A prayer based on Mark 12:17-22.

<aside> 🙏🏻 Our Father in heaven, We give You our praise that You so loved us that You sent Your Son into the world to save rebels like us. Lord Jesus, We praise You that You are the great friend of sinners. And that when You look at us, You look at us with a look of concern and compassion. You look at us and love us.

You love us because You made us. Along with Your Father and the Holy Spirit, You created us in Your image. So, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And because we are Your creation, we are precious to You. What’s more, we are amazed that You continue to love us, even after we had rejected You. As those born lost in our sins, because of Adam’s disobedience, we have not kept Your laws and commands. We have broken them all, especially the greatest commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds and all our strength. We confess that we have had other gods, false gods and idols, before You the One, true, and living God. Yet You love us. You were concerned about us, for You knew we were missing out on eternal life with You and that our future was eternal death. You wanted us to be saved. To come to a knowledge of the truth. To come to You and live.

We thank You that You have showed Your love for us by telling us the truth about how we can be saved. You have spoken to us these words of kindness. You have told us to repent of our sins – the sin of loving and trusting something else in place of God. We thank You that You have called us to follow You. To believe in You. Because only You can take away our sins and make us righteous and acceptable in Your Father’s sight.

Lord, to our shame, we are still tempted to put other things before You. To love something else more than You. So, we pray that by Your Spirt, You would help us to give up whatever it is. That absorbs our heart and imagination more than God. That we look for satisfaction in. That we seek significance and value from. Money. A relationship. Our work. Some leisure pursuit. Even a cherished sin. We cry out to You for the strength we need to not walk away from Jesus and remain on the narrow path. And help us to believe that even when we stumble and fall. Even when we don’t trust You as we should. Even when we don’t obey You as You would want. When the temptation to go back to the old way of living is strong and we give in. Christ, You are still is looking at us and loving us. And to be sure that if we confess our sin, You are faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Draw us to Yourself afresh in wholehearted commitment and devotion. For the glory of Your name.

Amen.

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