Father,

We praise you for your great mercy and power.

Your mercy is amazing! You took sinners, dead in their trespasses and you brought them back to life. Death was the just punishment which you had inflicted on us due to our rebellion and you owed us nothing, but you showed us mercy. And the mercy was amazing!

You did not try to pour out “comfort” grace on us, whereby our quality of earthly life improved. You did not take it upon yourself to provide us with food or healing or peace among ourselves or consequential lives. You gave us life-giving grace. You loved us when we didn’t love you back.  You brought us to eternal life, you welcomed us in your presence, you made us part of your family and you promised to continue to bestow rich grace upon us in eternity. Your mercy and your grace are amazing!

And Father, how powerful you are! We are but specks of dust, blown left and right by the wind. But you are almighty. In Christ, you bring dead people to life. You provide good things for them to walk into and you provide eternity for them.

Ah, Lord, how powerful you are! Our hearts are more deceitful than all else and desperately sick. We love all the wrong things and hate the good things. People have tried for millennia tame the heart and to shape people to do good but have only created monsters. But you, in your great power have taken our monstrous hearts and renewed them to love what is good and to love you, the Good Lord. In your great power you freed us from our fleshly, fallen desires and affections and gave us godly desires and affections.

Father, how powerful you are! How many of us could stand our hearts and our lives being torn apart by our acts of love? And what acts of love! Love for enemies and for rebels, who still don’t get what you have done for them. But in your great power, you loved, you suffered, and you conquered. The world has power to build castles of sand and to destroy. You, however, have power to love your enemies into eternal life!

We thank you Father that we are blessed to receive the benefits of your mercy and power. You saved us in Jesus and made us new. We thank you Father that we can love you and love good, rather than live in the lusts of our flesh. We don’t have to serve our primitive instincts anymore. We thank you we don’t have to live lies and to work hard to maintain lies to feel good about ourselves. We thank you that you are giving us new affections and works to walk into, works that are for your glory. We thank you that you gave us a place in your presence and that we will be able to enjoy your beauty forever.

We thank you Father that you have not left us alone but have given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee and to guide us in the truth. We thank you that you have put us in the church to encourage and to love one another and to proclaim the great news of your mercy and love. We thank you that you provide for us not only these amazing, unimaginable things, but also day-to-day grace in a lot of small ways we tend to forget.

Father, we pray for your name to be glorified. You alone deserve glory and we pray that we, as individuals and as an assembly of saints, would work, strive and sweat to give you glory, rather than to ourselves. We pray that we would be captivated by your plans and your goals, rather than with whatever the world wants us to be captivated by.

We pray Father that we would no longer live in the lusts of the flesh, but in increasing affection for good, truth and love. We pray that we would cultivate these in each other’s lives and not walk in the course of the world anymore. Father help us conduct our lives, the lives you re-created a great cost to yourself, in a manner worthy of your grace. We pray we would accept the good works you prepared for us to walk into. Father helps us not miss the daily acts of love.

Father, the greatest accomplishment in the history of the world is yours. The good news of salvation in Jesus has no equal. Prophets of old and kings wanted to have seen these things and angels cannot get over them. And yet, we Father, so often forget them and casually look over them. And we don’t talk about them for fear of earthly loss and suffering. We pray Father our eyes would be enlightened to grasp what you have done and to proclaim it.

Help us love our lost neighbors enough to tell them the Gospel. Help us love one another enough to be a testimony to your amazing grace and power. Help us love our brothers and sisters in the Middle East who are hunted and cast out for their faith in Jesus. Help us pray, encourage and serve them. And help us, we pray, to follow in their footsteps and carry our crosses.

We pray for your church Iran, that it would continue to grow. Give the Iranian people thirst for true life, dreams of Jesus and to enable them to hear the Gospel and believe it. We pray that you encourage and strengthen your servants there to preach the Gospel, to take away their fear of pain, fear of losing their families and fear of losing their lives. Father, please protect them from evil.

In Christ’s name, Amen.