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Calendar of Events
February
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March
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29 30 31
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April
S M T W T F S
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Worship
Lent
Toward the end of the 4th century, the church began a practice of
setting apart the 40 days before Easter to prepare themselves for the
great celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, which is what Easter
commemorates. This period - Lent - was a time of focused study,
prayer, fasting and preparation for those who were to formally enter
into the church through baptism on Easter Sunday. This preparation
was not just for those who were seeking to enter the church - rather, it
was for the whole community, as the church collectively prepared to
celebrate the wonderful work of faith and redemption that the Holy
Spirit had begun in their hearts. Traditionally, the 40-day period did
not include the Sundays, and so Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent,
occurs 46 days before Easter Sunday.
There are so many ways to enter into this wonderful book, and the
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particular approach we’ve chosen during Lent is to see the Psalms as
our framework of expressive worship through the changing seasons of
life. The Psalms keep us engaged with God at a heart level through
every up and down that life brings our way.
We begin a simple life in God, our shelter in the storm. He is our safe
place, the one in whom we hope, the one we seek to follow, the one
who promises to satisfy our soul.
There are times when we pray, and trust, and petition, and keep
seeking him, and he lets us down – he does not meet our expectations
nor does he fulfill our hopes. We are disappointed, discouraged,
depressed.
And there are times when he comes through for us in a time when we
had all but given up. We celebrate his goodness to us.
We look back on a life of journeying with him, and realize that he has
been faithful to us in good times and bad. He’s been with us when we
sensed him and when we didn’t. And he has been faithful… and we
find within our hearts a deep trust in this God we love & worship.
In all these seasons, God is the one we are called to listen to, to sense,
to be aware of, to speak to, to pour out our hearts to… If the Psalms
show us anything, it is that the people of God are always seeking to be
in communion with God, turning to him in every season of life, in good
times and bad. The depth of faith that the Psalms show us isn’t
reflected in how well the psalmists handled the vicissitudes of life – it is
seen simply in that they are always talking with God, crying out to him,
celebrating with him, proclaiming his praises, grieving their sin,
lamenting their tragedies, remembering his steadfast love &
faithfulness. He is the context of their lives, and he is the context of
ours. It is in God that we live and move and have our being, and to the
extent we live in that awareness, and express that awareness to our
God with utter honesty, speaking, waiting, listening, responding… to
that extent we bring him true worship.
Our reflection & meditation through the season of Lent will take us
through these six selected seasons of our heart – Simplicity, Sin,
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Disappointment, Celebration, Faithfulness, and Hope. We will learn
with the psalmists to live life in honesty in God’s presence, pouring out
the depths of our heart to him, finding in that catharsis the healing
and trust and restoration that we need.
These themes will guide our communal life as a church through our
journey together during Lent. The weekend messages will explore
these themes as they emerge from the text. And our weekday
disciplines as a church will focus on spiritual practices that guide us
into studying these themes, reflecting upon them, praying through
them, learning to live them out - as individuals and in community,
pursuing God in the company of friends.
Spiritual Disciplines
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The Week
We’ll begin the week on Sunday with reading the Psalm that we’re
focusing on that week. We’ll read the text, and pick out a verse or
passage that catches our attention. We’ll set ourselves the goal of
memorizing that verse or passage by the end of the week.
On Tuesday we’ll spend our time reflecting on what we’ve read in the
text, what we heard in the weekend message at the service and what
we read on Monday. This will be a period of being quiet in our hearts
before God and his word, asking him to speak to us, listening to him,
waiting on him.
On Thursday we’ll share all that God has been showing us to one or
two trusted friends, companions on the journey. We’ll pray for each
other.
On Friday we’ll make commitments. We’ll take all that God has
spoken to us about, and translate that into specific commitments that
we will practice. We’ll share those commitments with our friends, our
companions on the journey, for help and support in staying obedient.
Our hope is that through the few weeks that we practice these
disciplines, God will transform us as individuals and as a community of
faith (as we discuss these things in our life-groups), that he would
draw us closer to his heart and to each other. Our hope is that these
disciplined practices will form us into becoming a true offering of
worship to our Lord Jesus.
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Resources
We’ve selected a range of resources that you will find helpful for
further study and reflection on the Psalms.
