The Father's Character?

7:00 p.m. Ash Wednesday Service

For Pondering & Prayer

Read and ponder the following and let it lead you into prayer...

God wants the same relationship with us that He has with Jesus. Jesus teaches us to call God “Father.” The word Jesus uses is “Abba” which means “Daddy.” (In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther reminds us that this means we can approach and talk to God with the same trust and confidence of children approaching their earthly father.)

If our earthly father was a blessing to us, that experience can help us begin to “translate” what Jesus is teaching us about our relationship with God. If our earthly father was a void or a curse in our lives, Jesus wants us to know that our relationship with our Heavenly Father can fill that void and break that curse.

God wants to be nearer to us than our very breath. Each time we breathe in we can ponder how the Holy Spirit wants to fill us. As we breathe out, let it be a reminder of how the Holy Spirit wants to cleanse and purge us.

Even as we acknowledge that God loves us and is near to us, we also know that God is holy and we are not.

We desire to hallow God’s name.

We long for God to make us more and more holy and for the Holy Spirit to turn us from all that is unholy in our thoughts, attitudes, words and actions.

In faithful response to God’s love, we desire to “open up” every aspect of our life to the cleansing, healing, transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

In Holy Baptism, God “adopts” us into His family. As baptized children of God, Jesus calls us to “let our light shine” so that the way we live our lives becomes a demonstration of God to others. This is both a high calling of what God would have us be and do, and also a painful reminder of how far short we fall.

In light of that, O how much we need God’s love, mercy, power, forgiveness, grace, patience, help, strength, encouragement, presence, etc.!