St Peters RC Church Hamilton

A FRESH OUTPOURING  

“He will swallow up death forever, and the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces; the rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 25 v 8)     

Come, possess us, Lord Jesus! Increase our capacity for trust, According to the sending of Your Holy Spirit. He was the Motivator of our faith,  Our belief in You as Saviour.  We offer warm thanks and praise for this. But now is the time of Advent, A season of preparation for Christmas. Therefore we need a fresh outpouring Of Your Holy Spirit teaching us. Sharing with us holy wisdom, And the truth we find in You, Lord Jesus.     “And it will be said in that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him and He will save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for Him; and we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” (Isaiah 25 v 9)    Please come Holy Spirit, and increase our capacity To turn to, yearn for Jesus as Lord, As Saviour, as God’s living Word, our hope. Increase please, the scope of our ability To give first hand witness to meeting with Jesus. Fill us by His holiness, a sure testimony. Define again our heavenly destiny Discovered in the Son born to Mary, The Child born to be King over humanity. Elucidate the role of love, of mercy, of forgiveness, The reasons why our Brother chose to die That we would be pardoned of our sinfulness, and saved.     “Open the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter in.” (Isaiah 16 v 2)    Renew the promise our Father makes to us Of deliverance from sin’s shame, satan’s blame. Please, please focus Christ Jesus in each of us, In every heart and mind of a believer. So the remainder of the world find a love increasing Which is true, true to the Trinity, true to everybody. There would be no Christmas without Christ, And this is exactly how it feels in our world today. Sadly the majority have moved far away from propriety, From the virtue necessary to progress to holiness.  “You will keep him (her) in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You. Trust in the LORD, forever, for in YAH, the LORD is everlasting strength.” (Isaiah 26 v 4)   So many tend to live self-absorbed, self centredly. But the Lord Jesus comes to set us free from this. We will be welcoming a royal Baby, Son of God and mysteriously, Son of Mary.  Therefore we have to make ready.  Come, Holy Spirit of purity, descend firmly upon us. Please help us to dethrone ourselves, To exalt Christ Jesus as He is, the Messiah,  The promised Saviour, the Prince of Peace, Able to release us from our foolishness and gross stupidity.  “…authenticity…depends on a freedom and sincerity of soul which permits a person to grasp the value of all the signs contained in Jesus’ gestures and to accept all that ensues from them…” (“Recognising Christ’s Amazing Works” Servant of God, Father Luigi Giussani)  The stupidity whereby we seek to live independently is wrong! Let us instead, worship our Father in the Lord Jesus, Crowning Him as King to bring light to a darkened world. For Jesus will be our Saviour forever,  The doorway to heaven opened up for us, Because His holy life will be sacrificed on a † To gain us forgiveness and freedom from satan. Yes, we must make ready to receive.  Come, Holy Spirit, inhabit our thoughts  That we be fully caught up in who Christ Jesus is.    “…we have been made to face the affirmation of an extraordinary historical reality: a man – God” (Father Giussani cont. in “MAGNIFICAT” 02.12.20)   Let us be thinking like Jesus, acting like Him, loving like He does, Always with the high purpose of honouring our Father. Strengthen us, Spirit Lord, in our holiness. Make us totally focused on Jesus’ will and ways. Teach us again to pray handing over the control of the day. Not of course to satan, who will try to usurp us,  But to the One who lives to make love gracious. Come, Holy Spirit, that we be made holy, Living life through the Lord Jesus, making Him our worship, Which we lovingly offer back to our Father of mercy.  “ ‘And this is the will of Him who sent Me that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him (her) up at the last day’.” (John 6 v 40)      Then we can be entirely happy, happy to be holy. Come, for You are the Spirit of hope, of peace, of joy. In Your employ we discover Jesus as Christ the King, The One to bring us before the throne of mercy, Then we will have experienced holy love in its entirety. Love gifted us by our Father, in the Son, by You, the Holy Spirit. What merit there is in us turning to our Saviour Brother. As the Light of the world, He shines with love. As Christ the King, He gifts us of His love.  As the King of glory, He will lead us home to the heavenly realm.