One Year Pray for the Persecuted Bible - Flipbook - Page 97
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January 25
Some nations boast of their chariots and
horses,
but we boast in the name of the Lord
our God.
Those nations will fall down and collapse,
but we will rise up and stand firm.
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Let them penetrate deep into your heart,
for they bring life to those who find them,
and healing to their whole body.
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Guard your heart above all else,
for it determines the course of your life.
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Avoid all perverse talk;
stay away from corrupt speech.
20:2 Hebrew Zion.
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PROVERBS 4:20‑27
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Look straight ahead,
and fix your eyes on what lies before you.
Mark out a straight path for your feet;
stay on the safe path.
Don’t get sidetracked;
keep your feet from following evil.
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9
20
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Give victory to our king, O Lord!
Answer our cry for help.
My child, pay attention to what I say.
Listen carefully to my words.
Don’t lose sight of them.
27
WHEN MRS. AN WAS ARRESTED in China as a North Korean defector,
she wasn’t yet a Christian, but she did know how to pray. She’d learned
about prayer in anti-Christian propaganda films she’d seen while still in
North Korea. With nothing to lose, Mrs. An asked the Christians’ God to
help her get to South Korea. When that happened, she found Christians
who could teach her to grow in her faith. • LORD, ONLY YOU could
turn Communist propaganda into an introduction to you. You redeem
evil and use it for your good. How great you are! How mighty and
creative! Amen.
GENESIS 50:1—EXODUS 2:10
Joseph threw himself on his father and wept
over him and kissed him. 2 Then Joseph told
the physicians who served him to embalm his
father’s body; so Jacob* was embalmed. 3 The
embalming process took the usual forty days.
And the Egyptians mourned his death for seventy days.
4 When the period of mourning was over, Jo
seph approached Pharaoh’s advisers and said,
“Please do me this favor and speak to Pharaoh
on my behalf. 5 Tell him that my father made
me swear an oath. He said to me, ‘Listen, I am
about to die. Take my body back to the land of
Canaan, and bury me in the tomb I prepared
for myself.’ So please allow me to go and bury
my father. After his burial, I will return without delay.”
6 Pharaoh agreed to Joseph’s request. “Go
and bury your father, as he made you promise,” he said. 7 So Joseph went up to bury his father. He was accompanied by all of Pharaoh’s
officials, all the senior members of Pharaoh’s
household, and all the senior officers of Egypt.
8 Joseph also took his entire household and his
brothers and their households. But they left
their little children and flocks and herds in the
land of Goshen. 9 A great number of c hariots
and charioteers accompanied Joseph.
JANUARY
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10 When they arrived at the threshing floor
of Atad, near the Jordan River, they held a very
great and solemn memorial service, with a
seven-day period of mourning for Joseph’s
father. 11 The local residents, the Canaanites,
watched them mourning at the threshing
floor of Atad. Then they renamed that place
(which is near the Jordan) Abel-mizraim,* for
they said, “This is a place of deep mourning for
these Egyptians.”
12 So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded
them. 13 They carried his body to the land of
Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field
of Machpelah, near Mamre. This is the cave
that Abraham had bought as a permanent
burial site from Ephron the Hittite.
14 After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to
Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his father’s burial. 15 But
now that their father was dead, Joseph’s
brothers became fearful. “Now Joseph will
show his anger and pay us back for all the
wrong we did to him,” they said.
16 So they sent this message to Joseph: “Before your father died, he instructed us 17 to say
to you: ‘Please forgive your brothers for the
great wrong they did to you—for their sin
in treating you so cruelly.’ So we, the servants
of the God of your father, beg you to forgive
