Page 164 - FSB 2020 God's Church for God's World

154 God’s Church for God’s World
¶ LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI, LEX VIVENDI
As we Pray, So we Believe, So we Live
Our prayer forms our belief, and what we believe (as the Choristers’ Prayer puts it) we are called to ‘show forth in our lives’. For this to be so we have to will it. We have to want to accept the challenge to live Christ- focused lives. This desire for God’s will to be done in our lives may involve disobedience to the world and therefore suffering at the hands of a world which shuns Christ. In all of this the Lord’s Prayer becomes our rock and our point of connection in the relationship we have with God.
‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done’, must be our touchstone in the decisions we make and the trials we endure.
Reading: 1 Peter 4.12-19
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief-maker.
Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace,
but glorify God because you bear this name. For the time has come for judgement to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And
‘If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?’
Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.