A prayer researching redemption
Albert Bogle
September 12, 2025
Add to Favourites
Listen to this daily worship
Philemon 1: 7-20 (MSG)
7 Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel, doubly so when I see your hospitality to fellow believers.
8-9 In line with all this I have a favor to ask of you. As Christ’s ambassador and now a prisoner for him, I wouldn’t hesitate to command this if I thought it necessary, but I’d rather make it a personal request.
10-14 While here in jail, I’ve fathered a child, so to speak. And here he is, hand-carrying this letter—Onesimus! He was useless to you before; now he’s useful to both of us. I’m sending him back to you, but it feels like I’m cutting off my right arm in doing so. I wanted in the worst way to keep him here as your stand-in to help out while I’m in jail for the Message. But I didn’t want to do anything behind your back, make you do a good deed that you hadn’t willingly agreed to.
15-16 Maybe it’s all for the best that you lost him for a while. You’re getting him back now for good—and no mere slave this time, but a true Christian brother! That’s what he was to me—he’ll be even more than that to you.
17-20 So if you still consider me a comrade-in-arms, welcome him back as you would me. If he damaged anything or owes you anything, chalk it up to my account. This is my personal signature—Paul—and I stand behind it. (I don’t need to remind you, do I, that you owe your very life to me?) Do me this big favor, friend. You’ll be doing it for Christ, but it will also do my heart good.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
You’re more than holy words
Strung together on a page to make a sentence
You live, you breathe, making all things new
Engaged with all you have created
Your identity blows my mind
Yet you know me intimately
You call me into arms of love
No one is beyond your reach
You are living Communion — creator of unity
Redeeming the world
Redeeming lives
You’re making me, you’re making us, resemble you
Plant the seed of redemption in my soul
That I might become a redeemer to another
Like Paul and saints of old
Give me the courage
To be the peacemaker
The observer of potential
The learner from past experience
The sympathiser,
The empathiser
The healer, the pain absorber
Help me to see the value in another
In one who has been tossed to the side
Outlawed — shamed, left hurting and broken
Teach me how to speak up for the outcast
Give me the words that change mindsets
Plant within us grace to remain humble
Knowing all the while redemption starts and ends with You
Intimate Spirit of God, singer of the song
You sing out the meaning of redemption
Redemption is more than the name of a town
Redemption is more than a Bob Marley lyric
Redemption is more than a shower
— an instant clean for the moment.
It is to turn back time
To make what was wrong right
To absorb the pain of another
Can you do that you ask me,
Can you redeem another?
Lord,
Our silence is our truth
How can we?
How could we ever know the costliness of redemption and redemptive love?
The enormity of the transaction
So let us sing our redemption songs
How you have rescued us from the hands of our mental tormentors
Songs that magnify your goodness and kindness
Songs that speak of our transformed hearts
Songs that flow and never end.
Amen
Login to comment.