Repentance.
In our churches today we’ve perhaps fallen out of that practice more than any other personal and corporate act of worship. We do well singing powerful anthems. We give out of our plenty. We prioritize rightly the Word of God preached. But one area this pandemic is revealing to our church and churches across the globe is the need to repent.
I was encouraged by an article recently that models for us what repentance to God looks like.
A Prayer in the Midst of the Pandemic
As the author of the prayer in that blog post writes, “We don’t need you now more than ever, because there has never been a time when we have not fully needed you, but perhaps we are now more in tune with and aware of our great need for you, and our lack of control. We look to you. We truly have no other place to look.”
And on the subject of learning to repent and express our faith anew to God, I recommend one book so often to others that I want to recommend it here.
Prone to Wander: Prayers of Confession and Celebration
Among many recommendations, Pastor Bryan Chappell says about the book, “Confessing our sins might seem like a gloomy business—God already knows about them, so what’s the point of dwelling on failure? But confession is more celebratory than we think. It does not simply remind us of our guilt, but points us to our great Savior, who has atoned for us and lovingly pursues us despite our wandering.”