Christ Our Anchor is an Anglican mission in Nashville, Tennessee, focused on restoring relationships with God and neighbor through worship and work.

Join us Wednesday evenings in East Nashville at 530 for a time of fellowship, followed by evening prayer at 630.

Everyone is welcome.

You can learn more about providing paid work for the glory of God’s kingdom by visiting us at ChristOurAnchor.org.

Let us pray.

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

I really appreciate the collect for this week because it really ties in with the readings that we did.

We have Paul talking about the children of Israel and unworthily eating and doing those things which we don’t want to do and temptation and how we escape temptation through Christ.

And then we have Christ talking about the very real and present danger of money and commerce in our lives and how we can so easily compromise our principles to get a short-term deal or to try to better our lives even when what we’re doing is not the right thing and is dishonest.

And what I love about the collect is because it ties in those two readings, but then there’s also a very real prayer, I think, especially for those of us these days who are out working in the world.

It’s a constant temptation to be drawn into the workplace drama, to tell little white lies, to get ahead, to take credit for something you didn’t do, to try to undermine a manager that hasn’t really been good to you, to try to get them fired or make their mistakes more known.

And so this prayer is one that I think we really do need to pray more often than once a year because it’s truly the temptations that surround us are things that we cannot overcome of our own free will.

We must truly depend on God to overcome them because we cannot do anything that is good without Him because we are constantly going to be tempted to do evil, to make these little compromises that don’t seem all that bad, but then have these huge repercussions and ripples throughout our lives.

And so that’s what I find so important about today’s readings.

And it’s not just those little work-related white lies.

I think it’s also hard to do those things that we know are good.

It’s hard to have right motives.

It’s hard to get the gumption to readjust our priorities, to not live by secular values, but to live by kingdom values, to make sure that when we could easily drive by that person sitting in a tent, as we saw today, that it’s easy to walk by and ignore and nothing will happen.

But we know we have this call to do God’s will and that God pushes us towards that.

And that if we obey and if we push through the resistance, that on the other side of that resistance, He is there to provide, to guide, to give us the words, to give us the strength to accomplish that which He desires for us to accomplish.

So that is my prayer for all of us.

That as we go about our lives, we may continually seek guidance and pray to God that He will empower us to live according to His will, that He will drive us to seek and do the good, that He will push us away towards those easy temptations that move us away from the right, that He will guide us through the hard path and constantly support us in that path.

So that in our bodies and in our lives, we might glorify Him and might bring others to know Him.

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.