August Yada Prayer Invitation
Join me in the humbling?
The year after I left my Pentecostal Church, I asked God for a Scripture to pray over myself and my family for that year to accompany my One Word Scripture for that year:
That Scripture (Isaiah 58) returned to me, as I prayed for a Scripture for this month’s Yada Prayer Podcast.
Isaiah 58
New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition
False and True Worship
58 Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.13 If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
But rather than offering you a podcast today with this, I am offering you the Scripture in its written format, with the invitation for you to join me in asking God to help you this month to:
Yada Him through these verses (come to know Him intimately as a wife knows her husband to conceive a child). Yada is the Hebrew Word used both to refer to Mary not having known (yada) man and yet conceiving Jesus by the Holy Spirit and to refer to God’s repeated invitation to us to come to truly know Him. But my longing and prayer this month is for us to come to know Him through His Word, not in isolation, but in fellowship with our brothers and sisters both locally and abroad- both those brothers and sisters practicing their faith and those caught in the thornbush, who Jesus is calling us to go out to and love homewards, so He can also love us homewards in deeper ways through revealing His face and heart hidden in them and in us.
Amen this Word (so be it, Lord) - by inviting the Holy Spirit to stir a memory of Hjm having already produced the fruit of this admonition in us in past seasons, so that we can arise jn faith to believe He will bring even more fruit because His Word is trustworthy and true.
Do the Word - by inviting the Holy Spirit to help us not just be hearers but doers of this Word and by actively practicing this Word this month.
Adore the Word- by choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus this month to adore Him through this Word, taking the time to ponder, pray, repent, thank and worship God in and through it.
May God make us truly fruitful in the fullness of His grace for us and our joyful obedience in response to that precious grace of His.
So yes I'm interested in this plan and where I have limited Internet access I will be praying for fruitfulness and God's help
This passage is so beautiful and Isaiah a beloved prophet. The gift of my broken protestant life was a love for scriptures and leaning into them. The transformation power was there is those living words but to be fully unleashed obedience to the rest of the truth is necessary. This included fellowship with the Eucharist
I was taught add nothing to the gospel. And we don't need priests because we are priests ( except women in my protestant sect were second class and needed a male covering or they'd lead others to deception. Weak vessel and all sorts of propaganda presuppositions... We in fact added death to the gospel and misogyny.
Mary changes all that. She elevated all of humanity by participating in the redemption of humanity. In weakness and humility is her strength and ours.