Resurrection in Prayer

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27

And the question always is….who is my neighbor? Jesus answered that question with the story of a man who was robbed and beaten and left for dead on the side of a road. A priest and a temple official passed by, and crossed the road to avoid to avoid contact with the possibly unclean body. Then another man, an outsider in the community, came along and saw him and helped him and cared for him. The outsider showed him mercy, even though they were not from the same town or tribe or class and it’s pretty certain they did not know each other.  Jesus said we are to “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)

In order to “go and do likewise,” we have to first see.  As we walk down the road, we have to see our neighbors, even, maybe especially, those we don’t know. Do you really see the people you walk past every day?  Do you see the people you ride in the elevator with at work, or pass on the bike trail, or who walk past you at the grocery store? Do you see the person who sits next to you in worship or at the end of the row? Do you make eye contact, or do you look away? Do you know their names, where they live, what their lives are like?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.”  Most of won’t encounter a lot of gangrene and leprosy this week. But we may, if we open our eyes and really see, encounter hurt hearts, people who hunger for friendship, fellowship, conversation, acceptance of faults. If we are looking, we may realize people who need God’s love and care are all around us, and they are our neighbors, seeking grace and mercy just like we are.

This week, let’s pray together for the ability to see, and then love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and as Jesus loves us.

Lord God, open our eyes and help us see our neighbors
as you see them and love them as you love them.
Guide us with your Holy Spirit to see, and then act
in a way that shows your love
and mercy to everyone we meet.  Amen.

Jennifer Creagar
Resurrection Prayer Ministry

A few weeks ago my whole family went to Texas together to celebrate our nephew/cousin’s wedding. Because our extended family lives in all different states, I also anticipated the event as a joyous family reunion. The “save the date” was on our refrigerator for a good part of the past year, and as the family trip got closer and closer, my anticipatory joy became greater and greater. There were days prior to leaving town that I felt like I was going to burst with joy, and in my prayers I continued to express my gratitude to God for this blessing. The best part of it all was that the weekend did not disappoint. The wedding and reception were grand; however, it was the small conversations that happened over simple meals throughout the weekend that also were so life-giving.  Connecting  with our siblings and their spouses over the make-it yourself waffle breakfast at the Holiday Inn, catching  up with the ever-evolving lives of our young-adult nieces and nephews  while having lunch outdoors at a café, and  spending dear moments with my favorite cousin Jan over a cup of coffee provided moments of bonding and happiness.
Throughout the months, weeks and days leading up to Easter resurrection, God also provides us with anticipatory joy that never disappoints. Now that the grand event of Easter is behind us we have faith stories that teach us how to continue to live as people of the resurrection over simple meals in ordinary places. In Luke 24, we find friends from Emmaus eating a meal together in a home back in Jerusalem, and as they are caught up in conversation, Jesus is suddenly there among them. As the dawn breaks on the shore of Galilee after a long night of fishing, Jesus has prepared a meal of fish and bread for Peter and his friends.
In Living the Resurrection, Eugene Peterson says that like a physician who has a practice – work that defines both his and her character and work day… “this is the sense we practice resurrection – we engage in a life that is permeated by the presence and companionship of the resurrected Jesus in the company of friends.”
For your practice of prayer this week, reach out to someone dear to you and invite them to go out for a cup of coffee or into your home for lunch.  Do so with the anticipation of meeting the resurrected Jesus and give thanks.

“…For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” –Isaiah 56.7

Today we begin Holy Week, the most sacred and meaningful week of the Christian year. Holy Week brings the season of Lent to a close, the season in which we are called to deeper personal and corporate prayer and reflection. There several opportunities for you this week to enter into the depths of the gospel drama that leads to Jesus’ crucifixion. I encourage you to take advantage of the Holy Week  prayer opportunities  so you can prepare spiritually to receive the grace and hope of the Resurrection next week on Easter.  I also want to explain how we spiritually prepare ourselves as staff and prepare the Sanctuary, Wesley Covenant Chapel and the Student Center to receive the thousands of guests we are expecting next weekend by praying over every seat.

