Sunday, June 18, 2017

A Prayer

We thank You, Father, that You are a God whom we can enjoy. The gods of the nations are stern and distant and quiet. But that's not You. You are our Father. And You care for us as a Father. You are near and loving, and You still speak. And one of Your great desires is that we would come to know You so well that we would enjoy You fully. How different from all the idols. Thank You for rescuing us from them.

We know that we don't enjoy You as much as we can. Our sin gets in the way. We are grateful that Jesus has come to deal with that sin. He has come and has removed its just penalty. Because of that we can draw near to You to enjoy Your smile, Your words of comfort, Your guidance through what can be, at times, a rather confusing life. We are really grateful for that.

And Jesus has also come to destroy sin's power. It once held us down as slaves, but no longer. Now, we can put our sins to death. And as we do that, we are able to enjoy more of who You are. The day will come when the last vestiges of our sin will be gone, completely gone. That's when we will enjoy a resurrected body in a resurrected world. It will be the Garden all over again, except better. And what will make it so good is that You will be there, and we will be able to enjoy You fully. We want to thank You for these gracious gifts that are ours because of Jesus.

We ask that You would help us by Your Spirit to continually remember who You are and who we are. You are our Father and we are Your cherished children. And in the midst of the difficulties that we all face here, please remind us that we always have You. Because of Your fatherly care, You will bring us through every difficulty until that last day when all the difficulties of life will be past. Thank You for being that kind of Father to us.

And now, Father, as we turn to the preaching of Your most holy Word, give us all ears to hear from You. We want this because You always have good things to tell us and we don't want to miss any of it. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

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