Almighty God,
How great is your power and your love and your mercy! How terrifying is your holiness and judgment!
You – who with your Word create light, set boundaries, open the heavens, raise the dead, quiet the troubled soul, save those who humble themselves, and shake those who are proud – deserve our respect. We have failed. We have sinned.
You, who with your common grace to all – whether we love you or not, deserve our thankfulness. We have failed. We have sinned.
You, who with your saving grace to those who repent, deserve our worship. We have failed. We have sinned.
Your mightiness shakes governments and the people in them. Your patience is seen as weakness or absence by those who do not understand you. Your love is called by some as all-inclusive, yet your authority defines sin, and your holiness and righteousness judge it.
The roar of pride in our hearts is nothing but the roar of the waterfall we are about to tumble across to our potential destruction. We think we are strong without you, but it is there our pride comes before the downfall.
Even so, your mercy calls to us to be wise, to follow you, to humble ourselves. We failed. We have sinned.
Help us repent before it is too late, Lord.
Help us repent and turn to you not out of the desire to save a nation, a family, or even our own souls, but because you are worthy of praise, because you love us, because you desire to repair the brokenness in us, because you sent Jesus to redeem us and restore us to the relationship we were designed to have with you.
We know you, but often we serve ourselves. We say we love you, but often we have heard your Word and changed your meaning to suit our wicked ways. We deceive ourselves thinking we are the deity in this relationship instead of you. We have called good evil and evil good. Too often, we are indistinguishable from those who don’t even believe in you.
We sugarcoat your love while forgetting your holiness. We pick and choose what we like about you and your Word – if we are even reading it – like it is some playlist for our amusement. You offer joy, but you tell us loving you will have difficulty because the world didn’t and doesn’t love you.
The ways you have given us to follow are ignored, forgotten, or mocked. Church. Family. Sex. Leadership. You offer guidance that we too often reject. We think ourselves followers of your Word, yet you know our hearts while showing us the consequences in our world.
And you have let us reap just some of the consequences of this Lord.
We removed prayer from schools, truth from some churches, commitment from some marriages, God-fearing leaders from much of our government, and, too often, trust in you from our hearts. How can this be unless we have judged you inadequate to give us wisdom and skill for living in life?
We seek to make you what we want you to be instead of letting you teach us who you are through the Bible. We direct our lives by crooked measures that cannot stand in your light even though you’ve given us your Word to guide our paths.
Help us repent and turn back to you – the you who you are instead of some culture-affected image of who we might think you are. Help our understanding of you grow and our willingness to faithfully follow you expand to all areas of our lives. Let us hold nothing back from you while we trust you to provide all we need and more through your infinite wisdom and love for us and others.
Help us fear not man, nor disease, nor government, nor persecution, nor our limitations as we honor and serve you with our lives no matter what. Help us grow strong in your strength, wise in your Word, bold in our obedience, and courageous in heart because we have hidden your Word there.
Let our lives be the light you desire us to be for a dark world in desperate need of you. Let us always point others to Christ as the salvation you offer against your righteous judgment against sin. Let your will be done in us and on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen
