2 corinthians on Unworthiness

Holy Father, You are perfect and just, but we are sinful and unworthy. We intend the best in how we live our lives, Yet sin remains in us. Through Your Son, we are able to have redemption and a reconn...

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope.

Sometimes people are careless and speak disparagingly of all human righteousness, as if there were no such thing that pleased God. They often cite Isaiah 64:6 which says our righteousness is as filthy...

I find your lack of faith—disturbing.

Sister Joan Chittister writes about regret in the context of aging, though I think most of us can identify with this personification of Mr. R.: Regret…comes upon us one day dressed up like wisdom, l...

Heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace to confess our sin. We have been selfish instead of generous; we have been proud instead of humble; we have held grudges instead of forgiving; we h...

Imagine you have an invisible recorder around your neck that, for all your life, records every time you say to somebody else, “You ought.” It only turns on when you tell somebody else how to live. In ...

"At the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde."

This separateness from sinners is not a little, but a stupendous thing; it is the presupposition of redemption; it is that very virtue in Christ without which he would not be qualified to be a Saviour...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

Dear God, my Heavenly Father, My heart is unclean, but you can purify it. My heart is full of darkness, but you can illuminate it. My heart is sad, but you can comfort it. My heart is wicked, but ...

“What’s wrong with me is me. Somebody needs to pull me from the raging waters I call ‘me.’

If we acknowledge that our inclination to sin is part of our natures, and that we will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem ju...

Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ...

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

Out of the depths of darkness and despair we have cried out for your mercy, O God. Instead of marking our iniquities with the just weight of our condemnation, you have forgiven us, breathed new life i...

We don’t come to Him as bad people trying to become good people; we come as rebels to lay down our arms.

God stretches our faith in order to prepare us to receive his promises. That often requires painful rewiring. We need updating, just as an old house may need rewiring. The old electrical wires might b...

Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself.

God formed us in his image — a glorious thought! — but we all participate in the abandonment of that original identity…Does that mean that your precious little child is a dirty rotten sinner, as some ...

Holy God, we confess that we have been lukewarm about living our faith in Jesus each day. We put off to tomorrow what we know in our hearts you want to happen today. We go through the motions of relig...

Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you are not saved yourself. Be sure of that.

Gentle God, we have wandered away from you, from your love, and from what gives you deepest delight in our lives, so our lives become hollow and hungry, lost and lonely. We return to you. Rece...

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Hope remains possible even amid our failures—whether we disappoint God, let down our families, or fall short of our own expectations—because divine compassion operates like an inexhaustible well. Each...

Dear Lord Jesus, we feel our sins. They bite and gnaw and terrify us. Where shall we go? We will look to You, Lord Jesus, and believe in You. Although our faith is often weak, we look to You and find ...

Faith isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice to trust God even when the road ahead seems uncertain.

Leader: Jesus knows our every weakness, and loves us still. Awaken to the promise of Christ's amazing grace. Leader: Friends, believe the good news of the gospel. People: In Jesus Christ we are f...

The practice of confession in the context of a liturgy or in a private ecclesiastical setting has declined drastically over the past fifty years, and in particular since the Protestant Reformation in ...

From a purely biological point of view man is not at home anywhere in the world.