The Church on HyField Road

04/09/2026

Morning Prayers
Praying Through Luke
Scripture Reading for today is Luke 6:41-42.
"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye”.

RC Sproul said,
"A speck of dust in contrast to a wooden plank. We could draw a cartoon about this. We would see two people walking down the street, one man with a totally indiscernible speck of dust in his eye that would take a microscope to detect it, and he’s nearing a man with a wooden plank sticking out of his eye. And the man with the wooden plank comes up to the brother with the speck and says: “Brother, you have a speck in your eye. You need to take it out.” The other guy says, “How can you even see in my eye with that plank sticking out of your own eye?” Jesus said this is how foolish we are. We’re so quick to see the imperfections in everybody else, but we’re blind to our own myopia. We’re blind to the log or the beam or the plank that’s in our own eye. Jesus was not teaching us anything here more than to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. He was not teaching us any more than the Apostles taught us when they said that there is a love that covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). Keep your handkerchief in your own pocket, and let your brother take the speck out of his own eye. This is the teaching of Jesus for His people."

Dear God, please help me to see my own faults and shortcomings before I judge others. Help me to be humble and recognize the areas in my life that need improvement. Give me the wisdom to approach others with love and compassion, rather than criticism and judgment. Help me to be a better person and to reflect Your love and grace to those around me. Amen.

04/07/2026

03/17/2026

Confession of Faith:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth;
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. @

03/17/2026

Fill us, O God, to overflowing with righteousness and the joy that only comes through the Spirit. Let us find satisfaction in service, in loving those who are also in need, and let our empty spaces become vessels through which Your grace flows. Amen.
Happy St. Patrick Day.

03/17/2026

Morning Prayers
Praying Through Luke
Our Scripture Reading for today is Luke 6:21
"Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh."

"In Matthew’s version, it’s “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6). Sometimes the New Testament writers use a technique called ellipsis, which means something is stated in brief but it leaves the implications unstated. That may be simply what Luke is doing here when he fails to spell out the kind of hunger and thirst that Jesus is speaking about. We are people who have great ambitions and drive and goals, and we train diligently so we can be successful or so we can achieve a higher station in life. But who among us has the consummate goal of our lives to be righteous? Jesus’ priorities were different. He said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). The word translated “first” is the word prōtos, not first chronologically but first in importance. This is a challenge for us. We often seek with great passion everything but the kingdom of God, everything but righteousness. We need to have a passion for godliness. Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). He, of all men who ever lived, hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and He achieved it. We in the Western world have a hard time relating to the concepts of real hunger and thirst because few among us have ever experienced the depths of physical hunger. Few among us have ever been at the edge of starvation where a piece of bread would be the greatest joy that we can experience. But that’s what Jesus was talking about. In the ancient Near East, they had real hunger, the kind of hunger that is experienced in Third World nations even today, and Jesus blesses such people."
~ RC Sproul.

Our heavenly Father,, we embrace the hope found in Your Word, knowing that You nourish our souls in ways far greater than we can envision.
Lord, we come before You recognizing the hunger that stirs in the depths of our souls. There are moments when this hunger manifests in physical ways—when we experience lack and longing in our daily bread. But more significantly, dear God, there is a spiritual hunger that drives us towards You. Deliver us from the distractions of this world, that we might realize our deep need for You. We are reminded of Your word, that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4, KJV). We seek to fill ourselves with Your truth, to feast on Your promises, to draw close to You in unwavering faith.
In our hunger, Lord, grant us grace that we may endure and wait expectantly for Your provision. Teach us the beauty of longing, that through our hunger we may appreciate the satisfaction that comes from Your hand. May we never be satisfied with mere physical fill but yearn for the fullness found in Your presence, in communion with You, and in understanding Your great love and mercy. Fill us, O God, to overflowing with righteousness and the joy that only comes through the Spirit. Let us find satisfaction in service, in loving those who are also in need, and let our empty spaces become vessels through which Your grace flows. Amen.

02/21/2026

02/19/2026

Morning Prayers
Praying Through Luke
Scripture Reading for today is Luke 6:1-5
[1]Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields. And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.
[2]And some of the Pharisees said to them, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”
[3]But Jesus answering them said, “Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:
[4]how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?”
[5]And He said to them, “The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”

RC Sproul tells us that
"this passage is about much more than what Jesus and His disciples did and how He answered the criticism of the Pharisees. In this narrative, Jesus makes a pronouncement that is overwhelming in its importance for us and for our understanding of Him: And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (v. 5). We can divide this statement into two parts. The first is where Jesus calls Himself, once again, the “Son of Man.” We’ve heard Him do this before. When He announced the forgiveness of sins for the paralytic, the Pharisees were angry, and Jesus said on that occasion, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (5:24). If we count the times Jesus is described in the New Testament by various titles and we look at their frequency, we see that far and away the number one title ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament is the title Christ, or Christos. It’s used so often that we sometimes think that Christ is Jesus’ last name. Jesus is His name; Christ is His title, which is the New Testament equivalent to the Old Testament word for Messiah. So when the New Testament talks about Jesus Christ, it means Jesus Messiah, Jesus the Anointed One.
The second part of the statement, “lord of the Sabbath” (v. 5), would have been startling to the Pharisees. When was the Sabbath day established? Of course, it was one of the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Sinai. We may think that the sanctity of the Sabbath was established with the covenant God made with His people through Moses. No. Though the Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments, it was instituted in creation. The Sabbath is a creation ordinance established by God in His original work, where He worked for six days creating all that there was. On the seventh day He rested, and He hallowed it, He sanctified it. The Sabbath was sanctified in creation, and the only one who had authority to hallow the Sabbath day was God Himself—not the birds of the air or the fish of the sea or even the creatures that God made in His own image. Only the Creator can be Lord of the Sabbath day. And here, the Lord of the Sabbath day, the One who made all things, is now in His incarnation being challenged by the Pharisees for His behavior on the Sabbath day. He responds by asserting absolute authority over the Sabbath, asking in effect, “Who do you think made the Sabbath day?” We can understand why they couldn’t wait to kill Him as a blasphemer. Jesus was claiming nothing less than absolute divine authority."

Heavenly Father, I am so thankful for Your patience toward all of Your creation. Thankful that You gave us free wills so that we can have meaningful communication with You. That You provided a way for us to repent of our sins when we shamefully decide to disobey You, and for You to be so willing to bring us back into the fold.
Your blessings and provisions are not appreciated as they should be, but we ask You as Lord of the Sabbath, and The Son of Man Who are One, to continue to pick us up and dust us off and start us all over again every time we mess up. Amen.