52 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
52 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
Father,
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We come to You as reconciled enemies.
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Our old hearts were terminally driven toward a hopeless war against You.
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We were unfailingly loyal to Adam's Rebellion.
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We were without hope, forever bound in the grip of sin and guilt.
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In every thought and deed, even when benevolent to man, we sought to dethrone
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You.
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But for Your grace, we had no capacity to turn to You.
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Unlike You, we, even now, fail to love our enemies as Your Son told us to.
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We return evil for evil, and sometimes even evil for good.
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We hold onto our grievances against others.
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We pine for justice, even against those for whom justice is already satisfied
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through the cross of Christ.
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We have wielded the tongue carelessly and brought reproach upon Your name.
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As the hands and feet of Your Son, who loves us, He would set us to the task of
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caring for one another.
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We neglect this task.
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We have played the sluggard and have not utilized our time well.
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We have prioritized trivial things over our responsibilities.
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We have given more thought to the things that please us than to the things that
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please You.
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When we do the things that You command, we often are consumed by pride.
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We focus wrongly on the excellence of our work when and fail to beseech You,
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that You would bless it with fruit.
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We take lightly the blood of Your Son.
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We give far to little thought the enormity of the price for which we were
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bought, when we turn back to the ways of the nature of our first birth.
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When we do well, we think ourselves sufficient before You.
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Though we would never put it to words, we adopt attitudes of thinking we
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are worthy of our spot at the Table, rather than recognizing that this Table is
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an indictment against us that proclaims our unworthiness.
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Now we ask that You would receive us again.
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We ask that You would count us among those for whom Christ is high priest.
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We who were washed now reaffirm our reliance on the blood of our King.
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Help us as we remember the price of our redemption, as we partake and thereby
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proclaim that it is for us that the Lamb died.
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Here we see our guilt and our pardon.
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We come to You knowing that our plea for mercy is worthless, but the plea of
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our great High Priest and His Sacrifice on our behalf is worthy.
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It is in Your righteous Son Christ Jesus that that we come to You.
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Amen.
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