WEEKLY SCRIPTURE READINGS FROM THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
from Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C – A Daily Devotional by N. T. Wright
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MONDAY 04.01.19 Luke 12:35-59 (focused on 12:35-40)
Jesus was getting Israel, and the world, and his followers, ready for great events that were still to come. Everything he was doing was about launching a project, the work of God’s kingdom. One day that kingdom will come to birth full and fresh, and all that Jesus has been doing will be seen as the necessary groundwork for that new moment. We wish it would hurry up. ‘Your kingdom come…’ But Jesus says, ‘you need to learn to wait. You need to grow up in your trust of God. Learning to wait is part of the deal.’ ‘Lord,’ we say, ‘give us strength and patience – but please hurry up anyway!’ ‘No,’ he says again, ‘you’ve got to be like servants prepared to wait through until the small hours. What matters is that when God does what God is going to do, you’re ready.’
• Lord, give us patience, and the courage to wait and watch and be ready to join you at work when we are called to help build your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
 
 
TUESDAY 04.02.19 Luke 13 (focused on 13:22-30)
These stern warnings should send us back to our prayers, back to our knees, back to humility and trust. We cannot presume. We dare not. Jesus tells them that there will come a time when the people who thought they were ‘automatically’ part of God’s people will find they’re outside, while plenty who never imagined they’d have anything to do with the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be inside. The shocking warning to the insiders is matched by the surprising grace toward the outsiders. That puts the pressure on those of us who might assume that we are the ‘right’ ones: to recognize, both in how we pray and what we pray, that everything we have, everything we are, is a gift from God, and that neither we nor anybody else deserve it. Prayer like that will be humble. It will also be a sigh of relief. We don’t have anything to prove or earn.
• Thank you, Father, for your generous love. Help me, today and every day, to trust in you, not in myself.
 
 
WEDNESDAY 04.03.19 Luke 14 (focused on 14:25-33)
This is another time when you may want to put your hands over your ears, as Jesus says some of the harshest things you’ve heard from him yet. But Jesus was announcing God’s new way of running things. He was telling God’s people that everything up to now had been preparation, but he was starting the real thing. And the hardest task for someone doing that is to persuade people to give up the preparatory stages they’ve become so comfortable with. God’s people are being redefined, and the identity markers of family and possessions won’t matter any more. Jesus’ challenge, then, comes to all of us at the point where we are tempted to settle down and be comfortable with the way things are. Instead, we need to think through, and pray through, what it’s going to mean to be a follower, a learner, a disciple.
• Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, used to pray this prayer: Lord, teach me to be generous, teach me to serve as you deserve: to give and not count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and to ask for no reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.
• Talk to God about how that prayer makes you feel and what it makes you think.


THURSDAY 04.04.19 Luke 15 (focused on 15:4-10)
This is one of the stories in Jesus’ set of this-is-why-we’re-having-a-party stories. But, like most of Jesus’ stories, this one connects with what goes on in people’s heads when they respond to him. So many of us secretly assume that there must be something special about his person, or that one, that makes Jesus go looking for them. Others, with low self-esteem, always assume that it’s the other people who are the special ones, and that they’re somewhere in the back of the flock, unnoticed and unimportant. But the point it that every single sheep is important to the shepherd, and when any one of them gets into difficulties he is especially concerned for them. That is the truth that’s so hard to learn, both for those with self-confidence and for those without it. By welcoming Jesus, we are inviting him to do in our moral and spiritual lives what he did for so many people physically.
• Lord, help us to celebrate your welcoming love, and to be transformed by it.
 
