Speaker: Ivan

• Even when you try to concentrate, your thoughts scatter "as if blown by a fan": if you have to force yourself, it isn't really you yet. But in the New Covenant God Himself writes His laws in our minds (Heb 8:10), and then a person will be where his thoughts are: that is the "epistle of Christ" written in the heart (2 Cor 3:3).

• A prayer for those who are sick and whose bodies the devil is also attacking. Mikhail will be away on Wednesday, so everyone needs to bring a word.

• Because of his illness Edik has almost lost his voice, so he sent his reflections in writing, in Russian and English, and Ivan read them. "Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col 3:12–14). The words "put on" are not in the original: love is the bond itself (Strong's G4886), which makes mercy, kindness, humility, meekness and longsuffering whole and complete. Without it these qualities are like a cymbal that rings and fades away (1 Cor 13:1–3).

• Just as muscles need tendons, organs need blood vessels and nerves, and a clock works only when its parts are connected in the right order, so the body of Christ grows in love, "fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth" (Eph 4:16; Eph 3:17–19). Loving God means loving His commandments and keeping them.

• His own reflection: God may give someone a gift of healing, but without love the gift works only for a while; Judas and the seventy also had power to work miracles. Jesus was full of love, so God's mercy through Him had no end. We love the world and cannot do without it; in the same way, one who loves God can no longer live without His voice, as Jesus in the wilderness lived by the word (Matt 4:4).

Speaker: Igor

The wise virgins (Matt 25:1–13) are called wise because they understood what pleases the Bridegroom and gathered oil in advance. The foolish had a chance to buy, but the time had passed. This cannot be shared: everyone must have their own light.

Speaker: Mikhail

• A book of remembrance is written before God (Mal 3:16), and whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Gal 6:7). For the rain of grace not to be wasted, the weeds must be pulled and real grain sown. In God's light you see that the human heart is desperately wicked (Jer 17:9). The Father Himself wants to reveal His will, as He revealed it to Peter (Matt 16:17): "Sanctify them through thy truth" (John 17:17).

• Personal: this is a very hard time for him, much like what Elijah felt: "they have thrown down thine altars… they seek my life" (1 Kgs 19:10). God led Israel forty years in the wilderness to humble and prove them, "to know what was in thine heart" (Deut 8:2–3), and they perished because of their murmuring. The cause is not in God but in us.

• "I can of mine own self do nothing… I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me" (John 5:30). The written word can be twisted; we need the word that comes out of God's mouth. There are questions God wants to answer for the whole church, "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15): one person cannot stand alone in this war, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church (Matt 16:18).

• The enemy not only rages but mocks: "Where is thy God?" (Ps 42:3). This is a counteroffensive against what we confess. Edik's and Viktor's situations should have set us on fire with zeal. The disciples slept in Gethsemane (Matt 26:38–40) and only later understood how indifferent they had been. Elijah asked to die, yet later one prayer of his shut up heaven (Jas 5:17).

• God tests the heart today as well, and at the end of the chapter He warns: do not say that you gained all this by your own power (Deut 8:17). A prayer that He would break everything stony in us so the heart becomes a heart of flesh (Ezek 36:26).

• Love is like the string that holds bagels together: without it, all the qualities scatter. A blessing for Edik: may love pour into his heart, into spirit, soul and body.

• One man checked the news from the front every morning, and it set his mood for the whole day; spiritual warfare is the same. He doesn't know whether to call the church to fast this week (Matt 9:15) or whether fasting isn't the issue. They decided to hold Wednesday's meeting online.