Let me start what will be my final “Wednesday Inspiration” writing with a few personal comments. What a privilege it has been for Gloria and me to worship and walk together with you as a body of believers over these past 4 months during Pastor Kara’s sabbatical. We give thanks to God for your welcome, your encouragement, and for His leading and presence among us. It has been a joy to minister together, to share, to learn, and to grow together spiritually.
We have enjoyed getting to know many of you very well, but also recognize that there are numbers of you here at WMC that we have never met…one of the many pains of COVID.
However, my prayer is that as you reflect on these past four months, you can honestly say that God has invited you and enabled you to grow in Him. I also pray that our times of worship and meeting together, whether in person or online, your times of conversation and prayer with other believers, or times of solitude and reflection, have all moved the needle of your spiritual tank closer toward “Full” versus “Empty”. God’s desire is that we grow and mature in Him.
May God continue to lead, grant wisdom, and pour out His blessings on you as individuals and as a church.
These are difficult days for many in our communities as well as around the world. As I leave WMC, I would like to challenge each of you to become “difference makers”; to be the hands and feet of Jesus wherever God places you and however He inspires you. Read the following prayers from Voices Together as well as the Isaiah passage and invite God to speak to you through His Holy Spirit.
VT – 1035
Christ has no body now on earth but yours;
yours are the only hands with which Christ can do His work,
yours are the only feet with which Christ can go about the world,
yours are the only eyes through which Christ’s compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world.
Christ has no body on earth now but yours.
VT – 1036
Lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time;
we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.
But we know that God will take them and multiply them,
as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.
VT – 1029
Christ, whose insistent call disturbs our settled lives;
give us discernment to hear your word, grace to relinquish our tasks,
and courage to follow empty-handed wherever you may lead;
that the voice of your gospel may reach to the ends of the earth.
Amen
Isaiah 58: 6-9
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“God, break our hearts with what breaks Yours….”