Who I am
Yet you have made them a little lower than God
And crowned them with glory and honour. Psalm 8:5
Read 1 John 2:12—17
When I quieten before God and reflect and confess, my prayer can go like this: ‘I’ve sinned. I’m faithless. I forget who you are. I submit to the wrong power, the evil one. I’m weak. I forget your word. I fail, like the plaything of satan.’ I forged that rather sad little litany by reversing everything said in this passage to the early Christian readers. Tonight let me claim the forgiveness of God for everything I have truly confessed. And let me thank God with fervency for who I am in Christ. And let me take into my prayer the truths about the Christian life that are urged in tonight’s reading.
Prayer
Dear Father, I thank you that I am your beloved child. That I am forgiven on account of the name of Jesus, who took my place as sinner on the cross. That he is from the beginning, and I know him. That he has conquered the evil one, and I am in that victory because I am in Christ by faith. That he is my strength. In him I am strong. That he is the Word of God to me, and in him all the promises of God are ‘Yes,’ and he speaks to me of you. That because my life is his I do not belong to the evil one. I belong to the righteous one. In him I am yours. Let me rest tonight in the peace of the Lord and live tomorrow in the strength of the Lord.