Tagged: verse for the day

“Lord, teach us to pray.” —Luke 11:1 One of the most daring things we can do in life is to ask Jesus to teach us to pray. St. Augustine called prayer “the exercise of our desires.” St. Thomas Aquinas says in reference to the Lord’s Prayer, “In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired” (Catechism, 2763). Authentic prayer is about exercising, screening, and correcting our desires. Prayer concerns crucifying our “flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Prayer is laboring (see Gal 4:19)...

“His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go out and pull them up?’ ” —Matthew 13:28 In His kingdom, God lets the wheat and weeds grow together. He doesn’t pull weeds until they die or He comes again (Mt 13:30, 40). He delays in pulling weeds so that they might change and become wheat. However, it’s possible that, while waiting for the weeds to turn into wheat, the wheat may turn into weeds. Therefore, “be solicitous to make your call and election permanent” (2 Pt 1:10). “After beginning in the Spirit, are you now to end in...

“Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.” —Exodus 20:8 The Lord commanded us to remember to keep holy the new covenant’s sabbath, that is, Sunday. Do you remember? Is the whole day set apart as special? Or do you just go to church on Sunday? If Jesus isn’t “Lord of the sabbath” (see Mk 2:28), then He’s not Lord of your life. If He’s not Lord of all, He’s not Lord at all. The Lord’s word about the Lord’s Day for many people has fallen on the footpath. We don’t understand what God has sown in our minds, so the...

“While we live we are constantly being delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh.” —2 Corinthians 4:11 Mary and a very few others were “near the cross” (Jn 19:25). Almost all of Jesus’ disciples were nowhere near the cross. A few disciples were “looking on from a distance” (Mt 27:55). However, Jesus wants us to be as close to the cross as Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, and Mary were. The Lord wants us to be near the cross spiritually. The Lord wants us continually carrying “about in our...

“Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!” —Exodus 16:3 The Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, so oppressed them that he had their foremen beaten for not producing their quota of bricks, although Pharaoh did not provide the straw needed to make bricks (Ex 5:14). Pharaoh also commanded that every Israelite baby boy be thrown into the river (Ex 1:22). Pharaoh so hardened his heart that he still pursued the Israelites even after every Egyptian...