Book of Common Prayer
Thanksgiving for Escaping Death
A psalm of David. A song for giving the Temple to the Lord.
30 I will praise you, Lord,
because you rescued me.
You did not let my enemies laugh at me.
2 Lord, my God, I prayed to you,
and you healed me.
3 You lifted me out of the grave;
you spared me from going down to the place of the dead.
4 Sing praises to the Lord, you who belong to him;
praise his holy name.
5 His anger lasts only a moment,
but his kindness lasts for a lifetime.
Crying may last for a night,
but joy comes in the morning.
6 When I felt safe, I said,
“I will never fear.”
7 Lord, in your kindness you made my mountain safe.
But when you turned away, I was frightened.
8 I called to you, Lord,
and asked you to have mercy on me.
9 I said, “What good will it do if I die
or if I go down to the grave?
Dust cannot praise you;
it cannot speak about your truth.
10 Lord, hear me and have mercy on me.
Lord, help me.”
11 You changed my sorrow into dancing.
You took away my clothes of sadness,
and clothed me in happiness.
12 I will sing to you and not be silent.
Lord, my God, I will praise you forever.
It Is Better to Confess Sin
A maskil of David.
32 Happy is the person
whose sins are forgiven,
whose wrongs are pardoned.
2 Happy is the person
whom the Lord does not consider guilty
and in whom there is nothing false.
3 When I kept things to myself,
I felt weak deep inside me.
I moaned all day long.
4 Day and night you punished me.
My strength was gone as in the summer heat. Selah
5 Then I confessed my sins to you
and didn’t hide my guilt.
I said, “I will confess my sins to the Lord,”
and you forgave my guilt. Selah
6 For this reason, all who obey you
should pray to you while they still can.
When troubles rise like a flood,
they will not reach them.
7 You are my hiding place.
You protect me from my troubles
and fill me with songs of salvation. Selah
8 The Lord says, “I will make you wise and show you where to go.
I will guide you and watch over you.
9 So don’t be like a horse or donkey,
that doesn’t understand.
They must be led with bits and reins,
or they will not come near you.”
10 Wicked people have many troubles,
but the Lord’s love surrounds those who trust him.
11 Good people, rejoice and be happy in the Lord.
Sing all you whose hearts are right.
Wishing to Be Near God
For the director of music. A maskil of the sons of Korah.
42 As a deer thirsts for streams of water,
so I thirst for you, God.
2 I thirst for the living God.
When can I go to meet with him?
3 Day and night, my tears have been my food.
People are always saying,
“Where is your God?”
4 When I remember these things,
I speak with a broken heart.
I used to walk with the crowd
and lead them to God’s Temple
with songs of praise.
5 Why am I so sad?
Why am I so upset?
I should put my hope in God
and keep praising him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
I am very sad.
So I remember you where the Jordan River begins,
near the peaks of Hermon and Mount Mizar.
7 Troubles have come again and again, sounding like waterfalls.
Your waves are crashing all around me.
8 The Lord shows his true love every day.
At night I have a song,
and I pray to my living God.
9 I say to God, my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why am I sad
and troubled by my enemies?”
10 My enemies’ insults make me feel
as if my bones were broken.
They are always saying,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why am I so sad?
Why am I so upset?
I should put my hope in God
and keep praising him,
my Savior and my God.
A Prayer for Protection
43 God, defend me.
Argue my case against those who don’t follow you.
Save me from liars and those who do evil.
2 God, you are my strength.
Why have you rejected me?
Why am I sad
and troubled by my enemies?
3 Send me your light and truth
to guide me.
Let them lead me to your holy mountain,
to where you live.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God who is my joy and happiness.
I will praise you with a harp,
God, my God.
5 Why am I so sad?
Why am I so upset?
I should put my hope in God
and keep praising him,
my Savior and my God.
22 The Lord spoke these commands to all of you on the mountain in a loud voice out of the fire, the cloud, and the deep darkness; he did not say anything else. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets, and he gave them to me.
23 When you heard the voice from the darkness, as the mountain was blazing with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me. 24 And you said, “The Lord our God has shown us his glory and majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks to him. 25 But now, we will die! This great fire will burn us up, and we will die if we hear the Lord our God speak anymore. 26 No human being has ever heard the living God speaking from a fire and still lived, but we have. 27 Moses, you go near and listen to everything the Lord our God says. Then you tell us what the Lord our God tells you, and we will listen and obey.”
28 The Lord heard what you said to me, and he said to me, “I have heard what the people said to you. Everything they said was good. 29 I wish their hearts would always respect me and that they would always obey my commands so that things would go well for them and their children forever!
30 “Go and tell the people to return to their tents, 31 but you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, rules, and laws that you must teach the people to obey in the land I am giving them as their own.”
32 So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you, and follow the commands exactly. 33 Live the way the Lord your God has commanded you so that you may live and have what is good and have a long life in the land you will take.
13 It is written in the Scriptures, “I believed, so I spoke.”[a] Our faith is like this, too. We believe, and so we speak. 14 God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, and we know that God will also raise us with Jesus. God will bring us together with you, and we will stand before him. 15 All these things are for you. And so the grace of God that is being given to more and more people will bring increasing thanks to God for his glory.
Living by Faith
16 So we do not give up. Our physical body is becoming older and weaker, but our spirit inside us is made new every day. 17 We have small troubles for a while now, but they are helping us gain an eternal glory that is much greater than the troubles. 18 We set our eyes not on what we see but on what we cannot see. What we see will last only a short time, but what we cannot see will last forever.
5 We know that our body—the tent we live in here on earth—will be destroyed. But when that happens, God will have a house for us. It will not be a house made by human hands; instead, it will be a home in heaven that will last forever. 2 But now we groan in this tent. We want God to give us our heavenly home, 3 because it will clothe us so we will not be naked. 4 While we live in this body, we have burdens, and we groan. We do not want to be naked, but we want to be clothed with our heavenly home. Then this body that dies will be fully covered with life. 5 This is what God made us for, and he has given us the Spirit to be a guarantee for this new life.
6 So we always have courage. We know that while we live in this body, we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by what we believe, not by what we can see. 8 So I say that we have courage. We really want to be away from this body and be at home with the Lord. 9 Our only goal is to please God whether we live here or there, 10 because we must all stand before Christ to be judged. Each of us will receive what we should get—good or bad—for the things we did in the earthly body.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 Jesus said, “There was a rich man who always dressed in the finest clothes and lived in luxury every day. 20 And a very poor man named Lazarus, whose body was covered with sores, was laid at the rich man’s gate. 21 He wanted to eat only the small pieces of food that fell from the rich man’s table. And the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 Later, Lazarus died, and the angels carried him to the arms of Abraham. The rich man died, too, and was buried. 23 In the place of the dead, he was in much pain. The rich man saw Abraham far away with Lazarus at his side. 24 He called, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am suffering in this fire!’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember when you were alive you had the good things in life, but bad things happened to Lazarus. Now he is comforted here, and you are suffering. 26 Besides, there is a big pit between you and us, so no one can cross over to you, and no one can leave there and come here.’ 27 The rich man said, ‘Father, then please send Lazarus to my father’s house. 28 I have five brothers, and Lazarus could warn them so that they will not come to this place of pain.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets; let them learn from them.’ 30 The rich man said, ‘No, father Abraham! If someone goes to them from the dead, they would believe and change their hearts and lives.’ 31 But Abraham said to him, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not listen to someone who comes back from the dead.’”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.