Christ’s Supremacy :: A Guided Prayer

  • October 11, 2019
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Colossians 1.18
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Reflection: Christ’s Supremacy :: A Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

What I often call “preacher stories” are stories, illustrations, and parables about modern faith that have been passed on and told in many versions by many preachers in many sermons.

One of my favorite “preacher stories” is about a new preacher at a church who keeps preaching the same sermon every Sunday. Eventually a church leader questions the pastor about it and requests a new topic for the following Sunday. The preacher responds, “When you start acting like you remember the first one, I can stop repeating it”

We all need repetition in our spiritual lives to reinforce the greatest truths of our faith. One of those truths is the supremacy of Christ. The supremacy of Christ may seem unassailable. How could we forget it? We all nod our heads and “amen” in agreement…

Yet in our actions and in our lives, we find many ways to place things before Christ. People, issues, politics, career—these things all push to the front of our minds and demand our supreme attention and commitment.

Pray this prayer over the weekend, and repeat as needed to proclaim in faith the supremacy of Christ over all in your life and subjugate everything else to him.

Christ’s Supremacy
We pray to Christ and proclaim his supremacy…

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation…For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…

Nothing we create can displace Christ.
No government can cast him out, for they exist within his creation.
No discovery can reveal anything that Christ did not create.
No achievement or success can accomplish more than Christ’s redemptive work on our behalf.

He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased…through him to reconcile to himself all things…making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

We confess to you our pride, our naked greed, our self-deception, our poverty of principles and possessions.

In humility, Christ, we accept from you…
Peace we are incapable of procuring,
Redemption beyond our means to purchase,
Rescue from darkness of our own making.

Help us to let go of anything which strives to take your place.
Make of us a body that serves, be our head which gives us purpose.
May we continue in faith…

…established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
I will confess you among the peoples, O Lord; I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your loving-kindness is greater than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. — Psalm 108.3-4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
1 Kings 14 (Listen – 5:22)
Colossians 1 (Listen – 4:18)

This Weekend’s Readings
1 Kings 15 (Listen – 5:30), Colossians 2 (Listen – 3:27)
1 Kings 16 (Listen – 5:31), Colossians 3 (Listen – 3:09)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 emails with free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about Solus Christus
There has never been and will never be a clearer portrait of God than the person of Jesus himself.

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Read more about Downgrading Grace
When we downgrade grace through faith, we chip away the cross of Christ, making it an additive to our life rather than the sole source of our life.

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The Step After Surrender :: Throwback Thursday

  • October 10, 2019
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Philipians 4.11-13
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

We can do without anything while we have God. Hallelujah! — Isabella Lillias Trotter

Reflection: The Step After Surrender :: Throwback Thursday
By Isabella Lillias Trotter

There is another stage to be developed in us after the lesson of absolute unquestioning surrender to God has been learnt. 

A life that has been poured forth to Him must find its crown, its completion, in being poured forth for man: it must grow out of surrender into sacrifice. “They first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God.” 

Back to the Cross once more: if there is any place where this fresh lesson can be learnt, it is there! “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” 
It is the very love of Calvary that must come down into our souls, “Yea, if I be poured forth upon the service of your faith I joy and rejoice with you all:” so spoke the apostle who drank most deeply into the Master’s spirit: and again—“Death worketh in us, but life in you.” “Neither count I my life dear unto myself, that I may finish . . . the ministry.” 

Deeper and deeper must be the dying, for wider and fuller is the lifetide that it is to liberate—no longer limited by the narrow range of our own being, but with endless powers of multiplying in other souls. Death must reach the very springs of our nature to set it free: it is not this thing or that thing that must go now: it is blindly, helplessly, recklessly, our very selves. 

A dying must come upon all that would hinder God’s working through us—all interests, all impulses, all energies that are “born of the flesh”—all that is merely human and apart from His Spirit. Only thus can the Life of Jesus, in its intensity of love for sinners, have its way in our souls.

*From Parables of the Cross, by Isabella Lillias Trotter

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
You are my hiding-place…you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Psalm 32.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

1 Kings 13 (Listen – 5:14)
Philippians 4 (Listen – 3:20)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about Escaping Discontent
It is difficult to find contentment in a culture that works hard to foster discontent.

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Read more about Greed and EnvyThe psalmist, is thrown into doubt and pushed to the limits of his understanding by the inequality he sees in the world.

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The Poison of Privilege

  • October 9, 2019
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 Kings 12.8, 14
But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him…he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”

Philippians 3.18-20
For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.

Reflection: The Poison of Privilege
By John Tillman

Privilege seems sweet to the taste but is a generational poison that kills with pleasures and cripples with comforts.

Solomon is a second generation leader. He begins his career with a position David spent a lifetime getting to. It is as if he is running the 800 meters with his starting blocks placed in the final curve instead of at the start.

Rehoboam is a third generation leader. If Solomon’s privilege is analogous to running the last 100 meters of the 800, Rehoboam’s is analogous to taking a victory lap and standing on the winner’s stand without committing a disqualification. He could not manage it.

Privilege can grow generationally. Rehoboam says to his subjects who begged for relief from Solomon’s high taxes and enforced labor, “my little finger is bigger than my father’s waist…” 

It is not only King David’s grandson who is engorged with selfishness. Rehoboam’s companions of his own age are equally entitled, disrespectful, and self-focused. It is these men who craft Rehoboam’s harsh message: 

“My father scourged you with whips. I will scourge you with scorpions”

These young men could quickly find employment as social media managers for many of today’s disrespectful and autocratic leaders. How do individuals become so bloated by entitlement, privilege, and selfishness?

