Inspiring verses, prayers and quotes
Bible Passages
Rom 12:1-2 (Message Bible)
12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
1 Cor 9 (Message Bible)
26-27 I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got. No lazy living for me! I’m staying alert and in top condition. I’m not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.
Colossians 4 (NIV)
5 Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Ephesians 4 (Message Bible)
1-3 In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love,
Phil 3:13-18 Message Bible)
I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.
17-19 Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again.
1 Timothy 6 (Message Bible)
11-12 But you, Timothy, man of God: Run for your life from all this. Pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith. Seize the eternal life, the life you were called to.
Hebrews 12 (Message Bible
1-3 Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed …When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
4 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves.
12-13 So don’t sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
Prayers
Yielding Prayer
Disturb me, Lord, when I am too well pleased with myself,
When my dreams have come true because I have dreamed too little,
When I arrived safely because I sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb me, Lord, when with the abundance of things I possess
I have lost my thirst for the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, I have ceased to dream of eternity.
Disturb me, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, I shall find the stars.
Prayer from Susannah Wesley
Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in your presence. So may my every word and action have a moral content. May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward your likeness. Amen.
Prayers from John Baillie ‘A Diary of Private Prayer’
O Holy Sirt of God, inspire all my thoughts. Pervade all my imagination. Suggest all my decisions. Lodge in my will’s most inward stronghold and order all my doings. Amen.
Lord, You have so graciously called me to be Your servant. I would hold myself in readiness today for your least word of command. Give me the spirit, I pray, to keep myself in continual training for the punctual fulfilment of Your most holy will. Amen’
Teach me, O God, so to use all the circumstances of my life today that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin. Amen’
Quotations
Time is the oxygen of friendship (Phil Knox)
The devil’s goal is to first isolate us (John Mark Comer)
The single greatest ‘people skill’ is a highly developed and authentic interest in the other person. (Bob Burg)
The word retirement is not even in the Bible. What is taught in scripture is transition. There is nothing that says you work most of your life and then get to be selfish for the next 20 years. (Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life)
Never, never retire. You’ll be dead in three years. Daytime TV will kill you. (Roger Daltrey lead singer of the Who.)
A Lectio 363 Reflection from Pete Greig
Today I am reflecting on one of the most surprising things Jesus says about
us who are born again…
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I
said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes,
and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:5-8 (ESVUK)
It’s easy to associate spiritual maturity with words like solid, steady and
predictable. But Jesus says here that the distinguishing mark of those ‘born
of the Spirit’ is mobility, unpredictability, and even a certain wildness like
the wind. We see this in the life of Abraham who ‘went out, not knowing
where he was going… having acknowledged [with his wife Sarah] that they
were strangers and exiles on the earth’ (Heb. 11:8,13). We see it in the first
apostles who travelled thousands of miles. And we see it in the ancient
Celts whose favoured metaphor for the Holy Spirit was not a domesticated
dove but a wild goose. As for pilgrimage, they adopted the Latin word
‘peregrinatio’ which means wandering, adventuring, with and for the love
of God. Its meaning is beautifully conveyed by a lovely ninth century story
of three Irishmen who landed in Cornwall having drifted across the sea in a
boat without oars. They were brought before King Alfred and explained, ‘we
stole away because we wanted for the love of God to be on pilgrimage and
we cared not where.’
Lectio 365
I think about the time I have as the field I harvest. Am I reaping my time, right to the very edges, leaving no margin for the unexpected, the interruption, or the person who may need my attention? What would it look like to leave the edges of my time available for God and others today?