Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all.
Father, we live among a people that have been dazzled and distracted by their own wealth, and the brightness of the trinkets they manufacture. You are the one who gave us the power to get wealth, and we have pretended that it somehow came from our own hand, our own wisdom, or the systems that we have devised. Having fallen into this error, we then have settled for less and less of that which is substantially good. We have settled for far less of the material goodness that You intend for us to have. Despite the many warnings about this in Your Word, and despite the fact that Your servants warned of this trap regularly, we as a nation have fallen into it. Forgive us for this folly, we pray.
We know, Father, that if we in the Church regard iniquity in our own midst, or in our own hearts, this prayer will be ineffectual
. We confess that with our fellow Americans we too have been far too easily pleased with material goodness disconnected from fellowship with You. This idolatry is insidious, Father, and we confess that it is pervasive in the Church.
Father, we now confess our individual sins to You—and Selah . . . We do this in the great name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and amen.
The Lord will not chide forever. He delights to teach us our sins, not so that He might upbraid us, but so that He might forgive us. Therefore as a minister of all the gospel promises, I declare that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!