“Pray for His Fame “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’” (Matthew 6:9) Dozens of times Scripture says that God does things “for his name’s sake.” He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:3) For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt. (Psalm 25:11) He saved them for his name’s sake. (Psalm 106:8) For my name’s sake I defer my anger. (Isaiah 48:9) Your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. (1 John 2:12) If you ask what is really moving the heart of God in all those statements (and many like them), the answer is that God delights in having his name known and honored. The first and most important prayer that can be prayed is, “Hallowed be your name.” I used to think this is an acclamation. Like, “Hallelujah! The Lord’s name is hallowed!” But it’s not an acclamation. It’s a petition. Actually a kind of imperative or command. Lord, let it be! Cause it to be. May your name be hallowed. This is my request, my prayer. I am urging you to this: Cause people to hallow your name. Cause me to hallow your name! God loves to have more and more people “hallow” his name. That’s why his Son teaches Christians to pray for it. In fact, Jesus makes it the very first and paramount prayer. Because this is the first and great passion of the Father. “Lord, cause more and more people to hallow your name,” that is, esteem, admire, respect, cherish, honor, reverence, and praise your name. More and more people! So, you can see it is basically a missionary prayer.” - credit to Solid Joys Devotional https://www.desiringgod.org/solid-joys?utm_campaign=Solid+Joys&utm_medium=website&utm_source=website_banner&utm_content=SolidJoys-1

Keith Hobkirk has requested I share the following prayer needs for China: “April 12 - This week, pray for the needs of the people of Xiantan. Pray for the church to be a Christlike witness to their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members. April 13 - A pastor in Xiangtan speaks about how improved transportation has actually made things difficult for the city’s economy: "Around 2023, the transit connections among Xiangtan, Changsha, and Zhuzhou reopened, creating a half-hour living circle between Xiangtan and the other two cities. This has also led to a great deal of population loss, because Changsha and Zhuzhou have more job opportunities, and many young people are moving in both directions. That has also contributed to Xiangtan’s economic decline, because companies cannot recruit enough workers." Pray for people who will invest in Xiangtan, that it may be a city that flourishes for the good of all its citizens. Pray also for more care for those who are struggling in the poor economy. April 14 - A Xiangtan pastor says, "Campus ministry has shrunk and been restricted. The church cannot enter campuses or communities, and even social charity activities are hard to organize in the church’s name, because we are considered an illegal church and cannot operate in that way." Pray for more creative ways for churches to love and witness to students in the name of Christ. April 15 - A pastor in Xiangtan says, "Schools maintain constant pressure, and students feel they must study hard and are deeply repressed. Many young people have depression and emotional heaviness. When we interact with them, we find that if we only try to reason with them, they feel annoyed. To build relationships takes a great deal of time and energy, and for ministry today that is a huge challenge." Pray for students in Xiangtan who are struggling with depression or who are overwhelmed by school. Pray that the church can be a source of comfort and peace for them, that they will be able to build deep relationships with students and show them the hope of Christ. April 16 - "After the pandemic," says one Xiangtan pastor, "people have become more and more guarded. Before, we could hand out Gospel tracts on the street or give small gifts. Now none of that can really be done. On the one hand, the government restricts it and does not allow it. On the other hand, people are guarded, and there are too many scammers. If you kindly offer someone a small gift, they will throw it away because they are afraid." Pray that the Holy Spirit would overcome the spirit of fear and suspicion in Xiangtan, that the lost would find the hope of Christ. April 17 - "Right now there is an online culture," says one pastor in Xiangtan. "Especially among those born after 2000, the culture places a high value on personal entertainment, while social and outdoor activity have greatly decreased. When we try to reach them, we discover cultural challenges, and they are not willing to participate. It is hard to enter their world. They have their own circles and electronic entertainment, which gives a high level of stimulation to the brain, so when they hear the Gospel, it feels too traditional and too old-fashioned. They also have a desire for novelty and a tendency to tire quickly of things." Pray that the gospel will break through the overemphasis on entertainment, that young people in Xiangtan would be aware of their own deep longings and that in Christ they would find the rest that their restless hearts seek. April 18 - A sister in Xiangtan says, "In this age of