Sermon
You may listen to each week’s message online at
http://www.heritagecc.org/message-archive/
Commentaries
Tremper Longman III & David Garland, “The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary : Psalms”, 2008
Books
Patrick Henry Reardon, “Christ in the Psalms”, 2000
Audio
Bruce Waltke, “The Psalms”, available at
http://tinyurl.com/6lwp29
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Read : Psalm 86
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Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
a band of ruthless people seeks my life—
they have no regard for you.
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show your strength in behalf of your servant
and save the son of a woman
who served you before me.
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Monday, February 23, 2009
Study: You…
God has been faithful to those who have gone before them, and
therefore he will be faithful to them.
God has been merciful to those who have gone before them, and
therefore he will be merciful to them.
It is within this context, these memories, this story, that they speak…
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Here is the rawness of the broken heart crying out in hurt and anger
toward God…
Here is the untrammeled exuberance of the one who thought it was all
over and it wasn’t – God came through…
From Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, 1947
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Reflect
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Journal
Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent, the period
of forty days before Easter. It is so called because of the Church’s
tradition of making the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads with
ash, reflecting the ancient biblical sign of penitence and of Christian
witness (see, for instance, Job 42:5-6).
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Friday, February 27, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Preparation Week: The Psalms
Saturday, February 28, 2008
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 1: Simplicity
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 1: Simplicity
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Read
Psalm 1, TNIV
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Week 1: Simplicity
Monday, March 2, 2009
Study
The Psalms are poetry and the Psalms are prayer: this is the texture of
the text.
This texture, the poetry and the prayer, accounts for both the
excitement and difficulty in dealing with this text. The poetry requires
that we deal with our actual humanity – these words dive beneath the
surfaces of prose and pretense, straight into the depths. We are more
comfortable with prose, the laid-back language of arms-length
discourse. The prayer requires that we deal with God – this God who is
determined on nothing less than the total renovation of our lives.
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Week 1: Simplicity
Tuesday, March 3, 2008
Reflect
1. If you could pick five words that describe your life today, what
would they be?
3. Have you ever felt that your understanding of God and faith
are inadequate to deal with the realities of your life?
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Week 1: Simplicity
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Journal
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Week 1: Simplicity
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 1: Simplicity
Friday, March 6, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 1: Simplicity
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 2: Sin
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 2: Sin
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Read
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan
came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
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Week 2: Sin
Monday, March 9, 2009
Study
One of the key things that praying the Psalms has sensitized me
to is how much our individualistic and technological society
works against any inclinations we may have to engage in
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intimate gut-level dialogue with God.
Although praying the Psalms every day over the past few weeks
has given me a real sense of the discipline which flows from
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seeing the Psalms as a way of connecting myself with God’s
historical community, I have not yet begun to speak the
language myself with deep emotion or let its rhythms flow
through my whole person. I must still mature in the area of
letting the Psalms become a means of praying out my anger and
hostility and slowing me down in the midst of the craziness of
life.
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Week 2: Sin
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Reflect
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Week 2: Sin
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Journal
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Week 2: Sin
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 2: Sin
Friday, March 13, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 2: Sin
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 3: Disappointment
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 3: Disappointment
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Read
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Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
They are like a dream when one awakes;
when you arise, Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.
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Week 3: Disappointment
Monday, March 16, 2009
Study : Orientation, Disorientation & New Orientation
The second move also characterizes many of the Psalms, in the form of
songs of thanksgiving and declarative hymns that tell a tale of a
decisive time, an inversion, a reversal of fortune, a rescue, deliverance,
saving, liberation, healing. The hymnic psalm is a surprising, buoyant
articulation of a move of the person or community into a new life-
permitting and life-enhancing context where God’s way and will
surprisingly prevail. Such hymns are a joyous assertion that God’s rule
is known, visible and effective just when we had lost hope.
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Week 3: Disappointment
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Reflect
1. Has there been a time in your life where you felt utterly
depressed? Despondent? Abandoned by God?
4. Have you talked this through with him? What resolution did
you find? Where does this conversation leave you in terms of
your relationship with God?
