Psalm 50
February 4, 2024
Our Father, You are the Mighty One, God the Lord, perfect in beauty, awesome in power, and righteous in Your judgments.
You own the cattle on a thousand hills, and You rule over everything on earth. We’re reminded that there’s nothing we can offer You today that we haven’t received from You. And there’s nothing we can contribute to Your mission that You couldn’t do without us.
But we want to come with offerings of thanksgiving, as You call us to in this psalm. We have so much to thank You for, and too often we fail to do so, wrongly thinking that we’ve earned these gifts on our own somehow.
Thank You, Father, for the gift of life. For this world You’ve made, with all of its beauty. For Your abundance of provision. For calling us to be Your people, for delivering us from sin and death, for speaking to us through Your Word, for sending us Your Son. We didn’t deserve any of this and didn’t even know to ask for it, but You’ve given all of it generously. Thank You.
Help us, Lord, to order our ways rightly. Fix in our minds not just the truth of Your Word but its beauty, that we would rightly align all areas of our live according to Your character and Your call on our lives. Forgive us for the times we’ve hated discipline and cast Your words behind us, for when our greed or sexual desire or anger or envy has caused us to take what wasn’t given to us and to harm others for our selfish gain. We know that we deserve to be under Your judgment. And we are grateful that instead we stand justified because of Jesus. Thank You for showing us Your salvation.
We pray this morning for the many people we know that don’t know You, that are still trapped in their sin and without the hope of the gospel. Our friends and neighbors, coworkers and relatives, and maybe even the people we find it hardest to love. May we live, speak, and pray in such a way that they would be drawn to You and would also come to know Your salvation. Give us compassion for the people around us that we might hurry past on a daily basis. We pray that You would open doors for us to speak the message of Your good news, and that You give us courage to step through those doors when they open. We pray that many would be added to our numbers here at Centennial because they have been drawn to You through us. We know that to see that happen we need Your Holy Spirit to work both in our hearts and theirs, and so we ask this, in the name of Jesus and for His glory, and all God’s people said, Amen.