Confessing Our Lack Of Love

On Sunday during our worship service we read and prayed together this prayer confessing our lovelessness. Several people commented and asked to have a copy of this. So we are sharing it here below:

 This prayer comes from the book “Prone to Wander” by Barbara Duguid and Wayne Duguid Houk. If these prayers have been a blessing to you, I would highly recommend getting a copy for yourself.  

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 CALL TO CONFESSION: 

1 CORINTHIANS 13:1–3 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  

 PRAYER OF CONFESSION 

Holy God, Forgive us for the countless ways in which we have not loved others. Some of us are very obviously unloving: we are inconsiderate of others’ time and rude to those who are not as smart or “holy” as we are; we ignore those whom we do not like, make fun of those that we find tedious or stupid, and choose to maintain perpetually casual relationships so that we do not have to ask questions that make us uncomfortably aware of other people. Others of us are quite good at faking love: we wear ourselves thin with acts of kindness and words of counsel when primarily we are the ones desiring to be loved, we pretend to listen while really we are inwardly condemning others for not being as insightful or as mature as we are, and we make sacrifices for others with conditions that will bring about relational retribution if they are not met. Grief and guilt would leave us in despair over these sins. 

Merciful Jesus, you became sinless, perfect man to bear this, our great lack of love. What a wondrous love is this that you would live and die in our place. When you were on earth, you loved others with a specific and meaningful love. You really saw people, not just for what they could give you, but you saw their hearts, their needs, their sorrows, and their sin. You loved us with the greatest love of all: the love that led you to lay down your life to save us. Your loving tongue was silenced, your loving hands were pierced, your loving eyes were closed in death, and your loving heart stopped beating as you were forsaken by your Father to cancel our debt of sin.  

Faithful Spirit, we long for Christ’s kingdom to come, when we will be fully and finally free from our struggle with self-love and blindness to others. Help us, we pray, to live as citizens of that kingdom now, promoting peace and loving others with the self-sacrificing love that Jesus so perfectly modeled and poured out on us. Help us to want to see others, and help us to listen with our hearts. Continue to change us into those who love without condition, giving grace to others in light of the unimaginable grace that we have been so freely given, which is our only source of change, hope, and life. Amen.  

ASSURANCE OF PARDON: 2 CORINTHIANS 5:14–15 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Taken from Duguid, Barbara. Prone to Wander: Prayers of Confession and Celebration (pp. 168-169). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.