It is natural and good that parents dream their children might have a better and more prosperous life than their own. Parents can act as servants, subjugating their own needs, desires, dreams, and goals to advance opportunities for their children. But children who benefit from sacrifice don’t always catch the lesson that they should become people who sacrifice. They can become accustomed to their level of privilege, their level of wealth, their level of power. They can develop an identity connected to their advantages and possessions. 

In Rome, slaves often rode behind great leaders after a victory, whispering, Memento mori—Remember you will die. It was intended to inspire humility but we need more than this simple reminder. Awareness of mortality does not guarantee morality. Another popular saying in Rome was “Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Christianity gives meaning to mortality and recognizes privilege and power as what it is—poison for the soul. Rather than accumulate earthly privilege, Paul encourages the believers to remember that our citizenship is in heaven and our model is Christ. 

Anyone (of any generation) who does not learn to serve like Jesus, giving up rights, position, and power will end on a path of self-worship and eventual destruction.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
The same stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. — Psalm 118.22

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

1 Kings 12 (Listen – 5:15)
Philippians 3 (Listen – 3:21)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about Gospel Faith or Garbage Faith
Even with all that he had achieved, once he met Christ, Paul realized everything prior was waste, rubbish, by comparison.

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Read more about Born to Serve
Paul describes who Christ is, and by extension, who God is, and furthermore by example, who we should be.

https://theparkforum.org/843-acres/born-to-serve/

Paul’s Prayer for the Power of Faith

  • October 3, 2019
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Ephesians 3.16
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being

Reflection: Paul’s Prayer for the Power of Faith
By John Tillman

Paul does not presume faith or spiritual power and neither can we. We also must kneel humbly, admitting our powerless state and our tendency towards unbelief. Let us pray this prayer on our own behalf and on behalf of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.

Prayer for the Power of Faith:

“For this reason I kneel before the Father…”

We are your children, adopted through Christ into your family.
We kneel, humbling ourselves, acknowledging our poverty, our nakedness, our need.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being”

We do not need your power only for great deeds of faith.
We need your power for every moment and miniscule act of goodness.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

We need Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith. 
It is not that we do not have faith, Lord.
We do not lack belief. But we struggle with putting our faith in other things.
We are full of self-belief. We believe in our wealth. Our faith is in stockpiling resources. Our faith is in our human wisdom. 
Empty us of these beliefs.
Fill us with true faith in you alone.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Fill us with the Spirit as Jesus prayed.
May we fulfill the words of Christ when he said that we would do greater things than he did.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…

Our imaginations are sinful, Lord. Do immeasurably more than we can imagine.
Do immeasurably more than give us wealth. 
Do immeasurably more than give us power. 
Do immeasurably more than give us honor.
Give us service to perform.
Give us needs to meet.
Give us debts to cancel.
Give us trouble for which you are the only answer.

“…according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
1 Kings 6 (Listen – 4:30)
Ephesians 3 (Listen – 2:41)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about His Blessings, Our Curse :: A Guided Prayer
May we hear in God’s Word, always the tender love of our father who wants blessings for us.

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Seeking after a Seeking God

  • October 1, 2019
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 Kings 3.3-4
Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places. The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

Reflection: Seeking after a Seeking God
By John Tillman

People in scripture often worshiped God wherever they happened to be and God accepted them. But the “high places” in Israel were different. They were pagan sites of worship before the Israelites conquered the land. 

Israel drove out most idol worship but some still survived. Joshua warned the people of “traps and snares” saying that these practices, if continued, would be “whips for your backs and thorns for your eyes.” Worship at “high places” was expressly forbidden by God, because God knew that the old, cultic practices would return to pollute and subvert true worship. 

But people in Solomon’s day still worshiped at these places. The worship of God in Israel at this time was scattered. This was partly convenience so that they did not have to travel to Jerusalem, but it also had to do with tradition and an emotional and cultural connection to these locations. 

David had taken the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and set up a tent for it there in anticipation of the Temple being built. But the tent of meeting constructed by Moses was still at Gibeon. Probably what made Gibeon the “most important” high place was the emotional, traditional, and historical connection to Moses. This empty tent, filled only with nostalgia, remained in use as a place of worship and is where God spoke to Solomon. 

James tells us that God grants wisdom to all, without finding fault, and that includes young king Solomon who asked for wisdom even while unwisely worshiping God at a questionable place. God will do the same for us. 

God, throughout the scriptures, is a God who seeks. God, of course, desires us to seek him “while he may be found” and to seek him in his Temple. We should care deeply about worshiping in ways that are proper and biblical. But because God is a seeking God, he is always ready to meet us where we are. 

He will meet us in hiding in the wilderness, as he met with David.
He will meet us wrapped in nostalgia, as he met with Solomon.
He will meet with us singing new songs, as he met with Asaph.
He will meet with us in a corrupted Temple, as he met with Isaiah.
He will meet with us in a corrupted land, as he met with the woman at the well in Sychar.

Wherever and however we draw near to God, he will draw near to us.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
Out of Zion, perfect in its beauty, God reveals himself in glory. — Psalm 50.2

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
1 Kings 3 (Listen – 4:29)
Ephesians 1 (Listen – 3:10)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about Prayer From the Cave :: Readers’ Choice
Prayer does not come easier in dark times, but we may feel it does since we more quickly and easily turn to it in distress.

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Jesus sought us out when we were paralyzed and deformed by sin…When we take up our mat and walk, we are just beginning to follow him in faith.

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