By Barbara Rainey
First posted on EverThineHome.com
Holy Week is the most important week of the Christian calendar. To help you appreciate these last earthly days of Jesus’ life and to guide you into an experience of wonder and worship, I’ll be posting a short devotion each day here on the blog.
My greatest prayer in the last eight years has been that we, the children of God, would appropriately value this season above all others. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
N.T. Wright said, “This is our greatest festival. Take Easter away and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have Christianity.”
I hope and pray you will grow to share my passion for making much of Easter every year, that the world might know Jesus as King and Lord.
Barbara
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On Palm Sunday Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. In those days a king who came to a city in peace rode on a donkey. And so Jesus in this moment fulfilled yet another prophecy spoken hundreds of years prior: “Behold, your king is coming to you; He is righteous and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey …” (Zechariah 9:9).
In remembrance of this day, churches around the world sing the story of Christ’s entrance and the worship and honor He received from His people. The hymn, “All Glory, Laud and Honor” was written around the year 820 A.D., and the first stanza, below, is often sung when all the children walk in waving their palm branches:
“All glory, laud and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King! to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.”
As Holy Week officially begins … as the Lamb of God arrived to present Himself as our sacrifice … let us pay attention to His declarations of deity found in the Gospel of John.
“I AM the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger …” John 6:35
For what are you hungry today, this week, this season of your life?
Is there in your soul an ache, a pang of hunger for affection, attention, acceptance? Notice what is there within you and name it in prayer to the Bread of Life who longs to feed us with Himself.
All our attempts to feed our God-created soul needs will be only temporarily satisfying. Only the Bread of Life can feed us with nourishment that will last.
Come to Him today with your needs. He waits for you.
My Heart, Ever His: Prayers for Women (NEW from Barbara Rainey)
As we search for meaning in our world of shallow online relationships and glamorized selfies, many are returning to traditional and liturgical churches. The repeated words, benedictions, and historic hymns connect us to saints who have gone before, giving us a sense of belonging, richness, and transcendence. Written prayers, once cast off as archaic, are now welcomed as guides to tune our hearts to the heart of God.
In My Heart, Ever His Barbara Rainey shares 40 prayers for women. Readers can read and meditate on one prayer throughout the week or read a prayer a day for 40 days as a way to express the longing of our hearts to our Father who loves us even as he sees who we truly are. Like the psalms of David, these prayers are honest, sometimes raw. Barbara uses these transparent expressions of common female experiences to encourage us to surrender to Christ and help us see God as he is, not as we assume him to be. My Heart, Ever His provides a stepping-stone to help you become more transparent with God and discover his welcoming embrace.
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