Father, you made the heavens and the earth! Splendor and majesty are before you, strength and beauty are in your sanctuary.

Father, we marvel at the way you made the universe and we praise you for how your creation works from the smallest particle to the largest star. You made them and us and everything fascinates us. And if the heavens we can see are so amazing, how much more do you have to be who inhabit heavens hidden from our eyes, where you reign in splendor and majesty surrounded by the holy hosts of angels. We praise you, Father, for your greatness and glory which you have in the heavens.

Had we dreamt of a God, we could not have imagined one such as you. For you, Father, are magnificent in wisdom, splendid in your righteousness, abounding in mercy and lavish in love. We praise you, Father, for the glorious and righteous character which you have displayed in your Son as he lived on this earth among us. Because you are not an impersonal force, nor a distant God, but you are a God who sent His son to live among us and to reveal to us who you are.

And you did not send your son to just live among us, but to be like us. And not only to be like us, but to carry our infirmities and sin into death and to save us from your righteousness. We praise you that although highly exalted and set apart, your Son personally saved us.

And confronted by this salvation, we confess Father, that we did not worship you, but idols which our hands and our minds created, small and comfortable idols. We longed to be like the successful people of this world and we did not marvel at you, the creator, but we marveled at ourselves and our little creations. We did not rejoice in your righteousness and justice, but we sought to accomplish justice by diminishing our neighbors who hurt us. We did not rejoice in your grace and mercy you showed us when you saved us from our sins and gave us eternal life, but wallowed in pity about how our lives are not as good as they could be. We did not jump for joy that our names are written in heaven and our sin is forgiven, nor did we pursue our neighbors to tell them of your great mercy which is still available for them in the Gospel.

Father, forgive us our practical idolatry and enable us to love you the one true God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. Help us sing for joy of knowing who you are and for joy that you are just and merciful and that in Jesus we have life.

We thank you Father that in Christ our sin is covered and that you don’t hold our iniquities against us. We thank you that we can know you, the God of the universe, and that we have access to you as sons and daughters. We thank you that you are working to accomplish justice and make everything good again. We thank you that we are not fighting sin and temptation alone, but that you have put us in a community to serve and love.

We pray, Father, that we would sing for joy that you are for real, that you reign in righteousness and that in Jesus it is well with our souls. We pray that we would sing for joy that our sin is forgiven and that we will see you face to face.

We pray, Father, that we would love the appearance of Jesus Christ, when he comes back to judge the living and the dead. We pray that we would live like a people waiting to be saved and like kids waiting for their father to come back from a long trip to bring take them home.

And we pray, Lord, that we would not love the world and its comforts but love you and our neighbors enough to tell them the Good News of eternal life in Jesus. We pray, Lord, that we would appreciate men and women who live to serve you and to proclaim the Gospel. We pray we would not only long to be good professionals, but that we would long to be good disciple-makers.

We pray that you open the hearts and minds of our neighbors to receive the message of the Gospel and believe in Jesus. Please bring life to Washington DC and open blind eyes to see where majesty resides, where true life can be found and to desire them more than the immediate pleasures of sin.

Father, we pray we would rest in your justice and in your mercy. Help us love one another sacrificially and love our neighbors who do not love us back. Help us forgive those who wrong us and who have wronged us and rest in your just reign that you will make everything right. Please comfort those who have been mistreated and abused. Help all of us show understanding and love while we wait for your mighty hand to work and accomplish healing and justice.

Father, as we get ready to hear your Word preached to us, we ask that our hearts would receive it and that we would be transformed by it into people who love you and rejoice in you.

In Christ’s name, Amen.