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 live in a generation that rejects Your laws, and tries to make up the difference between those broken laws and a clean conscience through sentimentalism. Father, we confess that we as a people have disregarded the law of our mothers, and that we have not honored them in the way that Your Word requires. And so to make up for this—as though it could—we have given them a day on which to give them cards and flowers. And yet our nation, laws, governments, institutions and people despise motherhood, as can be seen in the abortion carnage, to take just one example. And so we confess this grievous sin.
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
. So Father, we confess that we in the Church have not honored our mothers as we ought to have done. We have not honored our mother the Church, and we have not honored the mothers who bore us. Forgive us, we pray.
Father, we confess our individual sins to You now—and Selah . . . We do this in the great name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and amen.
The command to honor father and mother is the first command with a promise. In addition to that promise is God’s promise of free and full forgiveness. So as a minister of all the gospel promises, I declare to you that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!