Holy Father, worthy is your name to be praised. You are above all things and in you all things exist. You separate the light from the darkness; you made the heavens and the earth we stand on. You constructed the tiny cells that constitute our bodies and you created Mount Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro, along with the vast Pacific Ocean and all of this in comparison to you is nothing. The entire galaxy cannot contain your glory. Your majesty is so magnificent that a symphony of the greatest order would not be able to play beautifully enough to communicate your infinite worth. And wonder of wonders, you have made us for yourself!

We thank you God that you have made us to know you. Unlike animals, trees, clouds, and insects; you have made us to know something about you. We thank you for that Lord. How incredibly dull our world would be if we could not see you through the beauty of sunsets and mountain ranges-acts of charity or the simple love of a family.

We thank you also for the love this church enjoys. How kind of you Lord to have granted this church to this community almost 7 years ago. Thank you for our brothers and sisters that have moved on from this church that helped create a community for those of us that are here now. Thank you for the ways you are using not only this church but dozens of other churches around DC to be salt and light to their surrounding neighborhoods. Your infinite wisdom is on display in the creation of the church.

Lord, thank you for the elders and deacons of this church that sacrificially give of their time and treasures to make disciples that delight in the supremacy of Christ. Thank you for the Community Group Leaders, as well as those that open up their homes every week for this same intention of making disciples.

Thank you for hospitals, policemen, firemen, Advisory Neighborhood Committees that all labor to serve this community and make it a place that is a pleasure to live. Most of all, thank you for your redeeming love. How you hate sin and made a way for sinners through Christ is the best news we could ever know or hope for…and it is real! We praise you that you are a God that is all that we would hope for and more! Glory to YOU in the highest and glory to you in this place.

As we consider your Holiness and the throngs of things we have to be thankful for. We not only thank for your redeeming love, but we thank you for the redeeming love that offers us forgiveness of our sins-and boy do we need forgiveness.

Forgive us for the ways we treasured things above you this week. Forgive us for the times we treasured money and possessions above the glory of your son by buying things we didn’t need or by wagering money away at gambling tables. Forgive us for treasuring our relationships with other people more than our relationship with you by our giving time to Facebook, a lunch or dinner with a friend when we’ve not even thought to spend a moment with you. Forgive us for our indifference towards you. Our lives are more oriented to the news cycle than they are our place in Redemption. Forgive us for the times some of us sought out pornography and made sexual intimacy something ugly when you made it good. Forgive us for the ways we objectified men or women this week in our sensual sins. Forgive the husbands that used their tongues to tear their wives down instead of using them to build their wives up. Forgive the wives that hope more in their earthly husbands than they do your Son, their heavenly husband. Forgive the ways we have complained about fellow brothers or sisters in Christ, forgive the ways we gossiped about our co-workers, and forgive us for when we have spoken with filthy language or laughed at crude jokes. Our lives are all too often conformed to the patterns of the world instead of being conformed to the patterns of our heavenly home…and we gather together in this place because we believe that you are a God that forgives sinners who walk in repentance and not lean into these sins.

We praise you and join the voice of the Psalmist when he said that with you there is Forgiveness! Thank you that in Christ we can be made whiter than snow. How good it is to know, Lord, that all of our righteous deeds are like dirty rags before you, but our feeble faith in Christ and His Redeeming work on the Cross and in the Resurrection can free us from our slavery to sin and onto glad hearted obedience.

Lord, as we ask you for forgiveness, we pray that you would also grant this church a few things. Would you supply this church with more godly men that could lead this church as elders? Would you mature the men that are here and providentially provide other men to move into our surrounding communities that are willing and able to lead your church?

And would you also supply us more ethnic diversity? Fill this church up with people from different backgrounds and various nationalities for the purposes of expressing your manifold glory. Grant us socio-economic diversity as well. May we find those that are poor sitting next to those that are rich, next to those that are neither.

And Father, grant that you would also fill this church with new believers. We plead that you would so move in Tenleytown, American University, Georgetown, UDC, Chevy Chase, Friendship Heights and Woodley Park in such a way as to bring those that are far from you near to you. Bring the doubters, the skeptics, the wounded, and those from false religions to the saving knowledge of Christ.

Open the eyes of those that think themselves to be Christians but aren’t understanding the Gospel and all of its implications. Have them count the cost and be willing to walk the narrow road to the narrow gate and know the everlasting joy that is found in Jesus! Make the 133 members of this church your hands and feet that will go and get them. Give us boldness and courage to speak the Gospel in apartment buildings and in our jobs so that others may come to know the hope that we have in our heavenly home with you.

Lord, we pray for our brothers and sisters in the Treasuring Christ Together network that are laboring towards these same ends. Bless Bethlehem Baptist and Jubilee Church in Minneapolis. Grant J and the church family at Harvest Fellowship in Little Rock endurance in the Faith, and move in the community of East St. Louis as K and his precious wife try and bring the hope of the Gospel to that neglected community.

Father, we also pray for laborers to join A, M, R, and B as they try and form a team in the next few months to plant the Gospel amongst the Hispanic of Washington, DC.

Finally, Lord, we thank you for our brother J and all the ways that he labors so faithfully and so diligently week in and week out. He is a gift to all of us. Bless our brother as he comes in a moment to preach your word to us. Help us more fully understand this Son that has been given to us.

Amen.