 
FRIDAY 04.05.19 Luke 16 (focused on 16:1-12)
Jesus’ first hearers of this story would have understood that a story about a landowner and his steward, or manager, was almost certainly a story about God and Israel. And, granted what Jesus had been saying about needing to sit loose to the traditional Jewish attachments to family and land, this would make a whole lot of sense. The nation of Israel, as a nation, is going to find that God’s purpose is moving ahead in a new direction, as always intended; but if they have been faithless to that overall intention, as Jesus is constantly warning that they have been, then they cannot presume that they will be God’s ‘steward’ for ever and ever. This story also illustrates the murky world you get into when you start playing around with money and property. Do one shady deal and others will follow as a way of hushing things up, and before you know what’s happened, you’re in over your head and can’t get out. That’s the point at which, after the parable, Jesus turns to serious warnings. These are things we need to take very, very seriously. But how? Jesus has some questions for every generation, for each of his followers; questions about priorities, about people poorer than you. How are you going to listen to those questions, and answer them truthfully?
• Take a walk (in your imagination) to your bank. Take Jesus with you. Chat to him, on the way, about how much money comes in, how big your overdraft is, which loans you hope to pay off, and all that. Then, when you get to the bank, sit down in a private room with your manager, with Jesus beside you. Get the full bank statements from last year. Talk through them with Jesus. Are there points you’re tempted to gloss over, or bits you wish had been deleted in advance?
• Lord Jesus, make me faithful in little things and great things, so that I may be faithful to your gift to me also.
 
 
SATURDAY 04.06.19 John 12:1-8
As we approach Passion Sunday, we switch to John’s gospel to help us get your hearts and minds ready for the tumultuous, awe-inspiring events that are about to unfold. John describes the intimate scene when Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with a very expensive perfume, and wipes them with her hair. Judas, watching this scene, is more than a little annoyed. His impatience grows the closer they get to Jerusalem because if God is ever going to act to free his people then Passover would be the obvious time to do it… so why is Jesus allowing this woman to waste perfume so good that it must have cost a year’s wages? Doesn’t she know there are poor people around here who could live on that money? Doesn’t she realize we’re all poor anyway and some of us could use a bit of a bonus after all we’ve been through? And you suddenly realize, as you watch this scene from Judas’ point of view, that Mary has seen something that Judas hasn’t. And learning to see that is what living with Jesus and his story is all about.
• Lord, help me to be humble enough to see what you are seeing, even when all my instincts are telling me the opposite. Help me, particularly, to understand what your death was all about.

WEEKLY SCRIPTURE READINGS FROM THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
from Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C – A Daily Devotional by N. T. Wright

MONDAY 03.25.19 Luke 9:37-62 (focused on 9:57-62)
Sooner or later, most of us who know in our heart of hearts we want to follow Jesus find ourselves coming up with excuses as to why his particularly sharp demands don’t really apply to us. God knows we’re human and need a rhythm of rest and refreshment. But God also knows, and Jesus obviously knew, that once we start down that road it’s easy to make exceptions to all the rules when it comes to our own case. So Jesus says, ‘Look! This is God’s kingdom we’re talking about, not a comfortable way of being religious that will let you settle down and take life at your own pace!’ Are you up for that? Jesus never said, ‘Come with me and all your happiest dreams will be fulfilled.’ He said, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’
• Talk to God about the excuses you make to him. Ask him to help you to follow him wherever he leads, and to give you the strength not to look back.
 
 
TUESDAY 03.26.19 Luke 10 (focused on 10:25-37)
The danger is that we think we know this story by heart. Today, read it slowly, again and again, and allow yourself to stand by the side of the road and watch what’s happening. Or, imagine you were the one going down from Jerusalem to Jericho… All of a sudden, I have to think again about who God’s kingdom is really for. Is Jesus saying that God’s kingdom has all sorts of people in it I never expected? That, certainly, is what the first Christians discovered very soon. The question, now as then, is whether we will use all that Jesus is telling us here about love and grace as a call to extend that love and grace to the whole world. No church, no Christian can remain content with living life in a way that allows us to watch most of the world lying half-dead in the road and pass by.
• Ask Jesus to help you to see the people you are passing by on the other side.
 
 
WEDNESDAY 03.27.19 Luke 11:1-28 (focused on 11:1-8)
I have no idea why God answers on the 1000th time a prayer he seems to have ignored for the previous 999 times. One might imagine that it would work more steadily and gradually. But no: from our point of view at least, prayer is like chopping at a tree. For 99 strokes of the axe, the main trunk seems to stand firm. Then, on the 100th stroke, suddenly it keels over. However you pray it, the Lord’s Prayer starts precisely with the note that says, ‘God’s way and God’s time is best.’ To say the Lord’s Prayer demands that you pay primary attention to God himself. It is his name and his kingdom that we care about above all, not our particular problems. But, having said that, the three requests that follow – for bread, forgiveness, and safety from being tested to destruction – all place our concerns within that name and kingdom. That’s the clue. To pray the Lord’s Prayer, then, requires an odd combination: complete humility and complete boldness. Once we get the first right, the second can follow cheerfully. Once God’s name and kingdom are the framework of all we do and think, we are free to knock on his door as late at night as we want.
• Try to find some occasions to pray the Lord’s Prayer very slowly, as if you were praying it for the first time. Think particularly about the words, ‘Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done.’ Imagine what it will be like when God’s kingdom is here on earth as it is in heaven. Does that help you to see Jesus’ prayer in a new way?


