A Prayer

Father,

You are the God who has rescued us. You have delivered us from the domain of darkness and the cruel king who rules that domain. Every day that we spent there was a taste of death. And our future, if we remained there, would have been worse.

But You delivered us from that domain and transferred us to a different kingdom, the kingdom of Your beloved Son, Jesus. And now we are subjects of a very different kind of king. He is a good king who loves all those who serve Him. And now, every day is another opportunity to taste more of the life that is His gift. And our future is glorious.

Father, it is obvious to us that we do not deserve any of this. What we deserve is to be left in that other domain. What we deserve is to suffer for time and eternity. But for reasons that will forever mystify us, You have been so very gracious to us. And we give You thanks for that.

We acknowledge that now that we are members of Jesus’ kingdom You have expectations of us. You call us to live worthy of this kingdom and worthy of this King. And that is exactly what we want to do. But our sin gets in the way. So, we ask You, Father, to do whatever is necessary - whatever is necessary - so that we will clearly see our remaining sin and thoroughly hate it so that we will repent of it and pursue instead godly traits of virtue and integrity and character. We know that doing this will not be easy. Dealing with sin will hurt, sometimes greatly. But we want to walk worthy of our Savior. So, we look to You to work in us by Your Spirit so that the change will happen and be obvious.

We know, Father, that You are the God who listens to the prayers of His saints. And that is so encouraging to us when we pray. And while You hear all of our requests, You don’t grant them all. You are too wise and too loving to do that. But we know that the requests that we have made this morning are the kind that will be granted. And so, we look forward to seeing that happen.

As we offer this up to You through Christ our Lord. Amen.