Father of all mercies, we ask You to forgive us in accordance with all Your mercies, and not in accordance with what we deserve. We confess to You that as a nation, we have wanted to earn some measure of our standing before You, and so we ask You to pour out upon our people …
Doctrinal and Liturgical Clutter
The longer you are a Christian, the harder it is to keep it simple. You grow in knowledge. You grow in your grasp of Christian doctrine, and the Word. You come to church long enough to know when to stand up and sit down. But in all these manifestations of doctrinal, liturgical, and cultural knowledge, …
Receiving and Grabbing
The Bible teaches that there are only two tables in the world—the Table of the Lord and the table of demons. Corresponding to this, there are only two kinds of table manners. One kind of person receives what is passed to him, and another kind grabs what he wants. The former is suitable for the …
Idolatry As Idolatry
Father God, Almighty God, we come before You now as citizens of a nation that has sought out many high places, and which has bowed down before many idols. We confess this sin of our people to You, and ask You to be merciful. We ask You to grant a great reformation, with the result …
Turning Into Grace
You have all heard the truism that you are what you eat. This is true on a number of levels, and of course it is also false in other ways. No matter how carelessly you eat, you are not going to turn into high fructose corn syrup. And no matter how finicky you are when …
Covenant Ties
You have heard the word covenant many times, and there is a temptation to think of it as just one of those Bible words. But the word covenant means something. In fact, it means many things, and one of the important ones has direct relevance to the make up of our congregation. Because we are …
Discarding the Word
Father in Heaven, You are the Father of all forgiveness, and we come before You representing a nation that has ingloriously discarded Your Word with regard to the honor that is due our fathers and our mothers, and our grandfathers and grandmothers. Father, we have sought to build communities out of materials that You never …
When the Other Guy Is Missing His Camel
One of the reasons Christians get tangled up in worship wars is that they fail to realize that something can be relatively unimportant theologically, but still be of immense practical importance. And then, when they realize that “something important” is going on when it comes to this practice, and conflict has started to heat up …
The God of Lent
Not being numbered among those who observe the days, I was somehow under the impression that Lent was going to start any day now. But checking with Google (another thing the apostolic church did not have), I find that we are still a month out. Far from being Fat Tuesday, this might as well be …
Christ is Your Christ
This is, of course, a covenant meal. This is the cup of the new covenant. Christ is the covenant, and this is His body, and this is His blood. But the word covenant is not just an all-purpose religious word, signifying something vaguely spiritual. A covenant is form by an oath, a bond, between persons. …