THURSDAY 03.28.19 Luke 11:29-53 (focused on 11:33-36)
When you think about the things you’ve gazed at today, or in the last few days, how have they affected the person you are? Have you allowed your eye to rest on, and feast on, genuine beauty? The eye is one of our principal means of finding our way within God’s beautiful creation; are you allowing your eyes to draw in the light of that beauty to make your whole personality beautiful as a result? Have you allowed your eye to rest on, to concern itself with, the injustices of the world, the places where people cry out to God for hope and help because they are being trampled underfoot by careless and arrogant people and systems? Or are you allowing yourself to be a mere spectator, looking on as though with a bird’s-eye view but without any real engagement with what’s happening? Gazing on the beauty of God’s world on the one hand, and on its need for justice on the other, will illuminate the body, the whole person, so that it celebrates the glory of God and works for his kingdom. Lent leads us to the foot of the cross. Two millennia of Christians have found gazing at the cross of Jesus, however it is depicted, to be both one of the most beautiful sights they can imagine and one of the most impassioned pleas for justice.
• What have you gazed on in the last couple of days? What would you like to gaze on today?
 
 
FRIDAY 03.29.19 Luke 12:1-34 (focused on 12:22-32)
Jesus relished the goodness and beauty of the natural world, and so should we. It’s strange, considering just how much beauty is all around us, that the modern world has trained itself to ignore it for much of the time. But not only is it a delight to the eyes and the mind; it is a great school of prayer. Stand beside a field full of wheat, or barley, or some other great crop. Watch the sun bringing out the color. Watch the wind rippling through and making patterns, and the grain, supple but strong, springing back into shape. Then think of the way we humans are meant to flourish, with the love of God looking down on us and the fresh wind of the Spirit bringing out patterns and meanings in our lives – corporate as well as individual. Reflect on the strange interconnectedness of it all. And, in thanking God for the mystery of our life, learn to trust him in new ways and at new levels.
• Try to spend some time looking at something around you more slowly and with greater attention than you normally do. Is there something you don’t normally notice that makes you want to give thanks to God?
 
 
SATURDAY 03.30.19 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
‘We just had to have a party!’ That’s the main point of this story. Jesus had been challenged about the parties he was having, and the company he was keeping at them, and he responded with this spectacular story. All right, you want to know why there’s a party? You want to know how it is with fathers and sons? And out it comes: a masterpiece, one of the greatest stories ever told, echoing the ancient stories of those other ill-starred brothers, Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and particularly Esau and Jacob. The son who runs away in trouble and comes back to find resentment. But all with a new twist. Something new is going on, right here, right now, and a party is the only possible response. ‘Resurrection’ is happening right under your noses, and you can’t see it. ‘This my son – this your brother – was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.’
• Imagine you are at a party; it’s happening at the local pub. One of the regulars has just had a very good win on the horses. He’s invited all his friends, and all the other regulars, for a really good evening. There is Jesus, right in the middle of it all. He turns and looks at you, standing by the door. ‘Yes,’ his eyes seem to say, ‘and what about you? Come on in and join the fun.’ Talk to God about how that makes you feel, and what it makes you think.

WEEKLY SCRIPTURE READINGS FROM THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
from Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C – A Daily Devotional by N. T. Wright

MONDAY 03.18.19 Luke 7:1-17 (focused on 11-17)
Supposing you’re there, in the crowd, that day at Nain. As you are walking slowly along, to the burial-place outside the city, you’re aware of a change in the mood over the other side of the crowd. It’s that prophet and his followers, the ones who’ve been going around saying that it’s time for God to become king! What’s he doing? He should know you can’t touch dead bodies. It’ll make him unclean… Jesus doesn’t just touch the dead man. He speaks to him. And then… He’s alive! God has come to rescue his people! God has raised up a prophet! It’s all true! God is becoming king!

