Confession Thursday 5.12.22

1 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before me. - Exodus 20:1-3

Father, forgive us.

We daily forget you and your work on our behalf.

We forget that you freed us from slavery to sin.

Indeed we often live as the slaves of sin instead of as your children.

Forgetfulness is our tendency in all things related to you.

We fail to worship and glorify you,

embracing distraction instead of thinking of, meditating on, and honoring you.

Forgetting your goodness,

we choose lesser things, lesser loves and desires, lesser and false saviours.

Our spiritual amnesia leads us to practical atheism and a multitude of idols of the heart.

We are full of self-love and self-seeking, and are not zealous to give you praise.

Have mercy, O Lord,

and deliver us from the treacherous dominion of sin and self-rule.

By the blood of Christ, purchase us from the house of slavery.

By the power of your Spirit, grant us faith in him,

that we may know you are our God, and you are all we need.

Confession Thursday is a weekly feature of Semper Ref. In keeping with the name of our website, we believe there is no true reformation in individual lives or the life and ministry of the Church apart from true repentance as God calls us to conformity with his word. The promise of the Gospel is not that we can repent deeply enough for God to love us, but that since God loves us he invites us into deep repentance. It is not the strength of our prayer that gives us hope, but the fact that Christ is the propitiation of our sin. Because of this, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Unless otherwise noted, all the prayers of confession found here are written by the SemperRef editorial team. Confession Thursday prayers may be reproduced with permission if you cite SemperRef.org as the source.