Lord God, strengthen me to acknowledge and take to heart your kingship in heaven and on earth ...

Deuteronomy 4:32-40 & Matthew 16:24-28
 

 
 
 
By human nature I prefer to take my own seat as God, acknowledging my own power and taking to heart my own successes. Armed with such half-truths, the enemy of God woos my being to be self-serving and egocentric. ‘Taking up my cross is ridiculous, when I can be the one directing those inconvenient to me to be crucified for their sins against me,’ I say in my own self-righteousness.  But it is the call of Jesus to take up not my throne but my cross, which is the assignment to love as he loved. Only by acknowledging and taking to heart God’s incomprehensible power will I have the strength to lift the challenges of my life, let alone carry them.  Lord God, as I follow the King of Kings, strengthen me to acknowledge publicly and take to heart privately your kingship in heaven and on earth. 
 
 
 
Love … does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:5-7)
 
                                                                                                     
 
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