Father and God, we confess to You now that we have gone about, as the Jews of old, to establish a righteousness of our own. We confess to You that as a nation, we have not wanted to be clothed in the righteousness of another—we have wanted to stand or fall on our own account, …
Edge of What?
God has called us to be holy and blameless before Him, and so we need to understand that call. As Christians we know that holiness and blamelessness are good things, but we cannot just accept that the words refer to good things. We have to know how God defines these things—and this is what Scripture …
Nothing But Grace and Gratitude
Here is bread and wine. Here is the grace of God. Come as supplicants; come as those who know that they need nothing but the sheer, unadulterated grace of God. Grace, if it to remain grace, must be received as gift. We can be worthy of a gift after the fact, but if we try …
Sin is Not Exceptional
Father, we confess that holiness or separation from the mundane is an inescapable concept, and if we don’t accept the gift of Your holiness, we will attempt to manufacture our own. We confess that we have attempted to create our own forms of exceptionalism, and we confess how wrongheaded that is.
Waiting for the Rat to Die
As we live with one another in our families and in community, we receive all the blessings that come to us from other people. We also receive all the temptations that arise from living in community. These temptations can be filed under grudges, hurts, offenses, bitterness, resentment, peeves, exasperations, and more. But in the name …
And Here You Are
The grace of God enables us to see and savor the grace of God everywhere. This happens in the created order, in the ordinances of worship, in the Scriptures, in the bread and wine, and in the law of God. For the gracious, everything is grace. When someone does not know the grace of God, …
Confessing a False Alternative
Father we confess to you that our grudges and resentments are ample proof that we have not loved our enemies as we ought to have done. We have dealt with our enemies in a fleshly and carnal way, and have not sought to deal with them in the way that Your Word requires. We assume …
Hot Joy From Heaven
Jesus came to save a dark and sinful world, but it was a world that thought itself glorious. And, to a certain extent, that glory was not a sham. The Lord Himself was tempted by it, when the glory of all the world’s kingdoms was paraded before Him by the devil. The world was grimy …
A Mouthful of Grace
This is the Table of grace, and God has set it down in the midst of a sinful world. Sinful unrighteousness knows enough to stay away, but sinful righteousness is constantly trying to figure out ways to turn this into a Table of law. But God reigns on His throne, and His determinative Word cannot …
The Sin of Not Listening
Father we confess to you that when men have been sent to our nation to speak prophetically, we have not listened to your appointed servants. We have stopped our ears. We have reinterpreted your words to suit our own desires. Our Father, the nation has turned far away, and has not listened to those whom …