Mighty, Majestic, and most powerful God, blessed be your Name. We praise you for your infinite grace, love, and mercy. How you have existed from before time began and how you will always exist as you are from eternity. You are glorious and your righteousness is complete, lacking nothing. You are light and in you is no darkness. Most of all, Lord, you are Holy. Transcendantly Pure. High and lifted up. Even now as we pray to you, the angels sing of your glory! Oh God, teach us to call these things to mind regularly.

How easily we fall into saying these things without thinking of them. We so often live in such a way as to neglect the strength of your might! We talk of your justice, your might, your power, or your eternality as though we were talking about the weather and yet we quickly shudder at the impending loss of a job, a relationship, or the threat of someone else. Oh God, have mercy on us.

Lift our eyes up to see your Transcendant glory and rehearse it for ourselves regularly. Teach us, yet again Lord, to fear you more than we fear the trifles of this world. Grow our understanding of your strength, your justice, and your purity. Remind us of passages that teach us that we cannot hide from you. We may be able to hide from others, but we cannot hide ourselves from you. Remind us that a Day of Judgment is coming soon and it will be real and it will be total. We shudder to talk about such things as they seem so harsh, and yet, they’re real.

Oh God, we rightly want to emphasize your steadfast love, your grace, your mercy, your many kindnesses, but Father, there is something within us that is hesitant to emphasize your Justice and your Holiness. There is something that wants to minimize you and make your more manageable so that we don’t have to deal with the fact that, as the Psalmist says, the mountains melt like wax before you. Or in other places of Scripture, how you look to the earth and it trembles.

May we worship you, God, yes for your tender and steadfast love. But Lord, may we worship you all the more for your Holiness.

Forgive us for the way we don’t rehearse these things. Forgive us for how casually we live as your children. Neglecting your commands and emphasizing our liberties. Forgive us for abusing grace and counting on mercy. Forgive us for the ways we lose sight of your anger in our selfish anger towards others. Forgive us for the ways we feel entitled, arrogant, or privileged when we only loom as large as ants in your presence.

Lord, I pray a dangerous thing. I pray you humble us in the midst of your glory. Make us more and more like your Son as you remind us more and more of your Strength. You tell us, that “this is the one to whom you will look, he who is humble and contrite and TREMBLES at your word.” And Lord, we so rarely are contrite and we so rarely TREMBLE at your word. Lift up our eyes to you, oh God. Grant that we may not abuse the forgiveness that you so generously give us. May we fear you as you forgive us.

Thank you Lord, that you are so patient with us. Thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ who forgives us of all our sins and allows us, as we learned last week, to come into your Holy presence, clean and undefiled. Hallelujah.

Lord, I continue to pray for the men of this church. May we hear more and more testimonies of men being more and more disciplined. Waking up early to spend time with you in the word and in prayer. May we hear more and more men loving their wives and their children, diligently teaching them to know God and to love neighbor. Grant that more and more single men would join this church and have undivided devotion in making disciples. May Restoration Church be a place that is known for its love for God and its cultivation of Biblical men. A place where passivity, laziness, slothfulness, is not tolerated. And a place where responsibility, courage, and hard work is celebrated. God, grant Restoration Church to be a community that raises up godly men.

God, thank you for the many, many women that reflect Biblical femininity in this church. Where we pray for more Biblical masculinity, Lord, I praise you for the pervasive presence of so many godly women in this church. Thank you for the ways so many women in our church are spurring one another on towards Biblical fidelity. Your grace is so overwhelmingly abundant among the women of our church and we thank you.

Father, we want to praise you for the work of Haiti Love. Thank you for Pastor C, E, and N for the ways they have been training up other pastors to lead healthy churches that will serve the poor and build communities that are salt and light to their country. Lord, we thank you for the ways the Haitian people have taught us so much about what it means to be content, to be joyful, and thankful with so little in the eyes of the world. How they have shown us resilience and kindness. May the people of Haiti begin to send more and more laborers into the harvest of not only their communities but also to ours and to other nations around the world.

Finally, Father, we pray that through the ministry of Restoration Church we would see a bevy of evangelistic fruit in 2018. I thank you, Lord, for the many testimonies of this church and how they are sharing the Gospel with the lost. God, grant that we may see a harvest from our Gospel proclamations this year. May the baptismal waters stir here with new believers born unto you. We ask that you would do that especially amongst the Spanish speakers of our city. Grant that A, M, C, A, R, and B would consistently be calling those that do not believe to believe. May Iglesia Biblical Sublime Gracia be a church that grows as a result of evangelism.

We love you, Lord. And we thank you for the privilege of being your children. We thank you for the hope of heaven and we thank you for the joy of making disciples. May we lean into all of these things as we display your glory in the church, your Bride. Blessed be your great name. Amen.