A Prayer

We thank You, Father, that because of the Gospel, we get to know You. How good. And that's so good because You created us to know You. You created us to take walks with You in the cool of the day, chatting together about this and that.

But our sin made a mess of that. Father, what could it mean to be completely removed from You and that forever? It is something too awful to consider. We are so grateful that You sent Jesus to deal with the sin that separated us from You. And we are so grateful that Jesus sent His Spirit to give us the faith needed to entrust ourselves to Him, to believe the promise of the Gospel and thus be rescued from that terrible fate.

And while we thank You, Father, for the closeness that we now experience, it is something for us to consider that one day this little taste will become a feast. The day will come when our enjoyment of Your presence will completely dwarf our best days with You now. And that is something to look forward to.

But while we are here, Father, we ask that You would teach us by Your Spirit. There is so much about You for us to learn, so much about You for us to enjoy. And as we do learn and enjoy more, guide us to see how we can share what we are learning so that others can also enjoy You more.

Some of these will be our fellow saints. Just as there have those saints who have shared with us what they have learned about who You are, we want to share with other saints what we learn. In this way we will all enjoy You together, the way that it's supposed to happen.

There will also be those who are not among the saints. These are the many who are now trying to live without You, something that really doesn't work. Lead us to these people. Grant us opportunities to say something about what we enjoy about You because of the Gospel. Wouldn't it be good, Father, if many, many came to know You so that they could enjoy You. That would be very good. And so, we ask for that. We ask that many would hear about what Jesus has done, and hearing they would believe it.

We know, Father, that the ultimate goal of all of this is not our enjoyment of You, though that is important to You. The ultimate goal of all of this is You. It's revealing more and more clearly to all of creation the kind of God that You are, and doing that so that all creation would respond with praise. More than anything, that's what we desire. So, use us, please, to bring that about.

And now, Father, with that goal in mind, we ask for Your blessing on the sermon. Bless me as I speak, that I would be clear and persuasive in communicating Your truth. And bless these good people, Your people, that hearing from You they would be encouraged as they work to live well. Through Christ our Lord Amen.