# Paul: The Journey of Sanctification **Theme:** God takes a man aimed in exactly the wrong direction, turns him on a road, and spends the rest of his life forming him into the message he once tried to destroy. --- ## Week 1 — From Persecutor to Preacher --- # Day 1: Saul the Persecutor ## Reading Acts 7:54–8:3 ## Overview & Key Takeaways You meet Paul for the first time holding coats at a killing. Stephen is being stoned, and Saul is standing there in full agreement, minding the cloaks of the men throwing the rocks. Immediately afterward he begins going house to house, dragging off men and women and putting them in prison. He is brilliant, disciplined, sincere, and completely wrong. - The first mention of Paul in Scripture is a man approving an execution - Stephen dies asking God not to hold the sin against them — Saul included - The persecution is systematic and house-to-house, not a flash of temper - Zeal proves nothing about being right; his is aimed at God's own people ## Prayer God, I assume that because I feel strongly about something I must be standing on the right side of it. Stephen prayed for the man holding the coats, and You answered that prayer. Show me where my certainty is pointed the wrong way. And thank You that You do not write anyone off at their worst chapter. Amen. --- # Day 2: The Damascus Road ## Reading Acts 9:1–19 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Still breathing threats and murder, Saul gets official letters authorizing arrests in Damascus. On the road a light knocks him down and a voice asks why he is persecuting Him — and gives its name as Jesus. He is blind for three days and does not eat or drink. Ananias is sent to the man who came to arrest him, hesitates for obvious reasons, goes anyway, and calls him brother. - Jesus treats persecution of the church as persecution of Himself - Saul is stopped mid-errand, at the peak of his confidence - Three days of blindness and fasting before anything is explained to him - Ananias is asked to walk into the house of his own would-be jailer ## Prayer Lord, interrupt me where I need interrupting, even if it costs me my footing. Thank You that You take what is done to Your people personally. And give me Ananias's courage to go toward the person I have every reason to avoid, and to call them brother. Amen. --- # Day 3: A New Man, A Suspicious Church ## Reading Acts 9:19–31 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Saul immediately starts preaching in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God, and everyone is bewildered — this is the man who came to destroy them. A plot forms to kill him and he escapes Damascus at night, lowered through an opening in the wall in a basket. In Jerusalem the disciples are afraid of him and will not come near until Barnabas vouches for him. - He begins preaching the message he came to destroy, almost at once - His old allies want him dead and his new family does not trust him - The great apostle's first exit from a city is in a basket out a window - Barnabas takes a personal risk to vouch for him when no one else will ## Prayer Father, transformation is real and it is slow to be believed. Give me patience with the in-between where nobody is sure what to do with me. And make me a Barnabas — willing to stake something on a person other people are still afraid of. Amen. --- # Day 4: Barnabas the Encourager ## Reading Acts 11:19–26 ## Overview & Key Takeaways The church at Antioch is growing fast among Greeks, and Barnabas is sent to look into it. He sees the grace of God at work and is glad, then travels to Tarsus to find Saul and brings him back to Antioch. The two of them teach there for a full year. It is in Antioch that the disciples are first called Christians. - Barnabas goes looking for Saul; Paul does not push his way into the work - Years pass in Tarsus with nothing recorded — the gap between calling and use is long - The ministry that will shape Paul begins with somebody else's invitation - The name Christian is coined here by outsiders describing what they observed ## Prayer God, thank You for the people who came looking for me when I had gone quiet. Do not let me despise the years where nothing appears to be happening. Make me someone who goes and finds the person the room has forgotten. Amen. --- # Day 5: Set Apart for the Work ## Reading Acts 13:1–12 ## Overview & Key Takeaways While the church at Antioch is worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit says to set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work He has called them to. They fast, pray, lay hands on them, and send them off. On Cyprus a sorcerer opposes them, and Saul — called Paul from this point on — confronts him, and the man is struck blind for a time. - The direction comes to the gathered church, not privately to Paul - Worship and fasting are the context in which the call arrives - The sending is corporate and public, with hands laid on - The man who was blinded on a road pronounces a temporary blindness on another ## Prayer Lord, I want direction on my own terms and on my own schedule. Teach me to seek it where these men found it — in worship, in fasting, in the company of people who know me. And when You set someone apart, let me