THE LAODICEANS ARE US AND WE NEED TO PRAY
Please dear heavenly Father, oh great and beautiful God of all glory, thou who art our sword and our shield, our high tower and our buckler, thou giver of all life, please hear our prayer with thine ear of grace and help us repent from our evil, backslidden ways with the balm of thy love.
Oh Lord of all lords, King of all kings, oh God of all gods please permit us to stand before thee with the publican dressed in the sackcloth of our spiritual poverty with the ashes of repentance and shame upon our heads. See our repentance when we smite our dirtied, foul breastplate of righteousness lost. Hear our suffering when we cry out; “Be merciful to us for we have sinned.”
“Oh great and beautiful God of all glory please forgive us for our horrid, mind numbing sin of “Take for Granted”. “Oh Lord Jesus, please forgive us for insisting by our actions that You take the back seat in our lives, for insisting that You take the second best of our lives and for insisting that You take what’s left over from our lives.
Oh heavenly Father forgive us the shame of our pride, arrogance and carnality that we think we can take just a part of your Holy Bible and expect your divine holiness to accept the dishonesty of our half-hearted, fraternal order, social club worship of thy Holy Son Jesus.”
“Oh Lord Jesus forgive us for our idolatry by gathering in stadiums, gymnasiums and arenas to wildly scream, gesture and brag on our athlete “heroes” who valiantly and violently try to overcome other Christian’s athlete “heroes” to make a statistic that does not see, it cannot hear, nor does it love. Oh Lord Jesus forgive us for losing sight that You, oh beautiful Saviour, are the greatest hero who ever lived.
And, shame upon shame, forgive us that we are silent about the grace of your gallant last stand of love for us at the bloody Roman whipping post and upon Calvary’s bloody cross wearing your awful crown of thorns where you horribly died so your precious blood could cleanse us of our sins.”
“Forgive us of our destitute shame as we plod gaily through the desolate desert of our never said prayers, the barren desert of our lack of Bible study and the forlorn desert of our never uttered praise of thee. Help us oh God! Help us lest we die in this desert of our own faithless unholiness! Forgive us for bowing before the twin false gods of accumulate and more. Forgive us for worshipping the 5 graceless pagan gods named I deserve, I want, I possess, I value and look at me.”
“Oh Lord Jesus please forgive us of our IDOLATRY. Oh Lord Jesus forgive us for our tears, laughter and worship when we expend great effort and expense to see our living idols, actors and actresses, portray imaginary heroes living imaginary lives and doing imaginary deeds that do not see, they do not hear, they do not love, nor do they speak reality thus they count for nothing.”
“Forgive us our idolatry when we brag and extol the virtues of our living idols, the musicians, who sing, chant, blurt and mumble Satan’s music of pride, greed, murder, conflict, rape, cruelty, fornication, witchcraft, drugs, drunkenness and wantonness.”
“Forgive us for decorating our vehicles with stickers that exalt our favorite sports teams, for exhibiting the names of our political party with which we are affiliated and for glorifying the names of our clubs, organizations and for displaying our pride in our travel agenda but we display nothing about thee.”
“Forgive us for our cold-hearted rudeness and the killing of our testimony when we browbeat and insult waitresses, waiters, salesclerks and cashiers. Forgive us of our pride when we whine and complain about imaginary problems with our food in restaurants.”
“Oh Lord Jesus, please forgive us of our lies, our cruelty and the shame we bring to Your name when we do display the name of our church on our vehicle then, regardless of our status, we park in a disability parking slot and walk briskly into the stores of our choice while the truly disabled must struggle painfully from much further away to achieve what we have so effortlessly done.”
“Forgive us our insult to Your Holy Word when we buy and sell on the day of Your Sabbath. Forgive us for forcing lost, unsaved people to work on Your Sabbaths by purchasing from their businesses.”
“Oh Lord Jesus forgive us our rudeness when we berate other drivers by our actions, words and gestures. Forgive us for our lack of compassion by forgetting we have made the same mistakes as they have and for forgetting the shame we felt when we were in the wrong. Forgive us of our insensitivity to senior citizens as they carefully and hesitantly try to live out the tiny bit left of their lives with their failing senses, sight and coordination.”
“Forgive us for sitting silent, absentminded and preoccupied in Your church. Forgive us for worshipping our thieving, one-eyed, electronic gods (TV, phone, etc.) that steal our attention from praying to thee, from studying your holy word and from praising thee for thy mighty love, grace, mercy, tender pity and longsuffering patience that saved us from a devil’s hell and kept us in spite of our unfaithfulness.”
“Forgive us for the awful sin of our “now and then” vain looking at a few verses of your Holy Word. Heavenly Father forgive us for refusing to intensely study thy Holy Word that we may know how to live our lives in a manner that would be pleasing unto thee.”
“Oh Lord Jesus, forgive us for the sin of Take for Granted. (Matt. 5:3-9 & Gal. 5:22-23) Oh Lord Jesus, You did not grant us any of the above, for they are sin. We take for granted that we are deserving, that we are special, that we have the right to be entertained, that we have the right to be impatient and that we have the right to be critical BUT our own pride, arrogance, perverted values, insensitivity, selfishness and cruelty granted us the attitude of “Take for Granted”. My Lord and my God FORGIVE US!”
“Help us to remember the true eyesalve oh Lord. (Luke 7:38) Let us wash thy feet with our tears of shame and sorrow. (John 12:3) Let us anoint thee with the spikenard of our regret for forgetting the cost of our salvation on Calvary’s bloody cross.”
“(Matt. 2:11 keyword: frankincense) Oh Lord God let us bring thee the gift of frankincense in thanksgiving that thou put on the mortal flesh of mankind to come to us and provide the way back to God. (John 19:39 keyword: myrrh) Let us bring the gift of myrrh in celebration that death could not hold thee nor could the grave confine thee.”
“(Rom. 12:1) Let us bring unto thee the dried, powdered clay of our unholy, faithless, half-hearted, in name only service unto thee Almighty God and renew us with the renewing of thy endless love, grace and mercy that we may be restored so we can present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto thee which is our reasonable service. Help us oh Lord, for we have lost our way.”
“Oh Lord God our sins are without number and we have lost something fine and good from our lives. Forgive us for serving ourselves and Satan instead of serving thee, the giver of the grace, who saved us from a certain hell. Forgive us the uncountable multitude of our insults to thy holiness. Help us return unto thee Heavenly Father, help us renew our covenant, help us return home to the true safety and security of the immeasurable love that abounds in thy longsuffering bosom.”
“We have gone the way of the prodigal and failed thee and wasted the substance of our personal relationship with thee. We can’t find our way back to thy house Father, show us the way with thy mercy and meet us at the door with thy love. Help us oh God to renew the precious value of our covenant with thee that was bought by the life of Jesus’ precious blood.”
“Help us start over. Please restore to us the joy of our salvation. We ask thy forgiveness in the name of Jesus and for his name’s sake. Amen. Amen. Amen.”