A Prayer For You Today

Dear friends.

We are in the early part of Holy Week. It begins with Palm Sunday when Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem. The week leads us through events like the Last Supper, His prayer in the garden, arrest, trial, and His crucifixion, and ends on Easter Sunday with the resurrection of Christ and the New Covenant God promised and many had predicted throughout the Old Testament. Finally, sin has been dealt with; the death He died, He died to sin once and for all (Rom. 6:10).

A prayer for you today.

God and Father, everything about Holy Week reveals the depth of Your compassion for sinful, broken people like us. The tears You wept coming into Jerusalem, and even the passion You showed driving the moneychangers from the temple—every encounter, parable, and action gives staggering clarity to Paul’s words,

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8).

Paul was writing about us. We are the powerless, ungodly sinners for whom You died—demonstrating God’s incomparable, irrepressible love for the ill-deserving. We weren’t an impassioned seeker; we were Your enemies when we received the gift of reconciliation (Rom. 5:10). We have peace with You, God, only because You made peace with us through Christ.

We would still be blind to what alone brings us peace if You hadn’t opened our eyes to see our need and Your provision. The gospel would still remain hidden from my eyes unless You had given us sight to behold You as the Lamb of God, who took away our sins. We have no claim to salvation… no boast, no hope, no assurance of sins forgiven, and righteousness received, apart from sovereign grace.

How we long for the Day when we will no longer even be tempted to look for peace anywhere else but in You. Lord Jesus, we yearn for the Day when we will see You as You are, and we will be made like You (1 John 3:1-3).

This is our great hope—until that Day, keep healing the eyes of our heart of all spiritual shortsightedness, blindness, or anything else that keeps us from seeing the magnificence of Your glory and the full measure of Your grace. For Jesus’ sake, we ask—Amen.

A prayer slightly abridged from Scotty Smith.

I am so thankful for Christ. No hope without Him.

God bless you this Holy Week 2024.

Pastor Joe