Please find below the notes from the Elder's Prayer this past Sunday.

(Prayer)

Father, you are holy and to be praised. You are the one who forgives sin and who heals from disease. You redeem our lives from sin and show us steadfast love and mercy. Because you have shown goodness toward us, we can find our satisfaction in you.

You have made yourself known to us – your righteousness and your justice. You have made known to us our sin – it’s totality, it’s completeness, that our sin is against you and that our sin deserves punishment, an eternal punishment, that we deserve hell for our sin against you.

But you have not dealt with us according to our sins. You have made known to us your mercy and grace, you are slow to anger and your love is greater than our sin. We have no way to repay you for our sin, so you provided Christ, your only son, to live the life we cannot live and to die to satisfy the penalty we cannot.

And you have made it known to us that when we put our faith in the work of Christ, you remove our sins far from us, that you will never cast us away, that you will give your spirit to those who believe in Christ in order to secure them for eternity.

Our days are short; our lives are like the grass that is here one day and gone the next. The places where we lived will quickly forget us.

But you will never forget us. Your love will always remain, your righteousness always working for us, your promises never failing.

Because of your steadfast love, we will soon see you face-to-face. We will know you more completely, more clearly, our sin will no longer mar our understanding of your holiness and your grace. Our praise will be more true, more genuine, those things that we hope for, we will see.

Soon we will be able to stand before you because we will stand in the righteousness of Christ, your provision of salvation to all who believe.

Amen.