be quick to lay hands on them and send them. Amen. --- # Day 6: Paul's First Recorded Sermon ## Reading Acts 13:13–43 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Invited to speak in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, Paul walks the room through their own history — Egypt, the wilderness, the judges, Samuel, Saul, David — and lands on Jesus as the one it was all pointing toward. He preaches forgiveness of sins through Him and freedom from what the law of Moses could never free them from. The people beg him to come back the following week. - He begins where his hearers already are, inside their own story - The whole of Israel's history is presented as running toward one person - What he offers is forgiveness and freedom, not new information - The first response is enthusiasm; the opposition arrives the next Sabbath ## Prayer Father, help me start where people actually are rather than where I wish they were. Let the center of what I say be Jesus and not my own opinions. And keep me steady when this week's enthusiasm becomes next week's resistance. Amen. --- ## Week 2 — The Missionary Journeys --- # Day 7: Hardship and Perseverance ## Reading Acts 14 ## Overview & Key Takeaways In Lystra Paul heals a man lame from birth and the crowd tries to offer sacrifices to him and Barnabas as gods. Days later agitators arrive from another city, and the same crowd stones Paul and drags him outside the walls assuming he is dead. He gets up and walks back into the city. Then he retraces the entire route to strengthen the churches he planted. - The crowd that wanted to worship him stones him within days - He gets up and walks back into the city that just tried to kill him - He deliberately returns through the dangerous cities to strengthen young believers - He tells them plainly that entering the kingdom involves many hardships ## Prayer God, keep me from needing the crowd, because the crowd turns. Give me the strange courage to get up and walk back in. And let me tell people the truth about what following You costs instead of selling them something easier. Amen. --- # Day 8: A Crisis in the Church ## Reading Acts 15:1–21 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Men come down from Judea teaching that Gentiles must be circumcised to be saved, and Paul and Barnabas argue with them sharply. The question goes up to Jerusalem, where after long debate Peter speaks, then Paul and Barnabas, then James. The decision protects Gentile freedom while asking for a few restraints that keep the fellowship workable. - What is at stake is whether grace is actually sufficient — the gospel itself - Paul argues sharply and still submits the question to the wider church - The debate is lengthy; nobody rushes the resolution - The outcome guards the essential and gives ground on everything else ## Prayer Lord, give me the discernment to know what is worth fighting for and the humility to let the rest go. Where I have made a preference into a principle, correct me. And let me be willing to bring my strongest convictions to people who might tell me I am wrong. Amen. --- # Day 9: Timothy and Lydia ## Reading Acts 16:1–15 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul invites Timothy, a young disciple with a Greek father and a Jewish mother, to travel with him. The team is repeatedly prevented by the Spirit from going where they intend, until Paul has a night vision of a man from Macedonia begging him to come. They arrive in Philippi and find no synagogue at all, just some women praying by a river, and the Lord opens Lydia's heart. - Paul starts investing in someone much younger than himself - Closed doors turn out to be guidance every bit as much as open ones - The vision is of a man; the first convert in Europe is a businesswoman - Lydia's household becomes the base of operations for the Philippian church ## Prayer Father, thank You for the doors You have closed that I resented at the time. Lead me by both the yes and the no. Show me who I am meant to be pouring into, and let me be surprised by who You are actually calling. Amen. --- # Day 10: Worship at Midnight ## Reading Acts 16:16–40 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul frees a slave girl from a spirit of divination, and her owners — who have just lost their income stream — have him and Silas stripped, beaten with rods, and locked in the inner cell with their feet in stocks. At midnight, backs torn open, they are praying and singing hymns while the other prisoners listen. An earthquake opens every door, and nobody runs. - The trouble begins because a miracle cost somebody money - They sing before anything changes, and the other prisoners are listening - When the doors open no one leaves — which is what saves the jailer's life - The jailer washes the wounds of the men he had beaten, and they baptize his family ## Prayer God, my instinct at midnight is to rehearse the injustice. Teach me to sing there instead, and let the people around me hear it. Thank You that You use the worst night of a week to save an entire household. Amen. --- # Day 11: Paul in Athens ## Reading Acts 17:16–34 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul's spirit is provoked by a city full of idols, but he does not