Father,
You loved us and made us your children. Being yours somehow makes us seem strange and unfamiliar to those who do not know you. We don't know what it will be like when you give your children immortality, but as we have been like Jesus in being disdained by the ungodly world, you will make us like him in transfigured glory. Because we know this day is coming, we labor to be less sinful and more attentive to your will as you will make us perfectly on that day. You sent your sinless son to take away sin and so we who belong to him and have his spirit living within us, continue to turn away from the sin we find in our lives. You sent Jesus to destroy the work of the devil. We who are your children have renounced all the works of the devil. His native language is deception and lies. Keep us firmly in the truth - to speak it confidently, and believe it with unwavering faith. The Devil is the accuser of the brethren. Keep us from accusing and gossiping and complaining about one another and sowing division among the brothers. Instead let our words be empowered by your spirit, spoken in season, calculated to minister grace to the hearers. From the beginning the Devil was a murderer. Keep us from embodying his murderous hatred with words that inflict poisonous hurt under a cloak of civility and plausible christian words. Instead may your Spirit within us stir us up to the love that unfailingly seeks the good of others.
We want to see the work of the Devil destroyed not only from our hearts and from our fellowship here, but also in the world. We want to see the people and practices that are right and good and godly and wise to be honored by political leaders, media influencers, and corporate power. The world has counted your holy people as the irrelevant margin while foolishness, lies, and perversion take center stage. We know that it is your will that the wheat and the tares grow up together until the end comes and so we are not asking for a premature paradise. But though evil remains, may we see honor for your name and your ways come from the mouths and acts of those who control this city. May public disdain be reserved for those who hate you and conspire against we who love you.
Please remember to take care of our practical needs. We feel strong as long as you are holding us up. But when you touch our finances, or our health, or our heart and mind, or anything we love, we suddenly remember that we are dust. We are dust, and incapable of anything without you. So we ask you to care for each of us in these ways.
We give you thanks this morning for the cross by which you have reconciled us to yourself. By the cross, you have loved us, canceled our record of sin, given us the hope of resurrection, given us strength for purposeful endurance of suffering, and taught us how we ought to treat one another. In the cross, you revealed yourself. By it you forged this people who are assembled here this morning to worship.
We pray for our service this morning and ask that you would be honored in all that is done here. May our songs be pleasant to you. May you be pleased as the truth is taught through the reading and exposition of the scriptures. Help us to be receptive hearers, that we would not be hearers only but doers of the word. Help us to love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In our fellowship, help us to speak truth with each other, always seeking others' interests ahead of our own. We ask that you would specially encourage those who serve in the nursery that we might gather here.