COV LIFE BLOG

Pastoral Prayer – June 24, 2018

Almighty, most holy God, we souls gathered here come before you now, in great need of your mercy. Lord, we are broken in so many ways. Like the prophet Isaiah, we confess we are a people of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips. We are hypocrites – changing our standards, changing our stories, changing our behaviors to suit our desires.

We look across this nation and lament pictures of children being separated from their parents, rightly demanding that those in authority treat them kindly. Yet in our selfishness, we are so often unkind ourselves, trampling the feelings of family, friends, and neighbors who get in our way as we pursue our idols.

We look across Tampa Bay and shake our heads at a pride parade celebrating an ever-growing catalog of sexual deviancy. But how readily we excuse our own sexual sins, whether physical, vicarious, or fantasized.

O Lord, the list of ways our lives contradict the truths we profess is innumerable. We are capricious in our conduct and wavering in our affections.
B
ut you, Immutable God, are faithful. With you there is no variation or shifting shadow.
You tell Moses, I Am Who I Am. With you there is no becoming, only being.
In Numbers you declare, God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

Psalm 102 proclaims, Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.

Unchanging God, your perfections are infinite. Among them are your boundless grace and steadfast love for your people. You sent Jesus into this world as a man, to live a sinless life and then suffer and die on the cross in the place of everyone who would ever repent of their sins and turn to him as Lord. You showed your acceptance of his sacrifice by raising him from death on the 3rd day. By your grace we rejoice in the words of Peter, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

Your people here bow in thanksgiving, loving Father, that through our faith in Christ we have been reconciled to you, and adopted by you, and can trust you with our lives and our eternity. We rejoice that you are unchanging, that we can trust your word, and that all the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus.

It is only by faith in Him that we approach your throne and plead for you to heal our brokenness. Turn our eyes and our hearts to you, Triune God, that we may know – and savor – more of you in your goodness and grace and grandeur.

Amen.