Father, We praise you for your mercy and for your justice!

Father, in your mercy you created a people for yourself, a people made of people who did not deserve to be loved, a people made of people who did not know what it meant to be a people, a people of people who didn’t belong together. Father, you created your church to show your glory and to share your love. In your mercy, you sought out rebellious sheep and had mercy on them when they themselves didn’t want to be saved or desired you. You were fed up with their misery and saved them.

Father, in your justice, you fought against evil and didn’t close your eyes to it. We praise you for the fact that you are a God of justice, who works hard at accomplishing justice. We praise you that you are not arbitrary or capricious, but careful, patient and thoughtful. Father we praise you for how you did justice in your Son to save sinners who had rebelled against you. Out of your own great love, you showed them grace at great expense to yourself to accomplish justice. Our sin was great, but your mercy and justice were greater.

We are thankful Lord that you made us part of your people. You didn’t turn against us to destroy us, but to save us. You took pity on us and we are grateful. We thank you for your people, the church, which you have assembled and for the privilege to see and experience your grace as part of it.

We thank you for our brothers and sisters whom you have saved. We thank you for our brothers and sisters who are not like us, who like other things than us, who have different political views, who have different skin colors, who have different types of jobs, who have different histories. We thank you because through our brothers and sisters we see you grace and are encouraged to obey you more and to love you more.

We thank you for our brothers and sisters who offend us through their actions and words, we thank you for our brothers and sisters who let us down and for our brothers and sisters who forget about us. We thank you because by loving our brothers and sisters we can learn to love like you love. And we can learn to be merciful and to be just as you are merciful and just.

For, Father, we don’t know how to love, we don’t know how to be merciful and we don’t how to be just. Even if we look at the past week, we loved our idols more than our brothers and sisters.

We considered ourselves better than people of different political views, with different life habits and from different socio-economic conditions. Our mercy was as good as our ability to think of ourselves superior. When it came to doing justice, we called for what advantaged us, forgetting the other’s own grievances. We acted out of fear of what might happen to us or what we might lose and not out of a love for what is right. We wanted to get back at the other person because they treated us poorly. We rewrote the history and the memory of our relationships to demean the other person in our and other people’s eyes. We lumped people together based on group dynamics. We envied the position and status of our neighbor and called for a justice that decreases them and lifts us up.

Father, forgive us our sin! Forgive us for being selfish, self-centered and disobedient. Have mercy on us. Enable us to learn love, mercy and justice.

We thank you for Jesus, that you accomplished mercy and justice and that we can now be part of your family and receive forgiveness.

We pray, Lord, for love. We pray that you enable and empower us to know what love is and what it looks like. We pray that we rest in your grace, not in our own good deeds and so-called sacrifices which do not measure up to a drop of your grace. Lord, enable us to be merciful and just and to grow in doing mercy and justice. Help us not do the mercy and justice of the mob in the public square, but your mercy and justice.

Father, in your Word, you have given us all we need to know truth, love, mercy and justice. Help us rest in, eat and devour your Word in seeking wisdom to love our neighbors. Father, help us defeat sin one day at a time as we practice loving our neighbors as revealed in your Scriptures. Help us love, have mercy and do justice by the obedience you have called us to.

Father, in this divided and compass-less society we live in, we pray that Restoration Church would be a light. We pray we would be faithful in sharing the Gospel and our love for one another would be real and visible.

In particular, Father, just as you intended the church to be a place where both Jews and Gentiles live together, we pray that Restoration Church and believing churches in this country would be a light of love between people of different skin colors and backgrounds. Father, grant us to obey you daily in loving people of different skin colors and backgrounds. Grant us knowledge and obedience in how to make justice where justice is due.

Father, our society looks like Judges. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, everybody doing what is right in their own eyes. The weak and the poor are trampled upon and justice is not served. Divisions between people are on the rise. Father, have mercy on this country! Pour out your grace in the form of spiritual awakening! Grant our leaders knowledge of truth to fight against evil and do justice!

In Christ’s name, Amen.