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 of all life, on this, a glorious day of resurrection remembrance, we confess that our nation is a nation of sleepwalkers, a nation of spiritual sluggards turning on our beds like a door on its hinges, refusing to be awakened. We have been told many times to awake so that Christ might shine upon us, and yet we have turned our face to the wall for some more rebellious shut eye. We confess that the sleep we are in amounts to a stupor, a coma, a form of sentient death. Father, we confess this to You on behalf of a dead people, so that You may speak the sovereign words of life. Father, we have confessed this deathly state of our people and so it is time for You to act. As our Lord’s mother spoke to Him about the wine at Cana, so we dare to speak to you about the miracle we so desperately need. Lord and Father, it is time.
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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. And so, Father, we confess our own sleepwalking, our own indolence, our own comfortable accommodation to the spirit of the age. Wake us up, Father, so that we might wake the others.
And Father, we take this time to confess any private sins to You now—and Selah . . . We do this in the living name of Jesus our risen Savior, and amen.
God knows what He is doing. He has summoned you here because He has something to give. Forgiveness, life, cleansing, and more life are all offered to you through the gospel, and as a minister of that gospel I declare that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!