Prayer

O God, we want Your Presence in our worship service. We long for You to visit our humble church with Your manifest presence.

What if You appeared in a cloud or pillar of fire in front of us? 

I don’t know why I feel this so strongly, and I don’t want to be critical, but I believe we are unfit for You to come among us. Yes, it’s true. We are unfit.

You are completely, perfectly holy and we are not.

We hide our sins and try to cover up what we know is displeasing to You.

You have not changed from the times of Moses in Exodus 19 where even the ordinary common people had to cleanse and prepare themselves 2 days for your coming. We come before You with no preparation. We pretend. We aren’t clean at all. We pretend.

We long for a visitation from You, yet do nothing to prepare ourselves for that coming. I guess we don’t see the need. Holy Spirit, please reveal to us what we need to know about this.

Could it be that we are the Laodicean church? We tell ourselves all is good when if we would be honest we would see how blind, wretched, poor and naked we are.

We are like the emperor who thought he was clothed in fine garments but was really naked.

So we continue to stand singing our songs oblivious to our nakedness, our stains, our hidden sins..  

Exodus 19-20

Malachi 3:6