Rejoice in Hope

Does God need to do more to give us reason to hope?

Is his trinitarian resolve to save us too shallow?

Is the Father’s sovereign rule of history too uncertain? 

Is the Son’s sacrificial death too small a payment?

Is his defeat of death too fleeting?

Is the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence poured into our hearts too weak?

Are the words of Scripture that speak all these truths too flimsy?

So what else do you think God must do to make you a more hopeful person? 

We do not dread tomorrow. We laugh at the days to come. We are the most secure, most free people on the planet. Heaven is our home, and God will get us there. 

Cities Church, rejoice in hope of his glory. 

And now we know that where we lack hope, the problem is not with God, the problem is with us. And this reminds us of our need to confess our sins. 

Prayer of Confession

Father in heaven, we recognize that our lack of hope is often a respectable despair that we allow to lurk deep in our hearts. Our presentation might be polite, but inwardly we are being eaten by cynicism. We scoff in our thoughts. We ridicule with our eyes. 

We exhaust ourselves with the cares of this world and too easily excuse our blindness and unbelief, our doubts and despondency, our impatience and pride, and our covetousness and secret envy and hatred and malice and the untold sinful affections that only you see. We are a mess.

And it’s in that mess that we come to you, confessing our individual sins to you now in silence…