A prayer based on Jude 1-16.

<aside> 🙏🏻 God our Father, We love you, we adore you, for the mercy, and peace, and love you have shown to us.

For calling us when we were your enemies, unresponsive to you, with hearts that were spiritually dead, and when we were heading for eternal punishment.

We praise you that spoke to us, calling us through the gospel to turn from our sin and believe in Jesus Christ, transforming our cold hard hearts so that we could and receive forgiveness through His death.

What love you have shown to us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Help us to see afresh this love by looking to the cross where He was killed in our place, in obedience to your loving plan.

And we praise you that even now we are being kept for Jesus Christ. Thank you for preserving and protecting us from untold dangers that would stop us making it to the end. That though Satan may try to snatch us into his clutches, we can be confidence that we are in the safe hands and under the protection of our mighty Saviour, who is the finisher of our faith, and who has promised to raise us up on the last day.

May this mercy, peace, and love you have shown be multiplied in our lives, so that we are truly established in the faith. Firm in our beliefs. Not moving and drift from them. We pray that as we read your Word and hear it preached, you would remind us of the truths we already know, and cause us to delight in them again. Move our spirits, stir us up, strengthen our resolutions, so that we live lives which correspond to our faith.

May we not make the mistake of presuming on our faithfulness, but be actively seeking to work out our salvation. Give us a godly contentment with whatever lot in life you give to us, being able to praise you in want and in plenty. Help us to flee and fight against sinful and impure desires that wage war against our souls. Increase our love for your Word and our desire to obey it - even when its teaching is unpopular with the world around us. And may we not forget that our citizenship is heaven by only living for the here and now.

Lord, we are aware that there are teachers and deceivers around who would lead us astray. Though they may not infiltrate this local church via the pulpit, there are many other avenues - especially via the internet - that they can seek to. We ask then, that you would enable us to encourage one another to persevere in sound doctrine and godly living, and help us to protect each other from dangerous teaching that leads away from faith in Christ by speaking the truth in love. We pray this not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our community as well, because we want them to hear of the hope of salvation found in Jesus.

In His Name we pray.

Amen.

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