PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
1 Corinthians 13:6–7
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
CONSIDER THIS
In union with Jesus, our capacity to live in purity of heart and fullness of hope is realized.
With today’s section of 1 Corinthians 13:4–13, let’s repeat our exercise of inserting the name of Jesus in the place of love first, and then inserting our own names second as a declaration of our union with Jesus.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [Love] always protects, [love] always trusts, [love] always hopes, [love] always perseveres.
Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Jesus always protects, Jesus always trusts, Jesus always hopes, Jesus always perseveres.
[Insert your name] does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [Insert your name] always protects, [insert your name] always trusts, [insert your name] always hopes, [insert your name] always perseveres.
The Spirit of Jesus lives in you and me. Therefore we are no longer to entertain our old inclinations to lose our moral footing, follow liars, look away from the distressed, mistrust God’s goodness, lose hope, or give up easily.
We can rejoice with the truth. Instead of focusing our attention on all the evil we see operating in the world around us, we can give our energies to celebrating what is good, right, and lovely (Phil. 4:8). We can fix our eyes on Jesus and his truth, giving it our best focus (Heb. 12:2). Jesus, living in us, can do this—he can help us see what is right with the world.
We can protect others. We can tend to those who need someone to stand between them and disaster. Jesus, living in us, can make us protectors and guardians of the troubled soul.
We can trust God and others. We can learn to lose our proclivity toward suspicion and negativity and affirm words of confidence in God and belief in others. Jesus, living in us, can help us believe God for miracles and believe that others will come to hope and faith in Christ.
We can hope ceaselessly. We can lean into the promises of God and learn to walk by faith and not by sight. We can become prayer warriors in our prayer closets, those who share the relentless faith of those in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews. We can long for a better country (Heb. 11:16), and speak of it, pray toward it, and embrace its future reality in the present until it comes.
Jesus, living in us, can make us the most hopeful people in our families, in our churches, even in our cities and world.
We can persevere. We can leave our foot on the faith gas pedal, embracing our union with Jesus, as we go through troubles and struggles. We can rehearse that sorrow may last for a night (even a long night), but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5). Jesus, living in us, can turn us away from patterns of giving up in our past and make us people known for our perseverance.
Union with Jesus means that new forms of love, stronger and mightier and more resilient than the weak and feeble forms of love we have left behind, can become our new normal.
THE PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I am in you and you are in me. I am capable of becoming love—like you. By your Spirit today, I will lean into the reality that I am a 1 Corinthians 13 saint because of your transforming work within me. In Christ Jesus, I pray, amen.
THE QUESTIONS
How is your trust level these days? Do you believe God has your heart, has your back, and has your best in mind as you walk forward into the unknown? Take your trust-pulse, and talk about what you would like Christ in you to do so you can go to the next level of trusting him.
For the Awakening,
Dan Wilt
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One Response
My heroes are people who radiate love, manifest joy, spread peace, show patience, display kindness, seek goodness, live with faithfulness, and communicate with gentleness, by continually surrendering to the control of the Spirit of Christ. People who keep their heart open to the risen Jesus and allow their life to be led by the Spirit moment-by-moment, reflect the glory of God. I seek to be around people like that.