EXHORTATION
The Christian faith isn’t just a faith of ideas. It’s also a faith of practices. And that’s because human beings aren’t just brains on sticks. There is more to us than our minds. We have bodies made up of hands, eyes, ears, and stomachs.
God isn’t just out to form your mind. He wants to conform every part of your body to the image of Christ. And one of the ways he does this is through the classic spiritual disciplines.
As Christians, you are believing Jesus with your eyes when you read the Bible. You are trusting him with your mouth when you pray. You are living out your faith then you listen to sermons. You are devoting your stomach to Jesus when you take the Lord’s Supper and when you choose to fast. You’re submitting to God with your schedule when you make a habit of meeting with his church every Lord’s Day. You love God with your hands when you greet a brother or sister in the Lord.
If the church will change our community, we can’t just be Christians in mind only. James tells us to love one another in word, and deed. Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The spiritual disciplines are physical practices that remind us that our only hope in life and death is that we are not our own, but belong, both body and soul, to God. So, it’s not enough to just believe Christian things, we also have to practice Christian living. We have to learn to love God.
This reminds us of our need to confess sin, so let’s go to God now.
CONFESSION
Holy Father,
You have called us to love you with heart, soul, mind and strength. And we know that the blood of Jesus didn’t just save our souls… it saved even our bodies.
And yet, we are guilty of holding back. We have not loved you with all our being. Father, we confess that we fool ourselves into thinking that you only care about what’s in our heart. That you don’t care about what our eyes see, our hands touch, or our ears hear.
We confess that we’ve kept back portions of our schedules and our wallet. There are fears that we are holding on to and there are hopes and dreams we have not submitted to your authority.
Father, we are sinners. And we humble ourselves before you. We want you to deal honestly with our sin. Please, Father, be gentle with us—but do not allow us to live in self-deception.
And we know that if we in the church say amen to this prayer while still holding back—this prayer will have no effect, and so we confess our individual sins silently to you now. Receive our prayers.
We ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
1 Peter 2:24