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Context
Scripture Reading: Psalm 90
Sermon Text: Genesis 1:26-28
Prayer
Father,
We come before you right now to recognize our sin. We come before you to confess that we have not lived according to your purpose and design for us.
We have failed as your image and as stewards of your creation. We have failed in your call to exercise dominion over creation, and have submitted ourselves to worshiping creatures rather than you, our Creator. The creation that you made us to be benevolent stewards of suffers because we love it wrongly. You made us stewards of your creation, and we have brought death upon it. We twist and contort your image in the world, and then set our hopes in that contorted image.
We have scorned your design for us. We are ashamed of your noble callings for us.
We have trained our hearts to delight in and esteem mockeries of the Gospel, mockeries of your manifold wisdom. We allow our entertainment to breed in us, sympathy for and celebration of things you have declared detestable.
Masquerading cowardice as compassion, we fail to speak the truth. Masquerading animosity as compassion, we use the truth for harm. In this we fail as Christ's body. We fail as the body of him who is your perfect image.
We are in many ways disciples of our culture, rather than your Son. We are in many ways disciples of whichever popular faction of our time seems best to us, rather than your Word. Whether we are stalwart devotees of tradition, progress, or moderation, we too often set our course according to the ideas of men without ever truly consulting your Word.
But by your Word, we know that you gave your Son for us, and so we come to you now seeking the peace with you that is bought by the blood of his cross, that we may share in his life. We ask your forgiveness for our sin, that you would deliver us both from the from the consequence of our sin and from our sin itself, that we might image you rightly.
We ask this in the name of your righteous Son, Christ Jesus. Amen.