A Month in Prayer
Praying the Prayers of the Reformers October 25
"This is how you should pray...Forgive us Our Debts as We forgive our debtors." Mt. 6:12
Forgive them all, O Lord:
Our sins of omission and our sins of commission;
The sins of our youth and the sins of our riper years;
The sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies;
Our secret and our more open sins;
Our sins of ignorance and surprise;
And our more deliberate and presumptuous sins;
The sins we have done to please ourselves;
And the sins we have done to please others;
The sins we know and remember;
And the sins we have forgotten;
The sins we have striven to hide from others;
And the sins by which we have made others offend....
Forgive them, O Lord,
forgive them all for HIS sake
Who died for our sins
And rose for our justification,
And now stands at YOUR RIGHT HAND
To make intercession for us,
Jesus Christ our Savior!
Amen Amen Amen!!!
John Wesley (1703-1791) was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. He is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement. Methodism stressed personal piety and used itinerant preachers who travelled widely to evangelize and preached often in open spaces to those who would not otherwise come to church. Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day including prison reform and abolition. Throughout his life Wesley remained within the Established Church and insisted that his movement was well within the bounds of the Anglican tradition. At the age of five, Wesley was rescued from his father’s burning rectory. This escape made a deep impression on his mind and he regarded himself as providentially set apart, a "brand plucked from the burning" (Zechariah 3:2). After being ordained, he and his brother both traveled to Savannah, Georgia with George Whitfield to work among the colonists and Native Americans. It was on the voyage to the colonies that the Wesleys came into contact with Moravian who influenced them with their deep faith and piety. Returning to England after a troubled time in America, Wesley’s life changed on May 24, 1738 a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street, London. He heard a reading of Martin Luther's preface to Romans, and "I felt my heart strangely warmed.” The rest of his life Wesley preached wherever he could, formed Methodist, societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, superintended schools and orphanages, and received at least £20,000 for his publications but gave most of it away. He travelled usually on horseback, preaching two or three times each day. It was recorded that he "rode 250,000 miles, gave away 30,000 pounds ... and preached more than 40,000 sermons.” Wesley married at the age of 48, but the union was not happy and produced no children. When his wife left him after fifteen years, Wesley wrote in his journal, "I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her." Toward the end of his life he was widely respected and referred to as "the best loved man in England.” When he died at the age of 87, Wesley’s last words were "The best of all is God is with us.”
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 – 1883)
Oh, God,
you know I have no money,
but you can make the people do for me,
and you must make the people do for me.
I will never give you peace till you do, God.
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 – 1883) is the self-given name after 1843 of an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was born in New York, and was sold at the age of nine at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100. She was owned by four people some of whom treated her very harshly including daily beatings with a bundle of rods. Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm. Robert's owner forbade the relationship, and Robert was savagely beaten. He died from those injuries. Truth was forced to marry an older slave named Thomas. She bore him five children. Late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her other children behind She found her way to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagener, who took her and her baby in. Isaac offered to buy her services from her owner for the remainder of the year until the state's emancipation took effect for $20.00. Truth learned that her son Peter, then five years old, had been sold illegally by her former owner to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the Van Wageners, she took the issue to court and, after months of legal proceedings, got back her son, who had been abused by his new owner. Truth was one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win the case. She had a life-changing religious experience during her stay with the Van Wageners and became a devout Christian. "The Spirit calls me, and I must go," she said. Truth became a Methodist and preaching about the abolition of slavery, women's rights, prison reform, and against capital punishment. More than 3,000 people crowded into the Battle Creek Tabernacle to pay their last respects to the black heroine when she died. In 2009 Truth was first black woman honored with a bust in the US Capitol and in 1997 NASA named the Mars Pathfinder's robotic rover "Sojourner" after her.
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Karl Barth (1886-1968)
Lord, our God,
you know who we are:
People with good and bad consciences;
satisfied and dissatisfied,
sure and unsure people;
Christians out of conviction
and Christians out of habit;
believers, half-believers, and unbelievers…
But now we all stand before you:
in all our inequality equal in this,
that we are all in the wrong before you
and among each other…
but also in that your grace is promised to
and turned toward all of us
through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth (1886-1968) was a Swiss Reformed theologian and professor of theology. Both the most prolific and influential theologian of the twentieth century, his thought emphasized the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of humanity, and the "infinite qualitative distinction between God and mankind was professor of theology. While teaching in Germany, Barth became a leader in the Confessing Church which actively opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. The Confessing Church sought to prevent the Nazis from taking over the existing church and establishing a state church controlled by the regime. This struggle culminated in Barth's authorship of the Barmen Declaration, which fiercely criticized Christians who supported the Nazis. The Barmen Declaration is in our PCUSA Book of Confessions. Barth had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler and went back to Switzerland and became a professor in Basel. Barth’s systematic theology, Church Dogmatics, runs to over six million words and 8,000 pages in English. It is over 9,000 in German making it one of the longest works of systematic theology ever written. Barth’s influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on April 20, 1962.
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