Christmas Benefit Concert prayer items

Pray for the ministries the concert will help...
  - The Pregnancy Center of Toledo
  - My Father's House in Haiti.

Pray that those who attend the concert will clearly hear the truth of Christmas as it is shared in word and song.

Pray that those who are participating will glorify God with their gifts and talents.

Released from the burden of having to maintain my righteous standing with God, I quickly found that I had enormous amounts of passion to put into growing in holiness and ministering God’s amazing grace to other people.  I had never had such energy available for ministry before, because so much of it was consumed with tending to my standing before God.  I also found the grace of the gospel producing in me a huge passion to love and obey God.  In moments of temptation, I enjoyed saying to myself “You know, I can commit this sin, and God’s grace would abound to me all the more as He maintains my justified status…But it is precisely for this reason that I choose not to commit this sin!”

The Gospel Primer (p. 96)

LORD, God,

I want to live a life that is built upon the finished work of Jesus Christ.  Help me to be strengthened by you and not motivated by guilt. 

Especially during this time of the year, help me to live in the joy of Christ's righteousness and not the bitterness of self-righteousness.

AMEN.

The woman caught in adultery.

Remember Pastor Snyder's sermon this past Sunday on John 8:2-12.
And consider section of The Gospel Primer (p. 74-76)

...This is my status
and these are my flaws
Apart from Christ Jesus
and his saving cause:
I carry sin's guilt
and am gripped by sin's power
Held fast to its
various lusts every hour,
Deserving of flames,
both within and without,
And sliding toward Hell
as I toss all about,

Too reprobate* even
to play a small part
In clearing my record
or changing my heart
To pacify wrath
and be worthy of grace,
To make myself lovely
and win God's embrace.
Completely condemned by
God's Law in its whole,
I've nothing to offer
to ransom my soul.

But wonder of wonders
so great to behold,
My God chose to save me
with method so bold.
What I could not render,
God fully has done,
And doing, He rendered it
all through His Son.
He sent Christ to die
on the cross for my sin
To suffer my anguish
my pardon to win. 

*reprobate:  adj.  under God's judgment, extremely sinful, lost in sin