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April 05, 2023

Day 11: The Golden Rule | 12-Day Guided Prayer

Welcome to Day 11 of Our Guided Prayer

Note: This prayer meditation is first and foremost designed to be listened to, so we encourage you to listen to the audio as you read along.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey Church on the Move family,

Welcome to our 12-day guided prayer podcast.

Today is day 11.

Take a moment to prepare yourself to pray over the next few minutes by putting away distractions, setting aside mental to-do lists, and finding a place where for the next 10 minutes or so you can give yourself entirely to the task of prayer.

See yourself placing any worries or situations outside of your control at the feet of Jesus.

Let’s begin by praying a simple prayer. If you find your mind wandering or it’s difficult to focus simply return to prayer by repeating this phrase. Take a deep breath, rest your thoughts on God and pray:

God, You are my refuge and my strength,

A very present help when I am in trouble.

Our prayers over the 12 days are based on reflections from the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. If you’ve made it this far, following along everyday, well done. Our hope is that these 10 minutes have helped you consistently turn your thoughts toward God and His goodness. Today we’re continuing our journey through Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Today we’ll be praying in response to Matthew 7:12.

12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

This is one of those verses that whether you grew up in church or not, you are probably familiar with in some form. It’s popularly known as the Golden Rule because of the value that it holds for the societies that keep it.

It’s a teaching of Jesus that at first glance we assume we understand. But by now we probably know that Jesus isn’t going after mere behavior, He’s going after our hearts.

Think about it. Jesus is summarizing the core teachings of an entire people in one simple phrase.

Everything that is required of you is met in treating your neighbor the way you want to be treated. How do we want to be treated? With honor, respect, love, grace, and honesty. How simple and yet how difficult we find this!

It’s easy for us to think about how we want to be treated but when someone wrongs us or maybe they are just different from us we find in ourselves a tendency to either think of ourselves as better or lesser. We, often unknowingly, think in terms or shame or contempt. Spoiler alert, this will not lead to us loving our neighbor well.

And if you’ve been following along for the past several days you know that the only remedy to our problem is the closeness or nearness of Jesus and our awareness of our need for Him.

When we see our need for Jesus, our need for grace and forgiveness, this will only more deeply acquaint us with our neighbor’s need. Their need might come out in defensiveness or disdain, but at the end of the day what we all need and want most desperately is to be seen and known and loved into wholeness.

Are you aware of your deep need for Jesus?

How prone we are to forget how much we need Him! For the next few moments as Jesus to remind you of your need for Him.

Mark 12:30-32 says,

30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Our ability to love others, to treat them the way we would want to be treated, comes from receiving love ourselves.

We love God because He loved us first.

We don’t know how to love without His love. We need to be constantly reminded of this.

So, let’s take a few moments to receive the love of Jesus. This might look like opening your hands, or kneeling down wherever you are. If you’ve been struggling with feelings of inadequacy or shame ask Jesus to meet you there. If you’ve been striving to earn His love let yourself relax into His care for you.

When you look at your neighbor there are two things that are always true of them.

Loving your neighbor well requires us to see them as God sees them. Ask for this now.

Now, ask God to make Your life a conduit of His love. Love that calls people to abundant life, love that calls people home. Ask God to make your life a testimony to others that what they most deeply long for is found in Jesus.

To end our time today, let’s pray together.

Father, those who have encountered Your love can’t help but be transformed by Your love. We can’t help but become love. Will you help us see others as people who have been made in Your image today? Sin has marred that image, causing irreparable damage without Jesus. Sometimes brokenness is all we see and we wonder if you can really restore and redeem others and use us in the process. But You saved us, You rescued us when we were just as needy, just as broken. Help us to love others today with the love You have so graciously poured on us.

Amen.

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