A prayer based on Ezekiel 47-48.

<aside> 🙏🏻 Our God and our Saviour,

We praise You for the hope we have. For the life of blessing, abundance, fruitfulness, order, enjoyment, plenty, beauty, community, and access that is ours when we live with You as our God and we as Your people for all eternity.

We praise You that one day when Jesus returns, all of Your people and all of Your creation will be as they were created to be. Beautiful, majestic and glorious as the curse is reversed.

We praise You that this incredible hope we have is already coming to pass, as the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water that Jesus spoke about, flows within us bringing new life, and transforming us so that we are not what we once were.

We praise You that the Day is coming when all Your people will be at home with You in the place Jesus is preparing for us. And that Your people will be made up of both men and women and both Jews and Gentiles. That there will be room there for everyone who turns to and trust in Christ for salvation. That no-one who does that will miss out. That everyone who believes will be welcomed in.

How grateful we are for these blessings and benefits that are ours. Not because we deserve them. We deserve to be punished for we haven’t lived the way You created us to. But because You have been so gracious to us by sending Your Son to save us.

We thank You Lord Jesus, that You have secured salvation for us – by living in our place a holy and righteous life and by dying in our place to satisfy God’s anger against us – and which You now give to us as a gift.

Lord God, we long to show how much we love Christ and how grateful we are for what He has done for us by obeying everything He has commanded. To be holy and blameless in your sight as you chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be. To live as those whose hope is in God and whose home will be with God forever. Yet we confess that we find it hard to live lives of godliness in the face of the pressure that comes from the world, our sinful flesh, and the devil. We are prone to wander from your way. To our shame, we do stumble and fall. We lose heart and doubt whether Jesus really will return. We wonder whether we are doing the right thing by turning from our sins and trusting You, as the alternative seems much easier to do. Forgive us for our unbelief and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness we pray.

And we ask Holy Spirit that you would strengthen our faith and convince us that all God’s promises will be kept. That one day we will take our place among all of God’s people in God’s promised land enjoying God’s presence and being eternally blessed by Him. So that we do keep loving God with all hearts, soul, mind, and strength; that we keep trusting Him; that we keep obeying Him and living holy lives; that we keep spreading the offer of new life in Christ to those who are yet to receive it; And so that we keep looking forward to the city whose designer and builder is God and keep pressing on until we reach there.

Amen.

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