Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 84
For the Music Director. According to The Gittith. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
1 How lovely is Your dwelling place,
O Lord of Hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, even faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my body cry out
for the living God.
3 Yes, the sparrow has found a home
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
even at Your altars,
O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in Your house;
they continually praise You. Selah
5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
in whose heart are the paths to Zion.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they makes it a spring;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
every one of them appears in Zion before God.
8 O Lord God of Hosts, hear my prayer,
and give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah
9 Behold, O God our shield,
and look upon the face of Your anointed.
10 For a day in Your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord will give favor and glory,
for no good thing will He withhold
from the one who walks uprightly.
12 O Lord of Hosts,
blessed is the man who trusts in You.
Elijah Flees From Jezebel
19 And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So let the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.”
3 When he saw that she was serious, he arose and ran for his life to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. 4 But he went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree and asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough! Now, O Lord, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.”
5 As he lay and slept under the juniper tree, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” 6 He looked, and there was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water at his head. And he ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.” 8 He arose and ate and drank and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Elijah Hears the Lord
9 He came to a cave and camped there, and the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “Why are you here, Elijah?”
10 And he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, Lord of Hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.”
11 He said, “Go and stand on the mountain before the Lord.”
And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind split the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake came, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake, a fire came, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire, a still, small voice.
Ministers of the New Covenant
3 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, letters of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? 2 You are our letter written in our hearts, known and read by all men. 3 For you are prominently declared to be the letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on human tablets of the heart.
4 We have such trust through Christ toward God, 5 not that we are sufficient in ourselves to take credit for anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7 If the ministry that brought death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, the glory which was to fade away, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry of condemnation is glorious, the ministry of righteousness much more exceeds it in glory.
18 But we all, seeing the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.