Ada Congregational

Teach us to honor the earth as your good creation and to live gently upon it. We pray for North America and the Arctic, where abundance and inequality live side by side. We lament political division, violence, and policies that burden the poor and protect the powerful. We grieve lives lost to preventable harm and communities stretched thin by fear and exhaustion. Yet we give thanks for mutual aid networks, for courageous organizing, for teachers, caregivers, and advocates who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. Help us to share our bread with the hungry, and to welcome the unhoused into safe shelter.

Ada Bible

I'm talking about your gospel identity. If it is true that the god of the universe came to this planet and sacrificed himself on your behalf, you got something. If it is true that he adopted you to be his treasured daughter, his treasured son, you got something. It it's possible that you now live with hope. Hope based on not what's happening on Super Bowl Sunday, but our Jesus told us that at the end of time, there will be a time when all that which is broken gets restored, which helps me live into a bigger picture.

Redeemer OPC

In other words, the first two verses say, you are called, if you're a believer in Jesus, to serve Jesus, not just part, not just here or there. But Paul uses the language of sacrifice. Because in the Old Testament, you went and sacrificed an animal to the Lord. That animal gave itself completely. Paul now says in verses one and two, every single one of us who believes in Jesus must offer ourselves as completely. There's no part of you that cannot be offered. Not your ability, your time, your money, your resources, none of them can be kept separate kept kept sup separate from your following after Jesus. All of it is to be offered to him. Now in verses three through eight, Paul goes on to say, and how does that work? How do you offer yourself completely to the Lord?