• Pause, and think, and listen. Jesus has a particular word for you today. You can turn away, if you like, and pretend he isn’t talking to you. But you might be far better listening to what he says. Then think and pray about what it means for his life-giving kingdom to come into your village, your family, your life.
 
 
TUESDAY 03.19.19 Luke 7:18-50 (focused on 7:18-28)
Imagine people standing around waiting for Jesus to say something that, whispered to the authorities, will get him into trouble. So he answers their question not by saying something but by doing something; doing, in fact, what the Bible said the Messiah would do when he came: open blind eyes, unstop deaf ears, even raise the dead. ‘Draw your own conclusions,’ he seems to be saying. ‘And think about this: God’s blessing will fall on those who are not shocked by me, not ashamed of the fact that I’m not exactly what they were expecting.’

• Try to be quiet for a moment and think about Jesus saying to you, ‘And a blessing on the person who isn’t shocked by me!’ Does Jesus shock you in what he says or does? Talk to him about that.
• Lord, give me the courage to understand what you really want to do for the world, for my community and for me.
 
 
WEDNESDAY 03.20.19 Luke 8:1-39 (focused on 8:22-39)
How do you pray inside a story like these? It may be easy enough to imagine yourself on that little boat, tossed this way and that by the sudden storm that sweeps down on the lake. At times like that there is no shame in praying, ‘Master, we’re lost.’ But in the second half of the story – and Luke, as he often does, puts things together because they make a natural set – is harder again. In this instance – and there are reported cases like this today as well – it seems that the poor man in the middle of the story was overwhelmed from within by what he calls ‘Regiment’ – the Roman ‘legion’, a troop of four of five thousand soldiers, well equipped, professionally trained killers. Some have speculated that his condition had been brought on by the trauma of seeing soldiers trampling through his country, polluting it with their pagan ways, crushing rebellions with casual brutality. So how do you pray inside a story like that?

• Sit with the scene in front of you for a while and pray for all those who, today, see violence sweeping through their village or their region. Pray for all those whose anger and fear have turned in on themselves until they have forgotten who they are and can only think of the terrible enemy. Pray for the power of Jesus to dispel the demons, whatever they are, that grip so many people in anger and fear. Ask for wisdom to look into the depths of your own heart and tell Jesus what names are haunting you just now.


THURSDAY 03.21.19 Luke 8:40-56
We in the Western world are used to comparatively sedate behavior and crowd control, but there was nothing sedate or controlled about people when Jesus was around. We have to imagine a seething, pushing crowd, like people spilling out of a football stadium or like shoppers on Black Friday. Everyone wants to get close to where they think the action is. Then suddenly Jesus wheels around and asks, ‘Who touched me?’ Peter protests. ‘What part of “this is a crowd” don’t you understand?’ Jesus knows better. ‘I felt power go out from me.’ Even those of us who’ve been Christians for many years find it easy to lapse back into thinking of Jesus as basically just another great teacher, even as the one who died for us; but the thought that he had that kind of power, and was conscious of it going out from him, that’s hard to imagine. By ordinary rules, we should make Jesus unclean, pressing upon him with our messy and muddled lives. But when we come to him in faith, it works the other way. His power makes us clean again. That’s near the very heart of the gospel. Come in faith!

• ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Jesus had said. ‘Just believe.’ Is this the moment to stop in your tracks, to face your fears and give them to Jesus? Trust him, and his power can and will bring new life where it’s needed.
 
 
FRIDAY 03.22.19 Luke 9:1-36 (focused on 9:18-27)
There are some questions that, depending on your answer, will change your life for ever. ‘Is this the path we should take to get down the mountain?’ Get the answer wrong and you could be heading for disaster. ‘Is this the person I should marry?’ Get that one wrong – either way – and you face lasting unhappiness. And so on. Jesus’ question about who his followers thought he was is a question like that. It wasn’t just a quiz, sitting round the campfire one night and seeing what people think, but then going on much as before. He needed to know that they had got the message, that they had worked it out. Are you ready to take a deep breath and blurt out the conclusion that Peter and the others were coming to? ‘You’re God’s Messiah!’ You’re the King, the Coming One. You’re not just a prophet. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for! That answer has immediate consequences. If you think Jesus is the Messiah, then you are committed to following him, even when he tells you he’s off to the big city to die.