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Week 3: Disappointment
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Journal
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Week 3: Disappointment
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 3: Disappointment
Friday, March 20, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 3: Disappointment
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 4: Celebration
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 4: Celebration
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Read
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Week 4: Celebration
Monday, March 23, 2009
Study
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Psalm 150, The Message
When I first began to draw near to belief in God (and even for some
time after) I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously
made by all religious people that we should “praise” God: still more in
the suggestion the God Himself demanded it. We all despise the
person who demands continued assurance of his own virtue,
intelligence, or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of
people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who
gratify that demand. Worse still was the statement put into God’s own
mouth, “What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.”
Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. The worthier the
object, the more intense this delight would be. Praise not merely
expresses, but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment
that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the
delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have
discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good
she is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain
valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent
because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in
the ditch.
CS Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, 1964
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Week 4: Celebration
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Reflect
1. When was the last time God came through for you when you
had all but given up hope?
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Week 4: Celebration
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Journal
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Week 4: Celebration
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 4: Celebration
Friday, March 27, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 4: Celebration
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Read
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Monday, March 30, 2009
Study : Praying the Psalms
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Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when
they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that
there must be an insider language that must be acquired before God
takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not
advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes
honest, true, and personal in response to God. It is the means by which
we get everything in our lives out in the open before God.
David wrote,
“God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking...
“Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong -
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
Psalm 139:1,23-24
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Eugene Peterson in The Invitation, 2008
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Reflect
2. Write a psalm that retells the story of your life from the
perspective of God’s faithfulness to you.
3. Are you able to “pray the psalms”, entering into the story of
those who have gone before us in the journey of faith? Does it
feel right? Or is it awkward?
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Journal
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Friday, April 3, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 5: Faithfulness
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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Week 6: Hope
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Sermon Notes
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Week 6: Hope
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Read
“Because they love me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue them;
I will protect them, for they acknowledge my name.
They will call on me, and I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will deliver them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them
and show them my salvation.”
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Week 6: Hope
Monday, April 6, 2009
Study
It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing
songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as
disoriented. That may be laudatory. It could be that such
relentlessness is an act of bold defiance in which these psalms of order
and reliability are flung in the face of the disorder. In that way, they
insist that nothing shall separate us from the love of God. Such a
“mismatch” between our life experience of disorientation and our faith
speech of orientation could be a great evangelical “nevertheless” (as in
Habakkuk 3:18). Such a counterstatement insists that God does in any
case govern, rule, and order, regardless of how the data seem to
appear. And therefore, songs of torah, wisdom, creation, and
retribution speak truly, even if the world is experienced as otherwise.
It is possible that the church uses the psalms of disorientation in this
way.
But at best, this is only partly true. It is my judgment that this action of
the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much
more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to
acknowledge the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless
affirmation of orientation seems to come, not from faith, but from the
wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I
take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible readers, given
the large number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest and
complaint about the incoherence that is experienced in the world. At
least, it is clear that a church that goes on singing “happy songs” in the
face of raw reality is doing something very different from what the
Bible itself does.
I think that serious religious use of the lament psalms has been
minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to
acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that
acknowledgement of negativity. We have thought that
acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as
though the very speech about it conceded too much about God’s “loss
of control”.
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The point to be urged here is this: the use of these “psalms of
darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure,
but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a
transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it
insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in
some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists
that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse
with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or
inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the
heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to
withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms
make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech,
and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is
the final reference for all of life.
But such a faith is indeed a transformed faith, one that does not
conform (cf. Rim 12:2). The community that uses these psalms of
disorientation is not easily linked with civil religion, which goes “from
strength to strength”. It is, rather, faith in a very different God, one
who is present in, participating in, and attentive to the darkness,
weakness, and displacement of life. The God assumed by and
addressed in these psalms is a God “of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief.”
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Week 6: Hope
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Reflect
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Week 6: Hope
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Journal
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Week 6: Hope
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Pray
What have you heard God speaking to you about? Respond to him, in
quietness or in speech. Tell him what is going on within you. Write it
down, if you find it helpful to focus your heart.
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Week 6: Hope
Friday, April 10, 2009
Commit
Write it down.
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Week 6: Hope
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Act
What actions can you take today that will put your commitment into
practice?
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