Happy Love Day to all. Remember Love Never Takes a Holiday. Remember to Love God, love your neighbor and love one another. John 13:34-35, God is love. Please pray for marriages, relationships and families.

Today is also is Ash Wednesday and the 1st day of Lent. Lent is a time when we should evaluate and reflect on our love for God in how we love Him by obeying His Word, love others and walk in love.

The Lenten Season (February 14 to March 30) is a time of repentance, self-examination, fasting and prayer in preparation for Resurrection Sunday (Easter). “Renewing our sense of who we really are before God is the core of the Lenten experience”. (Pastor Orville K. Littlejohn, my Pastor, “Our Focus for Ash Wednesday”). So today seek God with a repentant heart (See Joel 2: 12-24) and let us honestly search our hearts (Psalm 139:23-24)

Meditate on the scriptures listed below and pray the focus points and what the Holy Ghost places on your heart.

Prayer Focus for February 14, 2018
– February 14- Repentance and Loving God

Scriptures: Deut. 6:1-9 Matt. 22:34-40 Psalm 139:23 Psalm 51 Psalm 66:18-19

Repent: Of not loving God with all of your heart, soul, and mind and of allowing other things to fill and occupy our lives.

Meditate, pray, and write down other areas for which you should repent.

Reflect on what way you want to improve your prayer life and to deepen your friendship with God.

Pray:
• For Christ to bring people near enough to God to experience the Father’s loving delight in His Son for people to love and follow Jesus.
• Pray for forgiveness for what you have done to others and how you have failed to obey God and to forgive others who have wounded you.
• For household salvation for friends and family.
• It is Christ’s eager desire that you know God by drawing near to Him. Open your life to God. Accept His invitation. He’s summoning you to seek His face.
• Pray for MEN – Pray that men will seek God and honor Him with an integrity that unites their lives in faithfulness, wisdom, and truth; that their vision of masculinity would be a Christ-like servant leadership in the family, church and world.
• Pray for God to strengthen your prayer life and deepen your relationship with him.
• Ask God to fill you with joy in his presence.
• Intercede for the church in our community to be filled with fresh love for God and to demonstrate His love to those around us-both in the church and among those who do not yet know Christ.

 

It is important to note that a repentant heart is not limited to a special season or time of the year. If we want to have effective prayer lives which bring forth life transformation and healing of the land, repentance must become a part of our lifestyle. Despite the benefits of repentance, we are resistant to the thought of repentance. Repentance isn’t a popular word. Our culture encourages us to do whatever we want when we want. TV, music videos and movies very rarely show the consequences of our sins.

It is one thing to know that you have done something that is wrong. But it is another to be saddened and sorrowful about your actions and determine that you will turn away from that sin and never do the act again. To repent “I” or “we” must come to terms with and acknowledge that we have sinned and then turn away from such sinful behavior and be reconciled back to our loving Lord. Therefore, repentance is a change of mind that involves both a turning from sin and turning to God. Christ began his ministry with a call to repentance. (Mathew. 4:17). We must examine every attitude, every motive, every action and ever word of evil. Repentance means that you are deeply godly sorrowful and hurt about what you have done unto the Lord and that you are determined to do all that you can not to commit that sin again. “Repentance means we are sorry about our sin to the point of grief, and we have turned and walked away from it”. Stormie Omartian, “The Power of a Praying Woman” p. 40, Harvest House Publishers, (2002).

By Linda Fegins, The Prayer Leader. ldfaygo@gmail.com