A wonderful way to support CFCA's ministry is through prayer. Please
remember our CFCA family - children, aging, missionaries, volunteers, preachers, staff, sponsors and
donors - in your prayers.
It helps, now and then, to step back
and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.
Lord, we are all pilgrims. We came from God and we are going to Him. He who created us will welcome
us at journey's end. The Lord Jesus is preparing a place for all His brothers and sisters. Direct
my steps in the straight path. Protect me until I am safely home in heaven. Help me in all my
needs and difficulties.
Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow-men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and
hunger. Give them through our hands, this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love,
give peace and joy.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is
injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness,
light; where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood
as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning
that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
O God the Father of mankind, who hast given unto me these my children, and committed them to my charge
to bring them up for Thee, and to prepare them for eternal life: help me with Thy heavenly grace, that
I may be able to fulfil this most sacred duty and stewardship. Teach me both what to give and what to
withhold; when to reprove and when to forbear; make me to be gentle, yet firm; considerate and watchful;
and deliver me equally from the weakness of indulgence, and the excess of severity; and grant that, both
by word and example, I may be careful to lead them in the ways of wisdom and true piety, so that at last
I may, with them, be admitted to the unspeakable joys of our true home in heaven, in the company of the
blessed Angels and Saints. Amen.
O Heavenly Father, I commend my children to Thy care. Be Thou their God and Father; and mercifully supply
whatever is lacking in me through frailty or negligence. Strengthen them to overcome the corruptions of
the world, whether from within or without; and deliver them from the secret snares of the enemy. Pour
Thy grace into their hearts, and strengthen and multiply in them the gifts of Thy Holy Spirit, that they may
daily grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; and so, faithfully serving Thee here, may come
to rejoice in Thy presence hereafter. Amen.
Dearest Lord,
Teach me to be generous,
Teach me to serve you as you deserve,
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labor and not ask for reward,
Save that of knowing I am doing your will.
Thou hast made me known to friends who I knew not.
Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near,
And made a brother of the stranger.
I am uneasy at heart when I leave my accustomed shelter;
I forget that there abides the old in the new
And that there thou abidest.
Through birth and death,
In this world or in others,
Wherever thou leadest me it is thou,
The same one companion of my endless life
Who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy
To the unfamiliar.
When one knows thee,
Then alien there is none,
Then no door is shut.
Oh grant me my prayer
That I may never lose the bliss
Of the touch of the one in the play of many.
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