• Imagine that you are sitting around the fire and listen to Jesus asking you, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Tell him your answer. Tell him how much you love him, and what things you find difficult. Ask him to give you a share in his courage, to follow him wherever he leads and whatever it costs.
 
 
SATURDAY 03.23.19 Luke 13:1-9
Ever since that opening sermon in Nazareth, Jesus had been telling people things most of them didn’t want to hear. They wanted a rabble-rousing, let’s-go-and-bash-the-Romans sort of leader. Jesus went about healing people, talking about a few seeds producing a lot of fruit, and warning the rich and the self-righteous that their cosy world was under judgment. And now we begin to realize what was going on. He could see, more clearly than most of his contemporaries, that Israel was poised on a knife-edge. One false move, one classic piece of anti-Roman activism, and the Romans would come and stamp on the nation once and for all. Jesus is desperate to save his people. He will go ahead and take the full force of Rome’s anger onto himself. Anyone who follows him will find that a way of escape. But if they don’t – if they embrace the way of violence that he has set his face against – then they are signing their own death warrants. The fruitless tree is asking to be cut down. Stern situations need stern warnings.

• Pray that Jesus’ warning about the dangers of violent nationalism may be heard in our world, which still needs those warnings so badly.

WEEKLY SCRIPTURE READINGS FROM THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
from Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C – A Daily Devotional by N. T. Wright
 
 
MONDAY 03.11.19 Luke 2:22-52 (focused on 2:22-32)
Simeon has been praying and waiting for this moment all his life, and now it’s come. This is the Messiah; he’s seen him with his own eyes; now he can die in peace. How do you feel as you hear him say that? What does it make you want to do, or to pray?
 
• Pray for the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and inspiration to know what to pray for, and how to recognize God’s moment when it comes.
 
 
TUESDAY 03.12.19 Luke 3 (focused on 3:3-6, 10-14)
John the Baptist knew he had a job to do, and we as spectators gather round, listening to his stirring talk and seeing how people react. He had come to the lowest point on earth because that was where God had met with his people before when they were on the verge of crossing over into the promised land. John believes that God’s people now are on the verge of something new, something even bigger.
 
• People ask: ‘What should we do?’ Answer: ‘Straighten your lives out in the simplest, most direct way.’ Today Most of us know the places where, in our own lives, there are mountains to be flattened and valleys to be filled in, if God is to come and take up residence.
• Lord, show me how my life can be straightened out, so that your healing, restoring power may flow through me to the world around.
 
 
WEDNESDAY 03.13.19 Luke 4 (focused on 4:14-30)
This young would-be prophet is talking about grace – about ‘the year of God’s favour’. Well, that’s fine; we know about the Jubilee, the time when everyone is to be released from all their debts. Maybe it’s time we did it once for all, and more thoroughly. But … he’s talking about God doing it for everybody! The wicked and the pagans are going to be let off as well! We can’t have that! Who does he think he is? He deserves to be lynched! Are you angry? You should be. He’s just stood all your good, sound advice on its head. Unfortunately, God tends to do that; Jesus himself tended to do that. God is turning the whole world upside down. That means he’s turning your whole world upside down as well.
 
• As we allow a scene like this to wash over us, we will sometimes hear the disturbing question: when we know, only too clearly, what God ought to be doing, are we prepared to take a second opinion? God’s opinion?
• Sovereign Lord, teach me to listen to you even when you’re saying things I badly don’t want to hear.