rampant material desire, together with the culture of the city, people are especially drawn to eating, drinking, entertainment, and pleasure. They feel they do not have time for Jesus. They want to have fun, play mahjong, and pursue whatever brings profit. Some time ago there was a woman here who actually came to church for a period of time, but her heart never really seemed to come in. She said that going to church brings no payoff, no visible benefit, whereas playing mahjong does, and people drift in those things day after day. It is very hard, really very hard, to shepherd and support them." Pray for gospel depth in Xiangtan, that people would not see the gospel as transactional or expect a worldly "payoff," but would rather be captured by the beauty and goodness of the gospel vision.“

Daily Devotional for March 28, 2026 Charles Spurgeon Lead the Way "The LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail."Deuteronomy 28:13 If we obey the LORD, He will compel our adversaries to see that His blessing rests upon us. Though this be a promise of the law, yet it stands good to the people of God; for Jesus has removed the curse, but He has established the blessing. It is for saints to lead the way among men by holy influence: they are not to be the tail, to be dragged hither and thither by others. We must not yield to the spirit of the age, but compel the age to do homage to Christ. If the LORD be with us, we shalt not crave toleration for religion, but we shall seek to seat it on the throne of society. Has not the LORD Jesus made His people priests. Surely they are to teach and must not be learners from the philosophies of unbelievers. Are we not in Christ made kings to reign upon the earth? How, then can we be the servants of custom, the slaves of human opinion? Have you, dear friend, taken up your true position for Jesus? Too many are silent because diffident, if not cowardly. Should we allow the name of the LORD Jesus to be kept in the background? Should our religion drag along as a tail? Should it not rather lead the way and be the ruling force with ourselves and others? Charles Spurgeon's Faith's Checkbook - Devotional by Charles Spurgeon

“Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 “They are slipping away these sweet, swift years; Like a leaf on the current cast, With never a break in the rapid flow; We watch them as one by one they go Into the beautiful past.” What have we put upon the little white pages of the days of another year as one by one they were opened for us to write “our word or two” on them? What has the past year brought to us? What have we given it to keep? If we had it to live over again would we live it differently? What would we do that we have not done? What would we not do that we have done? What has our past year taught us? What lessons are we going to carry over into our next year’s life? This ninetieth Psalm is called a prayer of Moses. It is the oldest of the Psalms. Remember the wilderness wanderings. Forty years the Israelites tarried in the wilderness, before they entered the Promised Land. It was because of their unbelief. They were at the gate and were about to be led into possession. But spies were sent, and their fearful story frightened the people. They dreaded to meet the giants, and refused to go over the border. History was set back forty years. Unbelief is costly. Moses looked back over these forty lost years. He saw six thousand graves strewn along the path. No wonder a sad tone runs through his Psalm. He was one of the last survivors of the generation that had left Egypt. He thought of the disappointment that had broken so many brave men’s hearts. On himself, too, part of the curse had fallen. He must die outside of the land of promise. You remember how he pleaded to be permitted to cross over Jordan. But the saddest thing of all was that the people themselves were to blame for their disappointment. Those graves in the wilderness, sin had dug. It seemed but a little sin that Moses had committed. He was terribly tried by the people’s rebelliousness, lost his patience and self-control, and spoke unadvisedly. And his slip cost him his entrance into the Promised Land. We cannot tell what a moment’s loss of self-control may cost us. In this Psalm, Moses looks back and everywhere he sees sin’s ruin and hurt. “We are consumed by your anger.” “By your wrath are we troubled.” “You have set our iniquities before you.” “All our days are passed away in your wrath.” What has been the effect on you of the experiences of the past year’s life? Have they hurt you? Have they left wounds on your soul? The problem of true living is to get good and blessing out of every experience. You had sorrow. Did your sorrow leave your heart sweeter and purer? Did it make you gentler, more patient, more compassionate, more mindful of others? Did it bring you nearer to God? Or did the sorrow hurt you, leaving your peace broken, your trust in God impaired, your spirit vexed and troubled? Or you had temptation. Did your temptation make you stronger as you resisted it, and overcame the tempter? That is the way we may make our temptations blessings, to make even Satan help to build up our spiritual life. An evil thought resisted and mastered, leaves