Father, when men do not know You in truth, they of necessity gravitate to the externals. The Spirit of God always marries the inside and the outside, and it is the sin of man that seeks to divide them. We confess that we live among a people whose hearts are far from You, and yet who delight in projecting an image of goodness. Deliver us from all such hypocrisy, 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.
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Father in Heaven, we are praying to You now in a time liturgically appointed for confession of sin, and we acknowledge how easy it is for us to do the drill in this way, without really dealing with the heart issues. We confess that to You now, asking You to give us a spirit that rends our hearts and not our garments. Father, deliver us from mere externals. Father, establish us in true externals.
And Father, we confess our own personal sins to You now—and Selah . . . We do this in the strong name of Jesus, and amen.
When you confess your sins honestly and rightly, the sun rises upon you. And when the sun rises upon you, it rises upon you with a seven-fold brightness. You are privileged, as a child of God, to walk in that seven-fold forgiveness. On the basis of Christ’s blood, I now declare to you that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!