THURSDAY 03.14.19 Luke 5 (focused on 5:1-11)
So there you are, going about your ordinary everyday business, and one day someone comes up to you. He wants to borrow your boat. He talks about God becoming king, about everything being different, about a new day dawning in which the poor are going to be helped up out of the mud. And the next thing you know, it isn’t just the fish that are caught … it’s you! He seems to know something that goes deeper than everything else. He seems to have a purpose, a plan. He wants helpers. Why me? Goodness knows, but actually (I know it sounds a bit stupid) there’s something about him I’ve never seen before. Maybe this is for real. Maybe he is for real. Maybe he thinks I’m for real. That’s a scary thought. In fact (it just strikes me), if he’s really a prophet, and if he wants me to work with him, my life might have to change. Just a bit. Don’t think I want that … But what’s that? He’s laughing. ‘Get up, Peter. You’re going to be catching people from now on.’ What? You mean me? You can’t be serious, Lord. But he is. Very serious. But also very light-touch. Come on, Peter. This is the first day of the rest of your life.
 
• Lord, help me to hear your call and be ready to respond. I’m not perfect but I’m ready to have you take charge.
 
 
FRIDAY 03.15.19 Luke 6 (focused on 6:20-27)
Supposing you were in the crowd listening to Jesus telling you all kinds of things about God and his kingdom. So much to take in, so much to think through, so much to try to remember … but wait, he’s teaching us something, something we can learn quite easily. It goes with a swing and a flow. But what does it all mean? Well, we’re working on that. It’s a bit like the words they say his mother sang when she knew he was on the way: the rich getting brought down with a bump and the poor getting a leg up. God turning the world the right way up at last. But not everybody’s going to like it. There are already mutterings and mumblings in the background.
 
• Read again slowly the words in verses 20-23.
• Lord, help me to learn your new song, and to find out what it means in our world today.
 
 
SATURDAY 03.16.19 Luke 13:31-35
Perhaps we’re with Jesus and his party as those Pharisees (friendly ones, as occasionally they are in Luke) come to warn him that Herod, the local king who doesn’t like rival ‘kings’ on his patch, is out to get him. You can feel the tension in the air. Some of us knew it might end in this way; all the talk about the rich and the powerful being thrown down and the poor and humble raised up was bound to lead to trouble, however much it’s in the Bible! Now what shall we do? Now what will he do? He’s saying, ‘Herod can’t touch me; prophets die in Jerusalem. Didn’t you know that?’ Surely he doesn’t mean he’s going to Jerusalem…in order to die there?
‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem!’ Think of the hen and the chicks. Think of the fire that will sweep through the farmyard. Yes, I’m coming to Jerusalem, and that’s what I wanted to do for all of you, to take the fire on myself, the fire of Herod, the fire of Rome, the fire of all the wickedness in the world. But are you going to be ready for it? Or will you reject your one chance of safety?
 
• Lord, we don’t always understand what you’re up to, or why you went to die in that way. But we pray for strength to follow wherever you go, to be sheltered under your wings from all the evil that may come.

LENTEN CHALLENGE:
 
What am I being challenged to give up or stop doing in order to grow in my relationship with God? ______________________________________________________________________
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What am I being challenged to start doing or practicing in order to grow in my relationship with God? __________________________________________________________
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Who will I ask to hold me accountable? ___________________________________________
 
 
LENTEN SCRIPTURE READINGS – THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
 
WEDNESDAY 3.06.19 Luke 1:1-56 (focused on 1:46-55)
The whole of Luke’s gospel is about the way in which the living God has planted, in Jesus, the seed of that long-awaited hope in the world.
 
THURSDAY 3.07.19 Luke 1:57-80 (focused on 1:67-79)                
Can you hear a voice, saying to you, ‘Yes, it’s true; I am doing a new thing; and you have a part in it!’?
 
FRIDAY 3.08.19 Luke 2:1-21 (focused on 2:8-15)
Pause and pray about the quiet messages you get from time to time; perhaps not angels singing, but a soft whisper that tells you to go somewhere unexpected, to do something you hadn’t planned, to visit someone you weren’t previously thinking about.
 
SATURDAY 3.09.19 Luke 4:1-13
What tests are you facing right now? How are the whispering voices trying to lure you off course, into doing the right thing in the wrong way, or the wrong thing altogether? Where will you look in scripture to find help and strength?
 
Prayer for the week: Lord, let me be ready to hear your voice, to be eager to obey, and to come and worship. Give me the strength not to give up; to reach for your word, to remember what you are calling me to be and to do and, with your help, to persevere through whatever tests may come.