us not only unhurt but stronger in the fiber of our being. But temptations parleyed with, and yielded to hurt our life. What has been the effect of the year’s temptations on your life? Have you come out of them unhurt, with no smell of fire on your garments? Or take the year’s business or occupation. How has it affected your spiritual life? Business is not sinful, unless it be a sinful business. A right occupation ought always to be a means of grace. What has been the effect of your secular business on your spiritual life? Has it been helpful, strengthening, ennobling? Or take your companionships and friendships; what have they done for you in the year that is gone? Have you been helped Godward and heavenward by them? Have they been full of sweet and good inspirations for you? Have they made a summer atmosphere for your heart, a weather in which all spiritual fruits and all beautiful things have grown and flourished? What marks has the old year left on your life? Are you carrying hurts and scars from its experiences? Or have they helped to build up a truer, stronger, holier manhood or womanhood in you? We ought to be ever growing in whatever things are lovely. That is what life is meant to do for us. “Teach us to number our days .” What is it to number our days? One way is to keep a careful record of them. That is a mathematical numbering. Some people keep diaries and put down everything they do where they go, what they see, whom they meet, the books they read. But mere adding of days is not the numbering that was in the thought of the Psalmist. There are days in some lives that add nothing to life’s treasures, and that leave nothing in the world which will make it better or richer. There are people who live year after year and might as well never have lived at all! Simply adding days is not living! If that is all you are going to do with the new year you will only pile up an added burden of guilt. Why do people not think of the sin of wasting life ? If you saw a man standing by the sea and flinging diamonds into the water you would say he was insane. Yet some of us are standing by the sea and flinging the diamond days, one by one, into its dark floods! Mere eating and sleeping, and reading the papers, and going about the streets, and putting in the time is not living! Another way of numbering our days, is illustrated by the story of a prisoner who when he entered his cell, put a mark on the wall, for each of the days he would be incarcerated. Then each evening he would rub off one of these marks he had one day less to stay in prison. Some people seem to live much in this way. Each evening they have on day less to live. Another day is gone, with its opportunities, its privileges, its responsibilities and its tasks gone beyond recall. Now, if the day has been filled with duty and love and service its page written all over with pure, white thoughts and records of gentle deeds then it is well; its passing need not be mourned over. But merely to have to rub it off at the setting of the sun, leaving in it nothing but a story of idleness, uselessness, selfishness, and lost opportunities, is a sad numbering! What is the true way of numbering our days? The prayer tells us, “Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” That is, we are so to live that we shall get some new wisdom out of each day to carry on with us. Life’s lessons cannot all be learned from books. The lessons may be set down in books but it is only in actual living that we can really learn them. For example, patience. You may learn all about patience from a sermon, from a teacher, or from a book, even from the Bible. But that will not make you patient. You can get the patience only by long practice of the lesson, in life’s experiences. Or take gentleness. You can read in a few paragraphs what gentleness is, how it lives. But that will not make you gentle. Take thoughtfulness. You can learn in a short lesson what it is and how beautiful it is. But you will not be thoughtful, the moment you have learned the definition. It will probably take you several years to get the beautiful lesson learned. We talk of learning from the experience of others. It would seem that we ought to learn much in this way. An old man who has passed through many years can tell you, a young man, what he has learned in living but you cannot really learn from his experience. You may think that you can learn, too, from books. But after all, the great lessons of life we must learn for ourselves, by our own failings, stumblings, tryings, sufferings; by our own mistakes and the enduring of their consequences. The thought in the prayer is that out of the experience of our days we may gain a heart of wisdom. Some people never do. Solomon said, “Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle, you will not remove his folly from him.” There are plenty of such fools still! They make the same mistake over and over, suffering always from it, in the same way yet never learning wisdom from the experience. Why should we not learn? We should put our experiences to the test. What has been the effect upon us of this habit, of this kind of reading, of this amusement, of this friendship, of this method of business? There is another way