Father,
We are blessed, not because we have not sinned, but because you have forgiven our sin. We are not pretending not to have sinned or that our sins are insignificant. Each of us have had times of pretending, when we tried to continue merrily on without acknowledging our sin to you. But over time the weight of it becomes so heavy that it almost produces physical symptoms. And this is already the beginning of your mercy, because that strange exhaustion of sin drives us back to you. And we find afterwards that you are quicker to forgive than we were to repent. If we could choose to push a button once and never sin for our whole life, we would race each other to that button. But you have ordained that we are to choose obedience moment by moment. And so though we are yours and we love you, and though we may choose obedience 99 times out of 100, there is still no one who always does good and never sins. And so we love you not only by our obedience but by constantly running back to you through the pain of repentance. There is nowhere else we want to go. You are the one who saves us from trouble. You are the one who counsels us. Help us to be quick to stop and acknowledge our sin at our first awareness of something wrong so that we will not need your more severe discipline before we listen. Help us to remember that we who trust you are enveloped in your love and fill us with the joy of knowing you.
Please continue strengthening the family bond that we have through your Spirit in very practical ways. Many things exert pressure to keep us apart: business, traffic, space, health, tiredness, and sometimes the trick of sin that makes us want to hide. You are the one who sets the lonely in families. You gave us 100 times our natural family when you brought us together and became our one father. Help us to be that family for each other. Let none of us suffer from loneliness that the presence of a brother or sister would alleviate. Let none of us misstep for lack of counsel when the words of a brother or sister might easily have pointed out the right way. Let none of us persist in sin when the correction of a brother or sister would have brought us to our senses. Let none of us fall under trial or persecution when the encouragement of a brother or sister would have held us up. Let none of us fail in bringing our intentions for good works to completion when a brother or sister would have been able to show us how.
It is better to live a life of obedience out of fear of your discipline than to live in a descending spiral of sin. But it is not all that it ought to be. If we love what is evil and only turn from it for fear, it will be a burdensome life. But your yoke is easy. You have given us freedom and release from fear if only we will love what you love. If all that pleases us is to please you then we may do whatever we please. You are good and if we love you we love and do whatever is good. While the dread of your rebuke restrains some from sin, others plunge foolishly from disaster to disaster, ruining their lives, and don’t stop to think that your discipline is meant to lead to repentance. Perhaps they have forgotten that life can be other than it is. Send them a quiet voice to speak to them clearly over the noise of chaotic trouble and grant them repentance and knowledge that you suddenly rescue and abundantly pardon.
We thank you for Jesus, our older brother, who revealed you to us and died so that we might be reconciled to you and share in his glorious inheritance. Make us both as individuals and as a body more like him. May our worship in its various forms this morning be pleasing to you.