That means He determines beginnings and ends and in-betweens. Life and death are in His hands. Kings and rulers are lifted up and brought down by His hand. Times and seasons and all things uncontrollable…are controlled by Him, and Him alone. Like it or not, believe it or not, it is what it is. There is a God and He is on the absolute highest throne. There can be no coup. (It’s been tried. Didn’t end well.) It is His universe, created by Him, and for Him. There is none like Him. None before Him. He has always been, and will always be. He is surrounded by lightning and thunder, fire, and creatures not of this world, and all who are there are crying out “Holy, holy, holy”. Because He is God, and He is worthy of every holy moment of worship.

And yet…

He loved.
                     He came.
                                      He died.
So He could call me Beloved.

“What else is there to want? What more could I need? You are my God. All of my days I will live to seek Your face, to know Your heart. I want my whole life to cry out ‘Holy!'”

banished no more

For some reason, I landed in 2 Samuel 14 today.  As I was reading about people I don’t know, in the middle of a story that I knew nothing of, the words of verse 14 glowed like neon lights…

“But God does not take away life; instead, He devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him.”

wandering-in-desertBeing a woman attracted by bright lights and all things shiny, I became captivated by that sentence and my thoughts wandered away from Absolam, Joab and the woman from Tekoa. A paintbrush begins to move across my mind, and a picture is emerging.

God, beautiful and holy, watching as His beloved falls under the deception of evil. Then, banishment. Wanderings and sacrifices. Rebellion and repentance. Love, calling out through His prophets, “Return to Me!”.

God, beautiful and holy, stepping down to the fallen earth to be among His beloved. Healing and hope. Light and life. Love, coming to rescue.

God, beautiful and holy, now bloody and beaten, hanging between His throne and Hell. Life and death.  Love, paying the price.

God, beautiful and holy. Calling, drawing, pursuing. Capturing, cleansing and captivating. A people, once estranged, now brought near. Love, calling a bride.

Redeeming Love. Beautiful and holy.

A way for the banished to be banished no more.