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+## Context
+
+Scripture Reading: Mark 7:1-8
+
+Sermon Text: Luke 11:37-54
+
+## Prayer
+
+Father,
+
+We come to You as a people that has scorned Your holy Name, if not with our
+lips, then certainly with our actions.
+We were born with hearts that hated You.
+We knew better than to oppose You openly.
+We knew that You are unassailable and all powerful, and that all Your enemies
+will be ground into dust.
+Knowing these things, we invented ways to disguise our hate as love.
+We believed our own lies and thereby we comforted ourselves.
+And perhaps we even impressed others.
+But You were never fooled by our ruse.
+Our hearts were indeed far from You.
+
+For those of us who legitimately bear the name Christian, our greatest desire
+has been redirected to You, that we may love You truly.
+But in our flesh, we still desire many things inordinately and wrongly.
+We desire things that we should not.
+We esteem Your gifts more highly than You.
+
+We are too often an ungrateful people.
+Even on our most thankful days, we take for granted more blessings than we
+could count.
+
+We bend the truth.
+We lie both outright and subtly.
+
+We have our own standards that fall far short of Your unapproachable holiness.
+We pretend our standard is Your standard.
+We replace Your Word with vain books and podcasts.
+With eloquent words of men, whether voluminous or brief, we sweep the parts
+Your Word that we do not like away to an obscure corner and meditate on it no
+more.
+
+We esteem ourselves as living lives far more pleasing to You than we really do.
+We think our priorities are Your priorities, that our judgement is Your judgment.
+But our lives are stained tar black by sin.
+We sin in ways that seem small to us, but the natural consequences of which
+will be felt for generations to come in our families and in this church.
+Sins that we think nothing of today will make ruin of Your work here in
+generations to come.
+
+Still, in spite of our sheer abhorrence before You, You love us.
+You are patient with us.
+Unapproachable holiness stoops down in love for those who hated Him.
+The unassailable One came in flesh to bear our guilt and pay its great price,
+to be mocked, beaten, torn, and pierced by lowly creatures, so the we, though
+mired in sin, might have our hearts brought near to You.
+Father please, help us to live lives pleasing to You in all ways, that our
+lives may more closely resemble the record bequeathed to us by Your Son.
+
+It is in the name Your righteous Son, Christ Jesus that we pray.
+Amen.