I’m a bit behind posting here, but go check out gotonewlife.com/blog! I have been writing posts daily for my local church’s prayer week. There are already a few there, and more to come this week. I posted this one on there just yesterday…
Now What?
What do we pray about? If we’re honest, we ask this basic question all the time. We can find plenty of tools like our last post that can give us a general idea, but if we’re honest that still leaves us stumped every now and then. It gets even more awkward when we talk about confession. However, if we aren’t confessing sin regularly in prayer, than one of four horrible things has happened: (1) We have forgotten that we are sinful, eternally in need of God’s grace. Or (2) We don’t see the sin in our lives (we would do well in this case to ask that God show us our sin, so that we might repent and grow into obedience to Christ.) Or (3) We see our sin and don’t care to confess it or turn from it. (4) We forget that God’s grace can indeed forgive us of all our sin.
Good news, there’s more help on the way.
The Valley of Vision
When I first read the title, I was a little confused, but no need to fret. The valley of vision is a book containing devotionals and prayers from the Puritans (those people with the Mayflower and Plymouth and all of that). The truth is, they were serious about following God. They were serious about His grace, they were serious about becoming more Christ-like. Jonathon Edwards and the like weren’t mere backwoods, angry preachers. They were God-fearing, Jesus-obsessed people. At the recommendation of a friend, I picked up this book, a little weird-ed out because I had never really “read a prayer” before. I always assumed it was “more spiritual” to use your own. What I’ve come to realize though is that how and what we pray is a reflection of what we believe. Learning and praying go hand in hand, and that learning ought be theologically strong. This book is teaching me to pray a radically different way. A more God’s glory-oriented, sin-repenting, Christ exalting, fully biblical way. I trust it will do the same for you, as it has been doing for God’s people since it was created around 400 years ago.
Below is one the confessional prayers from the book (a prayer confessing our sin, and asking for God’s help to avoid sin in the future). Read these words, insert your own at the end of the line perhaps, or insert your own at the end of the entire prayer. Make this prayer your own. Use it as a guide, a sort of outline or a jumping off point. (I have taken it upon myself to modernize the English).
As I read this, I’m reminded that I am outrageously sinful, outrageously forgetful, outrageously feeble, and outrageously forgiven. I pray that sinks into you as well.
“Continual Repentance”
O God of Grace, You have imputed my sin to my substitute (Christ),
And have imputed his righteousness to my soul.
Clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe,
decking me with riches and crown of holiness though I did not earn them.But in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin;
my confessions of sin seem to happen far too often,
yet I sin even more than I care to confess.
Even my following the Spirit is hampered by selfishness.I need to repent of my self-centered repentance; I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness.I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving forgiveness;
for you always justify the ungodly sinners you have saved.I am always going into the far country,
and always returning home as a prodigal, always saying
“Father, forgive me,” and you are always bringing me your best robe.Every morning let me wear it,
every evening return in it,
go out to the day’s work in it,
stand before the great white throne in it,
enter heaven in it shining as the sun.Father, let me never lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of Christ’s salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace.
DavidAppelt.com 