A PERSONAL PRAYER Dear Jesus, my Redeemer, There are moments in my life that I prefer not to remember, times I have done things of which I am not proud. When I call these to mind, they sting and burn like poison and fog my mind with regret. They rob me of self-confidence and snatch away my sense of self-worth. I have tried to wash them away with your love, but it doesn’t seem to work. I know that they have left self-inflicted scars, and underneath those scars there is an ache, a sensitivity to touch that makes me wince [...]

A PERSONAL PRAYER God of my salvation, Some days, I think I have it all pretty well under control. I face my challenges head on, without wavering. I make decisions – some of them good ones even – and I learn from the ones that are not as good that I might not make the same mistakes again. I prioritize life according to values that I have chosen intentionally, hopefully led by the Holy Spirit. I have it together. I run my life well. But there are other days, Lord… Oh My God… those other days. There are days the only [...]

We pray. We study the Bible. We make friends. We tell our stories. We give ourselves away in generosity and service. A PERSONAL PRAYER God, I watched the news last night and there saw the replay story of a murder/suicide in the home of a nice family. So much pain… It was followed by the story of a couple of young parents neglecting their children. I looked at their photos, and I felt for them… so over their heads. I heard at a meeting yesterday about the overwhelming problems of opioid abuse, and saw the testimony about it. [...]

A PERSONAL PRAYER Gracious God, Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like for Jesus. On the one hand, the crowds followed him and cheered for him. He was a celebrity. They loved him, as much as you can love someone when what you really want is for that person to do something for you. On the other hand, there were so many who hated him, who rejected him, who denied him. They even tried to kill him. No, they didn’t just try – they did kill him. That is the ultimate form of rejection. There were some times he seemed to worry what people [...]

A PERSONAL PRAYER  Jesus, Were you afraid when you were in the wilderness? I read in the Bible that you were fully human, sent by the Father to face the same challenges I face, and more… So I think you were afraid. When you were in the desert, without food for forty days, face to face with the devil himself, were you afraid then? When you heard that they had beheaded your cousin John the baptizer, did fear for yourself and your disciples well up inside you? When you stood in the Garden of Gethsemane and the whip and the [...]

A PERSONAL PRAYER  O God, I am hungry right now. It is early morning, and I haven’t eaten. That hunger is a constant gnawing as I write. It keeps turning my mind away from my writing, my praying, and I have to work so much harder to stay focused. I am indeed a physical being, and I can’t deny that. But I am a spiritual being, too, and I want very much to live by the Spirit. Paul writes to the Romans  “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to [...]

We pray. We study the Bible. We make friends. We tell our stories. We give ourselves away in generosity and service. A PERSONAL PRAYER  God of love and healing, I remember some hard times, bleak midwinters of the heart and dry and parched summers of the soul. I remember wanting to stay in bed all day, but knowing the bedcovers couldn’t shield me from my troubles. But I made it through, God, somehow. I know it was only by your grace. Still, I must confess that while in the wilderness, I sometimes thought you had abandoned me. I can see [...]

We pray. We study the Bible. We make friends. We tell our stories. We give ourselves away in generosity and service.  This week, Bishop Scott Jones will preach at all of our traditional and Encounter Sunday morning services. Bishop Jones received both his Master’s degree and Ph.D from Southern Methodist University, has been a local church pastor and was on the faculty of Perkins School of Theology before he was elected bishop in 2004. He served for the last twelve years as the bishop in the Great Plains Annual Conference, covering the states of Kansas and Nebraska. He is the author [...]