Your Purchased People

Ephesians 4:17-24

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!-assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your former self, which belongs to your former way of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

Our Father,

Forgive us for blaming our flesh, 
                  for "not knowing any better",
                  for our addictive behaviors,
                  for our idolatrous hearts.

Remind us that the Gospel moves us not from vice to virtue,
                                                           but from vice to grace.
Virtue is but our attempts to "clean ourselves up" before approaching your throne..
Yet you never demand such facades, and insist that we let you do the healing.

Jehovah Rapha, God our Healer,
Teach us what it means to come as we are.
Show us how to be needy,
and how to be so without apologizing.
Remind us of your delight in being our Father-
                                          in providing for every need
                                          in sympathizing with our distresses
                                          in lovingly re-directing us
                                          in accomplishing good within us.

Remind us the way that we have been taught in Christ Jesus.
Remind us that our sin is not just a part of who we are-
but instead a direct contradiction to what is true of us.
May we know who we are because of whose we are.

Establish us yet again in the deep, deep love of Jesus.
Whisper in our ears that we are yours-marked by your love and branded by your grace.
By your Spirit's power, may we abide further as your purchased people. 

We pray these things in the name of Jesus,
      who took on human flesh not to do away with it, but to make it new.
He is our advocate even still- and asks for no apology. 

In wonder we pray, Amen.