Grace Come in the Flesh: Come Again, Lord Jesus

The following is the corporate prayer prayed at New Covenant Church this morning. It is shaped by Tit. 2:11–14.

The Prayers at NCC (11/30/14)

O God our Savior, your word tells us—“the grace of God has appeared.” Your grace has appeared. It has appeared “bringing salvation to all people.”

We marvel at this. We bless you for this. And we pray this would land on us with full force and great effect this Advent season. We ask for Christmas to lay hold on us as it ought. For your grace has appeared, appearing in person, coming in the flesh, bringing salvation.

O God our Savior, your word also tells that this grace that has appeared, that it instructs us, it trains us, trains “us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.” By your grace incarnate, O God, help us to live holy and heavenly lives.

And as we seek to live well-trained in this grace that has come in your Son, we pray for you to help us to wait for and look for “the blessed hope”—hope outstripping every other hope—“the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

We love your appearing, O Lord of glory, and we long for you to appear again in glory. We wait for you to come again, King Jesus, Desire of the nations, Lover of our soul, our Exceeding Joy. By your grace incarnate, help us to wait for you above every other kind of waiting.

How could we do otherwise, Lord? How could we wait for anything else? Wait for the next vacation? Wait for the new home? Wait for retirement? Wait for promotion? Wait for recognition? How could we do that? How could we wait like that? We would wait for you all our dying days, “our great God and Savior,” our Lord Jesus. Help us to wait with this sanctified waiting.

We want to wait this way, because you gave yourself “for us to redeem us from all lawlessness,” delivering us from defying God, doing it our way, not loving you heart, soul, mind, and strength; you gave yourself for us, Lord Jesus, delivering us from disregarding neighbor, making much of ourselves, not loving neighbor even as we love ourselves. Continue to deliver us, we ask, from all lawlessness, deliver us through your dying incarnate grace.

And, help us to wait, O Lord, for your coming again in glory, because you also gave yourself for us in grace “to purify for yourself a people for [your] own possession, [a people] zealous for good deeds.” And so as your purified people, as your purchased and cherished possession, beautify us for yourself with the adornment of good deeds. Make us zealous, our God and Savior, for good deeds that adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in everything, everywhere, at all times. 

For it is to you we pray, O Lord, and it is for you we wait. Come again, we pray, and turn faith into sight. Turn longing into seeing and savoring. Come again, Lord Jesus. Come.

Amen.