Book of Common Prayer
A Prayer in Sickness[a]
41 Happy are those who are concerned for the poor;
the Lord will help them when they are in trouble.
2 The Lord will protect them and preserve their lives;
he will make them happy in the land;
he will not abandon them to the power of their enemies.
3 The Lord will help them when they are sick
and will restore them to health.
4 I said, “I have sinned against you, Lord;
be merciful to me and heal me.”
5 My enemies say cruel things about me.
They want me to die and be forgotten.
6 Those who come to see me are not sincere;
they gather bad news about me
and then go out and tell it everywhere.
7 All who hate me whisper to each other about me,
they imagine the worst about[b] me.
8 They say, “He is fatally ill;
he will never leave his bed again.”
9 (A)Even my best friend, the one I trusted most,
the one who shared my food,
has turned against me.
10 Be merciful to me, Lord, and restore my health,
and I will pay my enemies back.
11 They will not triumph over me,
and I will know that you are pleased with me.
12 You will help me, because I do what is right;
you will keep me in your presence forever.
13 (B)Praise the Lord, the God of Israel!
Praise him now and forever!
Amen! Amen!
(A)God's Judgment and Grace[a]
52 Why do you boast, great one, of your evil?
God's faithfulness is eternal.
2 You make plans to ruin others;
your tongue is like a sharp razor.
You are always inventing lies.
3 You love evil more than good
and falsehood more than truth.
4 You love to hurt people with your words, you liar!
5 So God will ruin you forever;
he will take hold of you and snatch you from your home;
he will remove you from the world of the living.
6 Righteous people will see this and be afraid;
then they will laugh at you and say,
7 “Look, here is someone who did not depend on God for safety,
but trusted instead in great wealth
and looked for security in being wicked.”
8 But I am like an olive tree growing in the house of God;
I trust in his constant love forever and ever.
9 I will always thank you, God, for what you have done;
in the presence of your people
I will proclaim that you are good.
A Prayer for Protection[a]
44 With our own ears we have heard it, O God—
our ancestors have told us about it,
about the great things you did in their time,
in the days of long ago:
2 how you yourself drove out the heathen
and established your people in their land;
how you punished the other nations
and caused your own to prosper.
3 Your people did not conquer the land with their swords;
they did not win it by their own power;
it was by your power and your strength,
by the assurance of your presence,
which showed that you loved them.
4 You are my king and my God;
you give[b] victory to your people,
5 and by your power we defeat our enemies.
6 I do not trust in my bow
or in my sword to save me;
7 but you have saved us from our enemies
and defeated those who hate us.
8 We will always praise you
and give thanks to you forever.
9 But now you have rejected us and let us be defeated;
you no longer march out with our armies.
10 You made us run from our enemies,
and they took for themselves what was ours.
11 You allowed us to be slaughtered like sheep;
you scattered us in foreign countries.
12 You sold your own people for a small price
as though they had little value.[c]
13 Our neighbors see what you did to us,
and they mock us and laugh at us.
14 You have made us a joke among the nations;
they shake their heads at us in scorn.
15 I am always in disgrace;
I am covered with shame
16 from hearing the sneers and insults
of my enemies and those who hate me.
17 All this has happened to us,
even though we have not forgotten you
or broken the covenant you made with us.
18 We have not been disloyal to you;
we have not disobeyed your commands.
19 Yet you left us helpless among wild animals;
you abandoned us in deepest darkness.
20 If we had stopped worshiping our God
and prayed to a foreign god,
21 you would surely have discovered it,
because you know our secret thoughts.
22 (A)But it is on your account that we are being killed all the time,
that we are treated like sheep to be slaughtered.
23 Wake up, Lord! Why are you asleep?
Rouse yourself Don't reject us forever!
24 Why are you hiding from us?
Don't forget our suffering and trouble!
25 We fall crushed to the ground;
we lie defeated in the dust.
26 Come to our aid!
Because of your constant love save us!
God Is Lord of the Future
48 Listen to this, people of Israel,
you that are descended from Judah:
You swear by the name of the Lord
and claim to worship the God of Israel—
but you don't mean a word you say.
2 And yet you are proud to say
that you are citizens of the holy city
and that you depend on Israel's God,
whose name is the Lord Almighty.