Praying over worship service seats is a long standing tradition at Church of the Resurrection.  While every worship service at Resurrection begins with the whole worship team circling up in prayer, there are significant services or events for which all of the Resurrection staff is expected to pray. Typically these are Leadership Institute, Candlelight Christmas Eve, and Easter where many, many people visit the church for the first time. First time guests and the rest of us come for a variety of reasons. Some are skeptical, wondering what this big church is all about. Some want to feel God’s presence anew or perhaps for the very first time. Some are seeking to connect with people as a way to learn how to live out their faith in real life.   Some are lonely, or grieving or in need of healing of body or spirit. Some come to respond in gratitude for the blessings in their lives.  Some come out of habit. Our job as staff is to prepare God’s house by bathing it in prayer so that each individual who walks through the door feels welcome, accepted and touched by the grace of God.

Generally we pray over the seats after staff chapel on Thursday mornings where all of the staff gathers for worship each week.  This is a good time to pray over the seats because in staff chapel our hearts and minds are refocused on God’s goodness in the midst of our busy work week and we are more spiritually present and prepared to intercede for others. We then go to the Sanctuary, Wesley Covenant Chapel or the Student Center.  We lay our hands upon each seat and pray that the Holy Spirit would come to rest upon the seat and touch each person who occupies it with God’s grace.  God knows what every individual needs and desires.  Additionally, we pray for the worship service in general, Pastor Adam’s message, and that all of us might become invisible over the course of the weekend allowing Christ’s presence to shine through all.

So remember, as you spiritually prepare for Easter Sunday by taking part in the Holy Week opportunities, you are deeply loved by your church staff, and that Church of the Resurrection is indeed a house of prayer for all peoples.

Nancy Pauls, Pastor of Prayer

Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day.  In the Catholic tradition, it is the Feast Day of St. Patrick. In the United States, St. Patrick’s Day has become a fun holiday of celebrating the Irish heritage of so many Americans, and a day for wearing green, parades, shamrocks, leprechauns and eating corned beef and cabbage.  In Kansas City, it seems everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!

The real St. Patrick was the son of a wealthy family in Britain in the 5^th century. He was kidnapped by raiders as a teenager and taken away to Ireland, where he was a slave in a remote area, herding sheep and performing manual labor. During that time, he came to know and rely on the love and comfort of God through Jesus.  After his escape and return to Britain, God spoke to him in a dream and called him to go back to Ireland and help the small number of Christians there and to bring the love and knowledge of God through Jesus to the Irish people. He trained as a priest and then following his ordination, returned to Ireland and travelled all over the island, sharing Christ with his former captors using stories and symbols from their own culture to help the people understand. You could say he spent his life helping the non and nominally religious people of Ireland become deeply committed Christians!

So, in honor of St. Patrick and my own Irish heritage, I offer a part of the prayer known as the “Breastplate of St. Patrick.”  The imagery of God surrounding us, shielding us, protecting us, and guiding us is very powerful, as is the prayer that all who hear us, see us, or speak of us will hear, see, and speak of Christ.

As I arise today,
may the strength of God pilot me,
the power of God uphold me,
the wisdom of God guide me.
May the eye of God look before me,
the ear of God hear me,
the word of God speak for me.
May the hand of God protect me,
the way of God lie before me,
the shield of God defend me,
the host of God save me.
May Christ shield me today.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit,
Christ when I stand,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Amen

Beannacht Dé bheith leat an lá seo. (God’s blessings be with you this day)

Jennifer Creagar
Church of the Resurrection
Prayer Ministry

In the Divorce Recovery for Women class that I lead on Wednesday evenings, we spend a good deal of time talking about identity after divorce. After a divorce, a woman can no longer call herself a wife, lover, or part of a couple. “Who am I now?” is a question that we frequently ponder. Yet this “who am I now?” question is not just reserved for those going through a divorce. There are many life transitions that allow us to pause and ask that question of ourselves. I was recently speaking to a newly retired gentleman.  He said, “I am no longer a floor coverings manufacturer’s rep, who am I now?” I remember when my grandmother passed away and my mom, who was in her sixties said, “I am no longer anyone’s child, I am an orphan.” My younger sister says, “I am a survivor of breast cancer.” Personally, I am soon to become an “empty nester.”  It is a little scary to imagine this new identity. Our identities come and go over time. Who we are now is probably not who we were ten years ago or who we will be ten years from now.  However scripture tells us who we are in God’s eyes.

So God created humankind^* in his image, in the image of God he created them;^*  God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. male and female he created them. –Genesis 27, 31.

