God Satisfies the Thirsting Soul

631 O God, you are my God; early will I make my search for you: my soul is dry for need of you, my flesh is wasted with desire for you, as a dry and burning land where no water is; 2 To see your power and your glory, as I have seen you in the holy place.

3 Because your mercy is better than life, my lips will give you praise. 4 So will I go on blessing you all my life, lifting up my hands in your name. 5 My soul will be comforted, as with good food; and my mouth will give you praise with songs of joy; 6 When the memory of you comes to me on my bed, and when I give thought to you in the night-time.

7 Because you have been my help, I will have joy in the shade of your wings. 8 My soul keeps ever near you: your right hand is my support. 9 But those whose desire is my soul's destruction will go down to the lower parts of the earth. 10 They will be cut off by the sword; they will be food for foxes. 11 But the king will have joy in God; everyone who takes an oath by him will have cause for pride; but the false mouth will be stopped.

A Prayer for Protection from Hidden Enemies

641 O God, let the voice of my grief come to your ear: keep my life from the fear of those who are against me. 2 Keep me safe from the secret purpose of wrongdoers; from the band of the workers of evil; 3 Who make their tongues sharp like a sword, and whose arrows are pointed, even bitter words; 4 So that in secret they may let loose their arrows at the upright, suddenly and unseen. 5 They make themselves strong in an evil purpose; they make holes for secret nets; they say, Who will see it, 6 Or make discovery of our secret purpose? The design is framed with care; and the inner thought of a man, and his heart, is deep.

7 But God sends out an arrow against them; suddenly they are wounded. 8 The evil of their tongues is the cause of their fall; all those who see them are shaking their heads at them. 9 And in fear men make public the works of God; and giving thought to his acts they get wisdom. 10 The upright will be glad in the Lord and have hope in him; and all the lovers of righteousness will give him glory.

Praise for God's Bounty in Nature

651 It is right for you, O God, to have praise in Zion: to you let the offering be made. 2 To you, O hearer of prayer, let the words of all flesh come. 3 Evils have overcome us: but as for our sins, you will take them away. 4 Happy is the man of your selection, to whom you give a resting-place in your house; we will be full of the good things out of your holy place. 5 You will give us an answer in righteousness by great acts of power, O God of our salvation; you who are the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of the far-off lands of the sea;

6 The God by whose strength the mountains are fixed; who is robed with power: 7 Who makes the loud voice of the sea quiet, and puts an end to the sound of its waves. 8 Those in the farthest parts of the earth have fear when they see your signs: the outgoings of the morning and evening are glad because of you. 9 You have given your blessing to the earth, watering it and making it fertile; the river of God is full of water: and having made it ready, you give men grain. 10 You make the ploughed lands full of water; you make smooth the slopes: you make the earth soft with showers, sending your blessing on its growth. 11 The year is crowned with the good you give; life-giving rain is dropping from your footsteps, 12 Falling on the grass of the waste land: and the little hills are glad on every side. 13 The grass-land is thick with flocks; the valleys are full of grain; they give glad cries and songs of joy.

Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ

61 What may we say, then? are we to go on in sin so that there may be more grace? 2 In no way. How may we, who are dead to sin, be living in it any longer? 3 Or are you without the knowledge that all we who had baptism into Christ Jesus, had baptism into his death? 4 We have been placed with him among the dead through baptism into death: so that as Christ came again from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, in the same way, might be living in new life. 5 For, if we have been made like him in his death, we will, in the same way, be like him in his coming to life again; 6 Being conscious that our old man was put to death on the cross with him, so that the body of sin might be put away, and we might no longer be servants to sin. 7 Because he who is dead is free from sin. 8 But if we are dead with Christ, we have faith that we will be living with him; 9 Having knowledge that because Christ has come back from the dead, he will never again go down to the dead; death has no more power over him. 10 For his death was a death to sin, but his life now is a life which he is living to God. 11 Even so see yourselves as dead to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus. 12 For this cause do not let sin be ruling in your body which is under the power of death, so that you give way to its desires; 13 And do not give your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrongdoing, but give yourselves to God, as those who are living from the dead, and your bodies as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin may not have rule over you: because you are not under law, but under grace.

Servants of Righteousness

15 What then? are we to go on in sin because we are not under law but under grace? Let it not be so. 16 Are you not conscious that you are the servants of him to whom you give yourselves to do his desire? if to sin, the end being death, or if to do the desire of God, the end being righteousness. 17 But praise be to God that though you were the servants of sin, you have now given yourselves freely to that form of teaching under which you were placed; 18 And being made free from sin you have been made the servants of righteousness. 19 I am using words in the way of men, because your flesh is feeble: as you gave your bodies as servants to what is unclean, and to evil to do evil, so now give them as servants to righteousness to do what is holy. 20 When you were servants of sin you were free from righteousness. 21 What fruit had you at that time in the things which are now a shame to you? for the end of such things is death. 22 But now, being free from sin, and having been made servants to God, you have your fruit in that which is holy, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the reward of sin is death; but what God freely gives is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.