open with an attack. He reasons in the synagogue and daily in the marketplace, and is invited to speak at the Areopagus. He begins with an altar inscribed to an unknown god, quotes their own poets back to them, and works toward the resurrection. Some sneer, some ask to hear more, and a few believe. - He is deeply disturbed by what he sees and still speaks with respect - He starts inside their frame of reference and builds outward from it - He quotes their poets rather than only his own scriptures - The resurrection is where he loses most of the room, and he says it anyway ## Prayer Lord, give me Paul's combination — genuinely troubled by what is wrong, and genuinely respectful of the people in front of me. Help me learn the language of the room without editing out the resurrection. And let me be content with a few. Amen. --- # Day 12: Planting a Church in Corinth ## Reading Acts 18:1–17 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul arrives in Corinth alone, finds Aquila and Priscilla, and works alongside them making tents while reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath. When the opposition turns abusive he shakes out his garments and turns to the Gentiles. The Lord tells him in a vision to keep speaking and not be silent, because He has many people in this city. Paul stays a year and a half. - He supports himself with his hands the whole time he is planting the church - The encouragement he receives is not comfort but a command not to go quiet - God speaks of many people in the city before any of them have believed - A year and a half of steady, unremarkable work — most of ministry looks like this ## Prayer Father, I am built for the dramatic moment and most of the work is not that. Give me the endurance for eighteen months of ordinary faithfulness. Where I have gone quiet out of discouragement, tell me to keep speaking. And thank You that You already know the people who have not come yet. Amen. --- ## Week 3 — Toward Jerusalem and Rome --- # Day 13: Power and Opposition in Ephesus ## Reading Acts 19:1–20 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul teaches daily in a lecture hall for two years, until everyone in the province has heard the word. Extraordinary miracles happen. A group of travelling exorcists tries using Jesus' name as a formula and is beaten senseless by the man they were trying to help. Fear falls over the city, and believers haul out their magic scrolls and burn them publicly at enormous cost. - Two years of daily teaching is the engine here; the miracles are not the method - The name of Jesus is not a technique available to people who do not know Him - Repentance is expensive and public — fifty thousand pieces of silver burned - The gospel does not get added to their old practices, it displaces them ## Prayer God, I would rather add You to my life than let You displace things in it. Show me what needs to go on the fire. Give me the patience for two years of daily faithfulness rather than one dramatic evening. And keep me from ever treating Your name as a technique. Amen. --- # Day 14: Paul's Heart for Leaders ## Reading Acts 20:17–38 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul sends for the Ephesian elders and meets them at Miletus. He reminds them how he lived among them — with humility and tears, holding nothing back, coveting no one's silver or gold, working with his own hands. He warns that savage wolves will come, and that some will rise from among their own number. They weep, embrace him, and grieve most over never seeing his face again. - He appeals to a life they watched up close, not to his authority - He warns that the worst danger will come from inside their own group - He quotes a saying of Jesus that appears nowhere in the Gospels - Their grief is about the man himself — they loved him, not just his teaching ## Prayer Lord, let the people I lead be able to point at how I actually lived among them. Keep me free from wanting what belongs to them. Make me honest enough to warn people about real dangers. And let there be tears when I go. Amen. --- # Day 15: Bound but Obedient ## Reading Acts 21:10–36 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Agabus takes Paul's belt, binds his own hands and feet with it, and says the owner of this belt will be bound in Jerusalem. Everyone present begs him not to go, and Paul says he is ready not only to be bound but to die there. They stop arguing and say the Lord's will be done. In Jerusalem a mob seizes him in the temple and he is carried out over the heads of soldiers. - The warning is genuine prophecy, and going anyway is not disobedience to it - The love of his friends is real and their advice is still wrong - "The Lord's will be done" is said here by people who have just lost an argument - Nearly torn apart, he asks permission to speak to the crowd that wanted him dead ## Prayer Father, sometimes the loving advice and the right thing point opposite directions. Give me the clarity to tell them apart and the courage to go where You send me. Where I am asking You to spare me, give me Paul's readiness instead. And let me be gracious with the people begging me to stay. Amen. --- # Day 16: Storms and Shipwrecks ## Reading Acts 27:13–44 ## Overview & Key Takeaways A gentle south wind convinces the crew that they can make the crossing, and within hours a hurricane-force wind takes the ship. For fourteen days there is no sun and no stars, and all hope of being saved is finally abandoned. Paul, a prisoner, tells them an angel has stood by him and no life will be lost. He urges them all to eat, gives thanks in front of everyone, and all 276 reach land. - The disaster starts with a gentle wind that looked exactly like confirmation - The prisoner in chains becomes the steadiest person on the ship - He breaks bread and gives thanks publicly in the middle of the storm - The ship is destroyed and every single person survives — the promise was precise ## Prayer God, I have mistaken a favorable wind for Your blessing before. Give me discernment about what looks like confirmation. When there has been no sun for two weeks, make me the calm one because I have heard from You. And thank You that losing the ship is not the same as losing the people. Amen. --- # Day 17: The Gospel in Chains ## Reading Acts 28:16–31 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul finally reaches Rome and is permitted to live by himself with a soldier guarding him. He calls together the local Jewish leaders and spends an entire day, morning to evening, explaining the kingdom of God from the Scriptures. Some are convinced and some are not. For two full years he welcomes everyone who comes, preaching with all boldness and without hindrance — and the book simply stops. - He is chained and the message is not - His first act in Rome is to gather people and talk all day - Acts ends with no verdict, no execution, no conclusion of any kind - The final word in the Greek is "unhindered" — the story is handed forward ## Prayer Lord, I let my limitations decide what I attempt. Paul had a soldier chained to his wrist and considered himself unhindered. Show me what I can do from exactly where I am. And let the story keep running past the end of my chapter. Amen. --- ## Week 4 — Letters from Prison --- # Day 18: Joy and Purpose in Prison ## Reading Philippians 1 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Writing from custody, Paul says what has happened to him has actually served to advance the gospel, since the whole imperial guard now knows why he is in chains. Some are preaching Christ out of rivalry, hoping to make his imprisonment harder, and he says he rejoices anyway. He genuinely cannot decide whether he would rather live or die, because to live is Christ and to die is gain. - He measures his imprisonment by what it accomplished, not by what it cost him - He is glad Christ is preached even by people actively trying to hurt him - The choice between living and dying is a real dilemma for him, not rhetoric - He concludes he will remain, because they need him more than he needs relief ## Prayer Father, my first question about a hard season is how to get out of it. Teach me to ask what it might be advancing instead. Free me from needing credit for the work. And let it be true of me that living is Christ, so that dying could actually be gain. Amen. --- # Day 19: The Mindset of Christ ## Reading Philippians 2 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul asks for unity, and grounds it in what appears to be an early hymn: Christ, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, and obeyed all the way to death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name. Then Paul points to Timothy and Epaphroditus as two men who actually live this way. - The deepest theology in the letter is deployed to fix a relational problem - The movement is downward first; exaltation comes after descent, not instead of it - He does not ask them to admire the humility, he asks them to have that mind - He immediately names two ordinary men doing it, so it cannot stay abstract ## Prayer Lord Jesus, You had everything and did not clutch it. I have very little and hold it tightly. Put Your mind in me — the willingness to go downward first. And show me the ordinary people around me already living this way, so I stop treating it as impossible. Amen. --- # Day 20: Pressing On ## Reading Philippians 3 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul lists his credentials — the right tribe, the right training, blameless under the law — and calls the whole lot of it rubbish compared to knowing Christ. He wants to know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings. Then he says plainly that he has not already obtained this, but forgetting what lies behind, he presses on toward the goal. - He counts his best achievements as loss, not merely his worst failures - He asks to share the sufferings, not just the power - "Not that I have already obtained this" is written near the end of his life - What lies behind includes both the accomplishments and the things he regrets ## Prayer God, I am dragging both my trophies and my failures behind me and they weigh the same. Help me set them down. Give me a hunger to know You that makes the rest look like what it is. And let me still be pressing on at the end. Amen. --- # Day 21: Peace that Guards the Heart ## Reading Philippians 4 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul names two women in the