Tag Archive for Daily Confession

Have You Lost Your First Love?

2018-03-01 Devotional Companion to Revelation, Devotional with Hymn No comments

A reflection on Revelation 2:4-7,
Christ’s letter to the church in Ephesus.

Nothing is as vital as having
a warm, active, loving, self-giving relationship
with God and
with His children.
Nothing!

Has your relationship cooled?
Have you lost your first love?
Is your love for God and for others as
warm,
natural, and
joyful
as it was at the beginning?

If not, follow Christ’s own words for restoring your love:

Remember the way your love was at the beginning.
Realize how you’ve changed,
and not for the better.
Realize what you’ve lost.

Repent.
Admit that you have been wrong.
Focus on what you have done wrong,
not on what they have done wrong.
Ask forgiveness,
from God and from the other people involved.
Commit to change, with God’s help.

Do the loving deeds you did at first.
Love is not an emotion,
to be chased like the wind.
Love is a decision.
Love is a commitment.
Love is action.
Do the loving deeds you did at the beginning, and
the emotion will return in its own time.

Love is the most excellent way to live.
Never let it slip away.
Treasure love.
Pursue love.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Daily Confession
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Daily Forgiveness

2016-10-09 Devotional with Hymn No comments

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, NASB)

Our Father in heaven,…forgive us our debts. (Matthew 6:9, 12, NASB)

Father, You know my heart.
You know that I want to live and breathe as Your child.
I want to be one with You every moment and in every way.
I long to walk in total obedience to Your perfect and loving will.

But You also know how I live day by day.
My responses to You are so sporadic and cool.
I want to live a loving life constantly and completely,
but I shrink back into myself so often and so easily.
As I trust You, You always enable me to live a holy life in Your presence.
You are so faithful!
But how often I fail to trust You as You deserve!
Faith is still a response that is only partially formed in me.

The closer I grow to You, the more I am aware of the
magnitude and constancy of my failures before You.
You deserve so much better than me!

But Your grace is perfect, even though my behavior is not.
Your forgiveness is free for the asking!
Though my shortcomings are a never ending stream,
Your mercies are new every morning.

I count on Your forgiveness, Father,
but help me never take it for granted.
Give me a growing openness with You.
Give me a constant awareness of
who You are and
who I am.
May confession be an ongoing process between us,
a daily healing,
a regular realigning,
a natural part of our unbroken communion.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Daily Confession
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Freedom

2014-06-24 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
(Lamentations 3:22-23, NIV)

When I fail to trust God, I fail.
And I have failed so often.

Sometimes it’s been a troublesome, recurrent sin.
Sometimes pride,
worry,
selfishness, or
unkindness.

But in all these years, I have never used up His mercies.
We draw on them over and over, and
they are never diminished.
They are “new every morning.”

I feel ashamed and presumptuous to come to Him again for forgiveness.
But He asks me to come, and
I come in obedience.

Lord, in obedience,
I trust Your mercy once again.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Daily Confession
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics