Heavenly Father,

We come to you today to offer you our praise and worship. We praise you for who you are, for your majesty, and for your unmatched glory. We are grateful for your unbounded grace and unconditional mercy, for loving us beyond what we can even imagine.

Father, during this Lenten season, we are reminded again of our sinfulness and of our need for redemption. We come to you with deep gratitude for the cross and for the resurrected life, for cleansing us of our sins and forgiving our trespasses. As we remember, we offer you our whole lives, again. We relinquish all control of our lives and give you the lordship and sovereignty over our whole lives.

God, we live in a troubled world, especially this last year. In Lebanon, we face trauma after trauma and crisis after crisis. In the middle of all this hardship, we are experiencing your delivering love and provisions. We are grateful for your Church and the way you are working through it to bring hope and meaning to a hopeless world. We pray for our local churches that they continue to be the salt and light that you called them to be, that they would continue to proclaim your love and deliverance in word and deed.

We are also grateful for the work that you are doing through CBM’s partners all over the globe. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to participate in your vast work in this needy world. We pray for strength, wisdom, resilience, and bold witness for all our CBM staff and partners. We pray that you keep us faithful in participating in your mission in the world.

Strengthen us, Father, teach us to do your will, give us pure minds and hearts, protect us from our own sinfulness, comfort us when we are disturbed, and disturb us when we are too comfortable.

We love you, we praise you, and we give you all glory.

Amen!

Elie and Mireille Haddad

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. As children of God, one way to walk in him is to LOVE.

How can we love better? One practice we can take up is to be intentional in showing an act of love as a witness to Christ. Purchase groceries for your neighbour, spend (virtual, if needed) quality time with family member, check up on a friend who is struggling. Take it a step further and show love to a stranger. Help feed the hungry through food security projects, make care packages for people without homes or start a phone pal program at a seniors’ residence.

Worship on the road through Lent with Steve Bell’s “Love is Our Way”. Steve is a friend of CBM who was previously in a concert and story series of events with former CBM Strategic Associate Cheryl Bear.

God So Loved the World

“No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

“This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.”