Evening Prayer Is Updated Everyday Apart From Sunday    

 2 Kings 19.20–36    

20 Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I have heard your prayer to me about King Sennacherib of Assyria. 21This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:She despises you, she scorns you—   virgin daughter Zion;she tosses her head—behind your back,   daughter Jerusalem.22 ‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?   Against whom have you raised your voiceand haughtily lifted your eyes?   Against the Holy One of Israel!23 By your messengers you have mocked the Lord,   and you have said, “With my many chariotsI have gone up the heights of the mountains,   to the far recesses of Lebanon;I felled its tallest cedars,   its choicest cypresses;I entered its farthest retreat,   its densest forest.24 I dug wells   and drank foreign waters,I dried up with the sole of my foot   all the streams of Egypt.”25 ‘Have you not heard   that I determined it long ago?I planned from days of old   what now I bring to pass,that you should make fortified cities   crash into heaps of ruins,26 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,   are dismayed and confounded;they have become like plants of the field   and like tender grass,like grass on the housetops,   blighted before it is grown.27 ‘But I know your rising and your sitting,   your going out and coming in,   and your raging against me.28 Because you have raged against me   and your arrogance has come to my ears,I will put my hook in your nose   and my bit in your mouth;I will turn you back on the way   by which you came.29 ‘And this shall be the sign for you: This year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that; then in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 30The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards; 31for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.32 ‘Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, shoot an arrow there, come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege-ramp against it. 33By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. 34For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.’35 That very night the angel of the Lord set out and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies. 36Then King Sennacherib of Assyria left, went home, and lived at Nineveh.

Philippians 3.1 – 4.1    

3 Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!3For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— 4even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. 15Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. 16Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.17 Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. 18For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. 19Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Psalm 131

1 O Lord, my heart is not proud; ♦︎   my eyes are not raised in haughty looks.2 I do not occupy myself with great matters, ♦︎   with things that are too high for me.3 But I have quieted and stilled my soul,      like a weaned child on its mother’s breast; ♦︎   so my soul is quieted within me.4 O Israel, trust in the Lord, ♦︎   from this time forth for evermore.