church who are at odds and asks someone to help them work it out. He tells them to rejoice, to be anxious about nothing but in everything to pray, and promises a peace beyond understanding that will guard their hearts and minds. He says he has learned to be content in plenty and in hunger. He is writing all this from prison, thanking them for a gift. - A specific quarrel between two named women sits right in the middle of the chapter - The remedy for anxiety is prayer with thanksgiving, not positive thinking - The peace is described as a garrison — something posted to guard - Contentment is something he says he learned, not something he naturally had ## Prayer Father, take the thing I keep turning over at two in the morning and let me hand it to You instead. Post Your peace over my heart and mind like a guard. Teach me contentment the slow way if that is the only way I will learn it. And thank You for the people who send help. Amen. --- # Day 22: Christ Above All Things ## Reading Colossians 1 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul describes Christ as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, the one by whom and for whom everything was made, who holds all things together. He is the head of the church, and in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through Him God reconciled all things to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross. - The scope is cosmic — thrones, powers, everything visible and invisible - All things hold together in Him; the universe does not sustain itself - The same passage that describes cosmic supremacy lands on a bloody execution - Paul frames his own suffering as part of serving this particular King ## Prayer Lord, my picture of You shrinks to the size of my week. Enlarge it. You hold together everything I am worried about, including the parts I have not told anyone. Let nothing in my life compete with You for first place. Amen. --- # Day 23: Putting Off and Putting On ## Reading Colossians 3:1–17 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Because they have been raised with Christ, Paul tells them to set their minds on things above. Then he gets specific: put to death sexual immorality, greed, anger, malice, slander, lying. Put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and forgiveness — and over all of it, love. Let the peace of Christ rule, and whatever you do in word or deed, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. - Identity comes first; the instructions follow from what is already true of them - The image is changing clothes — take off what no longer fits, put on what does - Both lists are concrete and mostly concern how people treat each other - Everything, word or deed, is brought under one name ## Prayer God, I want to be transformed without changing anything. Show me the one thing to take off today and the one thing to put on. Let the peace of Christ actually rule rather than merely visit. And put my whole day, work included, under Your name. Amen. --- # Day 24: A Growing Church Under Pressure ## Reading 1 Thessalonians 1–3 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul remembers their work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope, and says the word rang out from them across the whole region. He recalls being gentle among them like a nursing mother and dealing with each of them like a father with his own children. Unable to bear not knowing how they were, he sent Timothy, and Timothy's report of their faith made him feel like he had come back to life. - He gives thanks for what they are doing before he instructs them in anything - He compares himself to both a mother and a father within a few verses - He admits he simply could not stand not knowing how they were holding up - Hearing that their faith was intact is described as what made him live again ## Prayer Father, make me the kind of person who notices what is going right in people and says so first. Give me a mother's gentleness and a father's directness with the ones You have put in my care. And let good news about their faith be the thing that makes my week. Amen. --- ## Week 5 — The Heart of the Gospel --- # Day 25: The Grace that Justifies ## Reading Romans 3–5 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul establishes that no one is righteous, that the law can expose sin but never cure it, and that righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ for everyone who believes without distinction. Abraham is his proof: credited righteous before circumcision and long before the law. And since we are justified by faith we have peace with God — because Christ died for us while we were still His enemies. - The level ground comes first: everyone has fallen short, with no exceptions - Abraham is cited to show this was never a new arrangement God improvised - Justification is a legal declaration, not a gradual improvement project - The timing is the scandal — He died for us while we were still enemies ## Prayer God, I keep trying to earn something You have already given. Let it sink past my head into wherever I actually live. Thank You that You moved toward me while I was still against You. Change how I look at myself and how I look at everyone else. Amen. --- # Day 