3 The Lord says to Israel,
“Long ago I predicted what would take place;
then suddenly I made it happen.
4 I knew that you would prove to be stubborn,
as rigid as iron and unyielding as bronze.
5 And so I predicted your future long ago,
announcing events before they took place,
to keep you from claiming
that your idols and images made them happen.
6 “All I foretold has now taken place;
you have to admit my predictions were right.
Now I will tell you of new things to come,
events that I did not reveal before.
7 Only now am I making them happen;
nothing like this took place in the past.
If it had, you would claim that you knew all about it.
8 I knew that you couldn't be trusted,
that you have always been known as a rebel.
That is why you never heard of this at all,
why no word of it ever came to your ears.
9 “In order that people will praise my name,
I am holding my anger in check;
I am keeping it back and will not destroy you.
10 I have tested you in the fire of suffering,
as silver is refined in a furnace.
But I have found that you are worthless.
11 What I do is done for my own sake—
I will not let my name be dishonored
or let anyone else share the glory
that should be mine and mine alone.”
1 From Paul, whose call to be an apostle did not come from human beings or by human means, but from Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from death. 2 All the believers who are here join me in sending greetings to the churches of Galatia:
3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
4 In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. 5 To God be the glory forever and ever! Amen.
The One Gospel
6 I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ,[a] and are accepting another gospel. 7 Actually, there is no “other gospel,” but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell! 9 We have said it before, and now I say it again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel that is different from the one you accepted, may he be condemned to hell!
10 Does this sound as if I am trying to win human approval? No indeed! What I want is God's approval! Am I trying to be popular with people? If I were still trying to do so, I would not be a servant of Christ.
How Paul Became an Apostle
11 Let me tell you, my friends, that the gospel I preach is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any human being, nor did anyone teach it to me. It was Jesus Christ himself who revealed it to me.
13 (A)You have been told how I used to live when I was devoted to the Jewish religion, how I persecuted without mercy the church of God and did my best to destroy it. 14 (B)I was ahead of most other Jews of my age in my practice of the Jewish religion, and was much more devoted to the traditions of our ancestors.
15 (C)But God in his grace chose me even before I was born, and called me to serve him. And when he decided 16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the Gentiles, I did not go to anyone for advice, 17 nor did I go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me. Instead, I went at once to Arabia, and then I returned to Damascus.
Jairus' Daughter and the Woman Who Touched Jesus' Cloak(A)
21 Jesus went back across to the other side of the lake. There at the lakeside a large crowd gathered around him. 22 Jairus, an official of the local synagogue, arrived, and when he saw Jesus, he threw himself down at his feet 23 and begged him earnestly, “My little daughter is very sick. Please come and place your hands on her, so that she will get well and live!”
24 Then Jesus started off with him. So many people were going along with Jesus that they were crowding him from every side.
25 There was a woman who had suffered terribly from severe bleeding for twelve years, 26 (B)even though she had been treated by many doctors. She had spent all her money, but instead of getting better she got worse all the time. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came in the crowd behind him, 28 saying to herself, “If I just touch his clothes, I will get well.”
29 She touched his cloak, and her bleeding stopped at once; and she had the feeling inside herself that she was healed of her trouble. 30 At once Jesus knew that power had gone out of him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 His disciples answered, “You see how the people are crowding you; why do you ask who touched you?”
32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 The woman realized what had happened to her, so she came, trembling with fear, knelt at his feet, and told him the whole truth. 34 Jesus said to her, “My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your trouble.”
35 While Jesus was saying this, some messengers came from Jairus' house and told him, “Your daughter has died. Why bother the Teacher any longer?”
36 Jesus paid no attention to[a] what they said, but told him, “Don't be afraid, only believe.” 37 Then he did not let anyone else go on with him except Peter and James and his brother John. 38 They arrived at Jairus' house, where Jesus saw the confusion and heard all the loud crying and wailing. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this confusion? Why are you crying? The child is not dead—she is only sleeping!”
40 They started making fun of him, so he put them all out, took the child's father and mother and his three disciples, and went into the room where the child was lying. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha, koum,” which means, “Little girl, I tell you to get up!”
42 She got up at once and started walking around. (She was twelve years old.) When this happened, they were completely amazed. 43 But Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone, and he said, “Give her something to eat.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.