We have repented, and yet we need to repent of our repentance. We have set a new course, but we so often fall right back into the ditch. When we look at ourselves, we see little progress. We are poorly sanctified. We are far less than holy. Our righteousness, even as your covenant people, are as filthy rags. Our motives are so mixed with good and evil. We think thoughts we ought not to think. Horrible and horrific. How could it even come into our minds? We repent and the Devil hangs around for another day. We covet what we should not covet. We worry when you tell us not to worry. We lust when you forbid us to lust. We cry when we should trust in your providence. We rejoice in the things that should make us cry.

Our Lord, lead us again to the cross of Christ. Let us kneel under his cross and let the blood flow all over us. Let his blood cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Nothing to the cross we bring, simply to the cross we cling. Cover us with the righteousness that is foreign to us. Count us as if we had never sinned. Impute to us that which does not belong to us. For Jesus’ sake Lord, for Jesus’ sake.

O Lord, how we tend to doubt. Give us a simple faith. Give us a faith that simply trusts in your word. What the Lord has spoken he will surely bring to pass. The Scripture cannot be broken. The promises of God cannot be revoked. Help us to remember that the gospel is for us. The healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. We come as vessels full of disease and darkness. We come looking for the Light. We remember that whosoever comes, You will not cast out. Not one person has ever come to you that you have rejected. Lord, for many of us, it seems that you could save anyone but us. You mercy is sufficient for anyone but us. How could God have mercy upon us? Lord, deliver us from such foolish thinking. Deliver us from the lies of the Devil.

Deliver us from our own doubts, especially as we look to you and not to ourselves. We sincerely battle against sin. We find our hope and rest in You. Why should we doubt? Why should we think that God would reject us? The greater the sinner the greater the grace. Lord, let us see Thy great grace.

Lord, have mercy upon the suffering. Give aid to the sick and dying. Come as gentle nurse and bind up our wounds. Help us to see that the pain, the loss of something important, is for our good. Thou must prepare us for a greater life. Thou dost move our attention from this world to the next.

Lord, we live in a nation where people are losing their jobs. We no longer have plenty for everyone. Many families struggle to survive. The debts continue to expand and the income is just not enough. For many, it takes two working to put food on the table. Lord, give our men work that will make them productive and enable them to support their families.

Lord, we have sought to make a paradise of our nation. We live in a nation where the wine flows like honey. Many have sought happiness in what they have, rather than who they are. The world lures us with promises of joy, but we have found that they have lied to us. Sitting under our own fig tree without Christ gives a man only a short-lived joy. Without the foundation of Jesus Christ, soon the world becomes rotten. We become disillusioned and bitter. Our dreams come crashing down. For many of us, we have seen the truth before we were destroyed. Lord, give our children wisdom beyond their years. Give them ears to hear the wisdom of their parents and grandparents. Keep them from harm while the foolishness of youth blinds them. May they learn early that wisdom begins with the fear of God. Lord, don’t let them crash because we crash with them. Their success is our success and their failure is our failure. May they know that they carry us with them wherever they go. We grieve when they grieve and we rejoice when they rejoice. They are our children. They are our seed. We are part of them as they were once part of us.

Lord, grant that we never lose sight of the sinfulness of sin, the harm that it does to so many people. Give us a vision of the exceeding righteousness of Christ, the exceeding. glory of the Son of God, the exceeding beauty of holiness, and the exceeding wonder of your grace.