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 kneel before You now, the one who searches every human heart. Father, we bow before You now, the one before whom every heart is laid completely bare. We live in a time, and among a people, where our ideas of fatherhood are almost completely deranged. We have despised our own fathers. We have envied the fathers of others, wanting to have been born in some other line. We have disobeyed our fathers. We have legislated against fathers taking responsibility. We have refused to receive from the founding fathers of our nation the wisdom that they offer us.
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
. We know that Your Word promises a full restoration of this whole sorry world, and that it will begin with You turning the hearts of the children back to their fathers, and the hearts of fathers back to their children. We pray that You would forgive us our sins, and do this in our midst, so that we might show the world what that looks like.
We confess our private sins to You now—and Selah . . . We do this in the strong and gracious name of Jesus Christ, and amen.
We are not consumed because the Lord is merciful. His mercy has established great and precious promises, and as a minister of those promises, I am privileged to declare that your sins are forgiven through Christ.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!