of getting a heart of wisdom, from the passing days. Paul taught us the lesson of moving forward and onward by oblivion of the past. A great truth lies in his words. We are not to stay in our past as one would stay in a prison but should be ever leaving it and going into new fields. We are not to stay by our past as if it held all that is precious for us of life, sitting down by its graves and weeping inconsolably there. We are to turn our faces ever to the future, because there new things wait for us new duties, new joys, new hopes. Our past should be to us a seed - plot in which grow a thousand beautiful things planted in the experience of by-gone days. Our today is always the harvest of all our yesterdays. We never can cut off our past and leave it behind us; its consequences will always follow us and cling to us and live in us. We are not to forget the things that are past, in any but a wise and good sense. Progress is the law of true living. Everything beautiful in our past we are to keep and carry forward with us. We leave childhood behind us when we go forward to manhood or womanhood ; but all that is lovely and good in childhood and all its lessons and impressions and visions we keep in our maturer life. We cannot forget the sorrow which the year brought, nor leave it behind it is too sacred and too much a part of our life ever to be outgrown; but the memory of the sorrow should stay in our heart as a blessing, sweetening our life no longer bitter but accepted in love and trust and enriching us by its holy influence. So nothing beautiful that faded or vanished in our past year is really lost to us. If we have numbered our days aright, the old year’s experiences will manifest themselves on all our future years and will make them all richer, sweeter, truer; fuller of life and holiness. Devotional Hours Within the Bible -https://biblehub.com/devotions/Morning_March_24.htm

Fruit unto Life Eternal - J.R. Miller DD "He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit unto eternal life" John 4:36 Those who work for this world — often fail of reward; but those who do God's work — are sure of good wages and of glorious harvest. "The wages of sin — is death." The wages of much of earth's toil — is disappointment. But the wages of living for God — is life, and the joy is sure and eternal. It is often hard work which the Christian has to do. The sowing is ofttimes in tears — but the reaping is always in joy. Christ Himself found the sowing hard and sorrowful — but He has never been sorry in Heaven for what it cost Him here. The old prophet having spoken of the sorrows and sufferings of Christ's life, said, "He shall see of the travail of his soul — and shall be satisfied." We have other examples of the same. When He had gone through His sore temptation and was "hungry," we are told that angels came and ministered unto Him. In Gethsemane also, after His bitter agony, we read that there appeared an angel from Heaven strengthening Him. May we not suppose that always when He had any special service, costing Him an outlay of strength — spiritual refreshment was imparted to Him in some secret way by His Father? As He sits now on His throne and sees the millions of the redeemed coming home to glory, all saved through His sufferings — He never regrets that He gave such a price for their redemption — but rejoices and is satisfied with the wages which He receives. So it will be with all His followers, who are permitted to suffer in any way in bringing lost ones home. The wages will a thousand times compensate for all the sacrifice and cost. No true work for Christ has ever been in vain. On earth many a seed is dropped which dies in the soil; but no seed of heavenly truth which is sown in faith and watered with tears — ever fails to spring up somewhere and some time into a plant of righteousness. It may not always grow as the sower hoped, nor always just where he hoped, nor when; yet no living word of God can ever die. We should notice the kind of wages God gives His reapers. He does not pay them in gold and silver — but in life — life eternal. Those who work in God's harvest-fields, may not grow rich in men's eyes — but they themselves grow into richer, riper, holier spiritual blessedness. https://gracegems.org/Miller/daily_bible_readings.htm

“And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”(Mark’s Gospel 16:15) https://gospelfromhome.org/

"The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give the peace." Num. 6:25, 26 "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of God the Father, he hath declared him." John 1:18 "The brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." Heb. 1:3 "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." II Cor. 4:4 "Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies sake. Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee." Psa. 31:16, 17 "LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled." Psa. 30:7 "Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord in the light of thy countenance." Psa. 89:15 "The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace." Psa. 29:11 "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid." Matt. 14:27 (https://dailylightdevotional.org/03/0312.html)