An Hour of Prayer 3

 Dear Church Family

   We are beyond the fourth of July now, and heading into the slow(?) part of summer. We have the time to continue our prayer for an hour journey with today’s third segment. As I have said in the past, we can use all twelve to pray for an hour or develop each 5 minute segment and let it guide us in developing a stronger prayer life. We need more prayer now more than ever. It will be helpful to have more resources and tools for that struggle in this time of waiting and wondering in the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases around us.

   Week Three is about Confession. Confession of sin and humiliation is an act of admitting your sinfulness to God and of cleansing you, as the Temple of God, allowing you entrance into God’s presence. This is a time of introspection and allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal all unconfessed sins. Don’t ask God to change your circumstances, but to change you and forgive you. Sin can be doing something wrong, or simply missing the target that God had hoped for you.

   Confession allows you time to talk to God, knowing that God already knows everything about you. You don’t have to worry about hiding anything, God already knows all about it. Confession allows us to deal with the challenges we face and to ask God to make better, what has gone wrong, or we have done poorly, or have misunderstood about God’s intention.

   Confession is all about getting a second chance to get this right this time. Confession helps download or remove the obstacles, the clutter in the way, so we can have a clear and clean workspace. It can be the beginning of a great relationship to God and through God to others. Sometimes we confess to God, sometimes we should confess to one another so that we can get that fresh start. There may be something in the way, that once taken away and dealt with, can begin a great new relationship. This could be in families, neighbors, workspaces, fellowship groups etc. wherever some trouble has been brewing.

   The result of the confession is of course feeling and knowing deeply that you are forgiven and loved more than you thought possible. Forgiveness is our theme this Sunday and in the midst of struggles in our culture over the way we have treated people who are different than we, confession and pardon might be just the power to renew us all, as a community and as a country.

   Join us on Wednesday nights for our AWE service at 7 pm. It is a time for prayer and reflection for equipping us for life in this world we live in. Next week’s five minute prayer thoughts are on Praying Scripture. Where do we find help for our prayer life?

Blessings

Pastor Jeff