Hey Everyone,

It was great praying with you all at last week’s prayer meeting! Thanks to all of you who allowed the Lord to use you to speak His truth to us. I think your preparation in really seeking the Lord before the prayer meeting definitely bore some fruit, keep it up! Let’s be encouraged to take some ground for the Lord! He was speaking to us both through Fr. Jack ( here's a link to his talk ) and through His prophetic word about (among other things) being more bold in the way we live out our Christian faith.

Fr. Jack was telling us that in John 17:11-19 Jesus prayed for our:

1) Protection

2) Joy

3) Consecration 

Fr. Jack reminded us that Jesus prayed for these things not so we can settle down and rejoice in them, but so that we can be "in the world", but "not of the world", so "we can be light in the darkness, so we can stand and witness life in the midst of a culture that embraces death" Jesus wants us to be called out of the world and made holy, that we might be sent into the world, as the Father sent Jesus into the world. (John 17:18)

Questions for reflection:

-Do we show in the way we live our lives that we have been consecrated in the truth, as Jesus prayed we would be?

-Another way of putting this: do people see Jesus when they look at us? Can they tell we're Christians by the way we live our lives? Do people experience God's love through us? Do we make people think "This person must be a Christian..."?

-When the answer to any of these questions is no, why? Is it because we're not living in the world? Are we giving into the temption to hide away and just live a comfortable Christian life where nobody can see it?

Let's pray that with the help of the Holy Spirit, we might be consecrated in truth and be living witnesses, that Jesus might be "glorified in [us]" (John 17:10)