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made
–Psalm 139:13-14

Today in worship, and in the GPS lessons through the week, as we  look at the “I am “ sayings in the Gospel of John and discover who Jesus is, remember who you are.  You are created by God in the image of God, and who you are is a reflection of who God is.  A speaker in Divorce Recovery Class shared this poem/prayer by Helen Mallicoat with our group recently.

I was regretting the past
and fearing the future.
Suddenly my Lord was speaking:
“My name is I am.”
He paused.
I waited.
He continued,
“When you live in the past
with its mistakes and regrets,
it is hard. I am not there.
My name is not I WAS.
When you live in the future,
with its problems and fears,
it is hard. I am not there.
My name is not I WILL BE.
When you live in this moment
it is not hard I am here.
My name is I AM.”

This week in your prayer time,   I invite you to reflect on the truths that God is always present with you and that you indeed are a child of God, an identity that does not come and go but is forever and eternal.

–Nancy Pauls, Pastor of Prayer

Our lives are filled with temptation. Consuming too much sugar, alcohol, Internet and pills are classic examples of that which are difficult for some of us to avoid. More insidious temptations are choosing greed over generosity or blame over grace. For me, one of the hardest temptations to resist has something in common with the two things I am good at—being a pastor and being a mother—and that is the temptation to worry. I worry about my daughters driving back to their homes after a party or my husband driving home after an overnight shift at the hospital. I worry about my son moving off to KU in the fall. I worry about the souls who make their way into my office at Resurrection with crises so real and so immeasurable that words of hope get stuck in the back of my throat. Perhaps you can also relate to the temptation of worry.

For me, prayer has been the best antidote to worry. However, I never thought about worry itself as prayer. In The Path of Prayer, Sophy Burnham writes that, “worrying is like praying for our worst fears to happen. Put more succinctly, worry is a prayer for disaster. It scatters our attention, leads to moodiness or depression, saps our physical strength and depletes our emotional will.” With this new insight I am going to put even more emphasis in my prayer life on pushing back the darkness of worry. If worry is a temptation for you, I invite you to join me. At work during the day, I will distract my thoughts from worry by pausing to take a few deep breaths or by saying “Stop it” in my head. Before bed, I will continue to surrender my burdens to God. Recently I read that surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. I’m so grateful that our awesome God is ultimately the one in control, and that I can confidently surrender myself and my loved ones into God’s capable hands. I am grateful that our God loves us so much that he is big enough to bear all of our worries, and all we have to do is let go and hand them over.

I’d like to close with an excerpt from The Centering Moment by Howard Thurman. “Sometimes it is very hard to tear ourselves away from the things that tax us and weigh heavily upon us, moment by moment, hour by hour, and day unto day: and yet there is a quiet joy in us because we are privileged to withdraw, to turn aside… As we do this, we turn , each in his own way, to something more than we are, to a spirit, to an atmosphere, to a silence, to a presence; with the hope that what has been anxiety for us may be tranquilized by this presence, what has been low may be lifted and purified, redeemed and established; what has been weakness will be redone by the presence, until at last weakness becomes strength; what has been despair may become hope, what has been sickness may become health.”

–Nancy Pauls, Pastor of Prayer

In worship this weekend at the Church of the Resurrection, we will hear the story about how Joseph and Mary went to the Temple in Jerusalem to present baby Jesus to the Lord. Similar to Christian infant baptism, it is a Jewish custom to offer a new baby in gratitude and thanksgiving to God, acknowledging that the baby is a gift from God and belongs to God while he or she is being cared for by the parents. This ritual can also be called dedication or consecration and means to “designate as holy.” This story of baby Jesus reminds me that all children are a gift from God, that we belong to God and that God cares deeply for each one of us.

Whether we have been baptized or not, the New Year is a wonderful time to re-dedicate ourselves as Christ’s servants, to give ourselves back to him, and to remind ourselves that we belong to him. There is a special prayer called a Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition that lends us beautiful language to pray our own prayer of dedication to God. Here is the prayer in language from the time of John Wesley:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Some churches have a tradition of praying this prayer together just before the New Year. I think it is a prayer that can be prayed every day. It that often takes me to my knees. I also like to pray it sitting with my hands open on my lap. I keep a business size card of this prayer in my wallet, so that it is always nearby. It has the traditional language on one side and contemporary language on the other. Click here to see what the card looks like. You can purchase one for yourself at The Well bookstore.

Our contemporary worship leader, Lance Winkler, wrote a song with lyrics inspired by this prayer. Sometimes I find that praying to a melody helps the prayer sink into my heart faster. Click here and then click on Covenant Song to hear this beautiful prayer of worship and dedication.

