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 confess that we as a people have become enamored of certification, and every form of accreditation by men. Father we confess that we cannot believe in Jesus as a people because we are so distracted and so busy receiving honor from one another. We are a horizontal people, and we have lost our sense of Your transcendent glory. Forgive us for this, 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. Father, we confess that the Church has led the way in this sin, in that our seers and prophets have spoken like scribes, and not like ministers with authority. We confess our impotence and our powerlessness to You. On this day of Pentecost, it is fitting that we confess this sin. Forgive us for our unbelief, we pray.
And Father, we confess our individual sins to You now—and Selah . . . We do this in the great name of Jesus, and amen.
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God has invited us to make this appeal to Him, and so we have done so on the basis of that invitation. He is eager to cleanse us, eager to forgive, eager to empower us. And so as a minister of Jesus Christ, I declare to you that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!