Ohana Prayer 277 – Luke 5
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.
18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus.
19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?
23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?
24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”
25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.
26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him,
28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
Praise the infinite, immeasurable, and limitless ruler, our Father God in heaven. Thank you for allowing us to live in your miracles all our lives with your constant blessings. Our cups overflow. Where you are, it is heaven. Let the darkness before dawn act as our dark chamber in which we can rid of all distracting thoughts and bow down before you, our heavenly father. Please examine our hearts and refocus our thoughts in preparation for a new day.
Lord Jesus, thank you for your generous love. Willing to bear the stigma of mischoosing one of your disciples, you never gave up the personal teaching to Judas and gave him many opportunities to repent.
Lord Jesus, please come to enlighten our lives. Forgive us for hiding behind the crowd because of our suspicious hearts and complaining in the dark corners because of self-pity. We have become the invisible Christians. We have lost both light and heat; the new and old garments are both torn.
Holy Spirit, please do not discard us as a low-burning fire, an unburnable stick, a cold heart or a superficial Christian who has failed to be a living testimony. Holy Spirit, please show us remarkable things in this harsh winter-like pandemic. That is, please light up the spiritual fire of prayer for revival of the churches, shovel off the ice from our spiritual windows and clear the heavy snow from the roof of our house of God. May the radiance of the cross reappear and may the Lord’s banner of victory fly again in the communities.
Holy Spirit, please heal all our spiritual illnesses so that we can give up everything we have to follow Christ, making “making disciples” as our calling and mission in life.
We pray in the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!