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