–Nancy Pauls, Pastor of Prayer

In the wake of shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary  our hearts are broken and we find ourselves at a loss of words.  It is hard to know how to pray, or what to ask God for . In times like these, I find hope comfort in returning to the words that God provides for us in Scripture.

In Romans 26-27, Paul tells us that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”  It gives me great consolation to know that the Holy Spirit is praying in me and through me at times like these.

As we continue to struggle with senseless violence, we can also turn to Scripture to find strength in God’s presence. Psalm 46 is the Psalm that gave birth to Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”   It describes the care and protection that God promises to provide in times of great turmoil. It goes like this:

 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
          


There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. 
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns. 
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts. 
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.
          


Come, behold the works of the Lord;
 see what desolations he has brought on the earth. 
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
   he burns the shields with fire. 
‘Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
 I am exalted in the earth.’ The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Please pray with me:

Gentle, Compassionate, Loving God,

Hear the cries of your joyless, sorrowful people.

Our prayers go out to the families of Newtown and

Sandy Hook Elementary School who have experienced incomprehensible loss.  We come to you now with heavy hearts and in deep sorrow.

We pause to remember the twenty-six lives taken by a gunman in Newtown, CT, eighteen of whom are school children, we lift them up to you Lord.  Let us pray for the families who grieve.  Let us also pray for those who have been traumatized by the events that have unfolded at this school — teachers, children, parents, neighbors, the community.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

May we be still for a moment and know that God is with us, even in this most horrible of moments.

Nancy Pauls, Pastor of Prayer

Where do we receive our hope?

Maybe it is just a coincidence that just a few days ago people were buying Powerball jackpot tickets at the rate of 131,000 every minute up until an hour before the deadline last Wednesday. That evening, the Powerball jackpot stood at $550 million. It was the largest jackpot in the multi-state lottery’s history. Many of us put our hope in the odds of becoming a millionaire. Now, statistically speaking, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 175 million. A person is more likely to become President of the United States than win the jackpot. According to one source, you are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, seven times more likely to die from fireworks, 25 times more likely to win an Academy Award, and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

I have never bought a lottery ticket, but I have often put my hope in relationships and activities that turned out to be disappointing and unsatisfying.

In the first verse of 1Timothy, Paul calls Jesus Christ our “hope.” The salutation of his letter begins, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” The word “hope” means something very different from wishful thinking or playing the odds because this hope connotes absolute certainty.

For your prayer time today, I invite you to try a prayer practice that I found in the Spiritual Formation Bible. At the top of a sheet of paper write the words “Because of Jesus.” Below them list all the “absolute certainties” you can count on because of Jesus Christ. What can you expect in this life? What certainties do you trust in for eternity? After you have spent time creating your list, say a prayer of gratitude to God for this time of hope and anticipation. Give thanks to God for the certainty of the coming Christ, our life, our light and our true hope.

Nancy Pauls – Pastor of Prayer

This week in the GPS, we will be exploring what the Bible says about being a servant, and through our service, a blessing to others.  In the early church, we are told, the first Christian believers spent their time listening to the teaching of the apostles, fellowship with one another, caring for one others needs, and prayer. We can follow their example, and bless one another with the gift of our time in prayer.

This month, on November 20, we will have our annual Thankful Day of Prayer Vigil.  It is a wonderful chance to take some time to come join others in prayer and focus on our thankfulness and gratitude for our many blessings, but it is also a great opportunity to bless others with the gift of our time in prayer. Each time we have a prayer vigil, we pray for each member of our church family BY NAME at least once during the day.  We also pray for our members who are serving in the military, and for the ministries of the church.  Mark your calendars right now to come and pray with us any time from 6:00 am until 10:00 pm on November 20 in Wesley Covenant Chapel.  Your prayers will be a blessing to many!

Another way to bless others with the servant gift of your time in prayer is by joining one of our email prayer teams.  You can sign up and choose which team or teams you would like to pray with at www.cor.org/prayer.  You will receive prayer requests via email, and are asked to pray for them for at least one week.

If you would like to learn more about personal prayer and spend time in fellowship with others, there is still time to sign up for the Fall Prayer Retreat in Nature next Saturday, November 10 at Camp Timberlake. You can read about it and sign up for the retreat at www.cor.org/prayer.