26: Life in the Spirit ## Reading Romans 6–8 ## Overview & Key Takeaways If grace covers everything, why not sin more? Paul says we died to sin and cannot go on living in what we died to. Then he describes the honest experience of doing the very thing he hates. Chapter 8 opens with no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, describes the Spirit helping us in our weakness and interceding when we do not know what to pray, and ends with nothing in all creation able to separate us from God's love. - Grace does not license sin; it makes returning to it incoherent - Paul describes his own divided will without resolving it into a technique - The Spirit prays on our behalf when we cannot find the words - The closing list is deliberately exhaustive — height, depth, present, future, nothing ## Prayer Lord, there is no condemnation. I need to hear that more than I need almost anything else. Where I am doing what I hate, be patient with me and keep working. Pray for me when I have run out of words. And hold me where nothing can separate me from You. Amen. --- # Day 27: Walking by the Spirit ## Reading Galatians 5 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Christ set us free for freedom, and Paul warns them not to put on a yoke of slavery again. But freedom is not license — through love, serve one another. He lists the works of the flesh, most of which are relational wreckage, and then the fruit of the Spirit, named as a single fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. - The danger he is addressing is religious rule-keeping, not moral collapse - Freedom is defined as being free to serve rather than free from obligation - The works of the flesh are largely about the damage people do to each other - Fruit is grown rather than manufactured, and it is listed as one thing, not nine ## Prayer Father, I slide back into performing for You without noticing I have done it. Keep me in the freedom Christ bought. Grow the fruit in me instead of letting me manufacture a convincing imitation. And show me which one You are working on right now. Amen. --- # Day 28: Blessed in Christ ## Reading Ephesians 1 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul opens with one enormous run-on sentence of praise: chosen before the foundation of the world, adopted as sons, redeemed through His blood, forgiven, and sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Then he prays — not for their circumstances, but that the eyes of their hearts would be opened to know the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance, and the greatness of His power toward them. - Every blessing in the list is stated as already accomplished, not pending - The language is adoption — chosen deliberately, not merely rescued - The Spirit is called a deposit, a down payment on everything still coming - His prayer is for perception, not for provision ## Prayer God, I keep asking You to change my circumstances and Paul prayed for open eyes. Do that. Let me see what You have already given rather than only what I am still waiting for. Chosen, adopted, forgiven, sealed — help me believe those words today. Amen. --- # Day 29: From Death to Life Together ## Reading Ephesians 2 ## Overview & Key Takeaways You were dead — not struggling, not sick, dead — following the course of this world. But God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved through faith, and not from yourselves, so that no one can boast. Then Paul turns to the wall between Jew and Gentile and says Christ Himself is our peace, having torn it down to create one new humanity. - The diagnosis is death, which rules out self-improvement as a strategy - "But God" is the hinge the entire chapter turns on - Saved by grace, then created for good works — the order is the whole point - Personal salvation becomes immediately a question of who you will sit with ## Prayer Father, I was dead and You did not wait for me to improve. Keep that in front of me when I start feeling superior to somebody. Tear down the walls I am maintaining, including the polite ones. And let me remember my own story every time I look at someone else's. Amen. --- # Day 30: Finishing the Race ## Reading 2 Timothy 4 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Paul charges Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season, because a time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching. Then he turns personal: he is already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of his departure has come. He has fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith. He asks Timothy to bring his cloak and the parchments, and to come before winter. - His last written concern is that the message be handed on faithfully - He describes his own death as an offering being poured out, not a defeat - Three claims, none of them about results: fought, finished, kept - He is cold and lonely and wants a coat and his books — the end is very ordinary ## Prayer Lord, I want to be able to say those three things and mean them: I fought, I finished, I kept the faith. Not that I won, or that it was recognized. Give me strength for the ordinary end — the cold room, the few friends, the work handed on. And bring me safely into Your kingdom. Amen.