Father,
It is shocking to consider you in comparison to our human experience. One minute we don’t exist, then we’re born, and very soon we’re gone. But you are not like that. As you said to Moses, your name is being. We say that you are in all places at all times, but your existence is so complete and so powerful that the borders of place and time don’t even apply. It is from you that all being comes. You who are existence have made us exist and so in that way too you have made us finite images of yourself. To think about anything as if you were not there is the contemplation of fools.
For our brief span on earth you have allowed us to participate in your great work. You reconciled us to yourself by the blood of your son and you have made us ministers of reconciliation. You show your love to the world through us. You make your appeal to the world through us. And we know that this is not of necessity, but as your sons and daughters you loved us by letting us do your work with you.
And so help us to be more like Jesus who is himself the perfect imprint of your nature. Help us to do all the work you have given us to do as he did all the work you gave him to do. Help us to embrace the transience of our lives. Not laboring for what we can see, but for what you keep reserved in heaven for us: glory, honor, and immortality.
You gave us all things to enjoy and so often our enjoyment of life is an expression of our love for you. But we have often abused the good things you have given us by using them to serve our gluttony and slothfulness. We can leave work that you have prepared for us to do undone. In all sincerity we mean to come back to it later, but we forget that our life is a vapor. The hours that we misspend amusing ourselves pile up.
Father, we need the reminding of your Spirit to teach us to number our days. Teach us to pray constantly. You give gifts variously, but all people may pray. We know that you would not be so unjust as to overlook the labor of those among us who are weak in body but are nevertheless constantly in secret prayer.
May you be pleased with our worship this morning. Bless the musicians and the singers, those who read the scriptures and those who expound it, those who are in the service and those who serve us by watching the children, those who record and mix the sound, those who pray and those who lead.
More than anything we can see, please help our souls. Give the sluggard zeal to work. Convict those who gossip and brag. Comfort those who are suffering in their heart. Illuminate the mind of the sinful that they may come to love the crucified and living savior and find rest for their souls in his forgiveness.
For New City Baptist we ask that the collective character of that congregation and their leadership would be so characterized by holiness and gentleness and love that onlooking churches and the onlooking world would be drawn to worship you and say, “he has sent his Holy Spirit among them.”