Blog
Prayer of Confessions: Becoming Heirs
Sun, Jun 26th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
Lord, like children playing hospital we have set up our own identities and have preferred them even over being your sons and daughters. We love to deny that we need you and pretend that we can handle ourselves.
Teach us the truth in Christ, to put off our old selves, which belongs to our former manner of life, and renew the spirit of our minds to put on our new selves, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Lord, disillusion us.
Salvation: God Does, We Realize
Sun, Jun 19th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
Father, we have been party to belligerent band of rebels
We have taken your grace for our own ends.
Jesus, you are enthroned as Lord—there is no other.
We see you with outstretched arm;
Diverting the wrath of the Father;
Receiving your enemies as friends.
We have died with you, our Substitute,
Even as we now live in you, our Substitute.
In you we find our life as loved children of the Most High.
Spirit, show us our increasing need of Him,
Teach us to depend on you,
That we may live in glad submission to our King!
Slavery: Prayer of Confession
Sun, Jun 12th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.
But you have received the Spirit of adoption as a son,
by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"
We are slaves of the one whom we obey.
Either of sin, leading to death
or of obedience, leading to righteousness.
But thanks be to God, that we who were once slaves of sin,
having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
For we have been bought with an infinite price,
ransomed from the fields of burden to fields of grace,
invited by the Master's Son to dine at His very table,
and if the Son has set us free, then we are free indeed.
Now let us abide in His word, and we will be his disciples.
We will know the truth, and the truth will set us free.
For the Lord is the Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Motherhood: Prayer of Confession
Sun, Jun 5th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
Spoken through the ages, the Infinite Divine
In a race, in a nation, then Incarnate sublime
And here now the church, household of God
Pillar and buttress of the Truth angels laud
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh
Vindicated by the Spirit
Seen by angels
Proclaimed among the nations
Believed on in the world
Taken up in glory
Father, by your Son, you adopt and save
Now grant your children grace to behave
Unite us as family, the proof Jesus came
Make us one at your table, rescue from shame
Triumph of the city?
Mon, May 23rd
Will cities save the world? Maybe not, but Harvard economist Edward Glaeser considers them our best hope. In his book Triumph of the City, Glaeser calls the world’s urban landscapes “our greatest invention” due to their intrinsic ability to “magnify humanity’s strengths.” Indeed, as Glaeser so effectively argues and empirically proves, cities produce the best of architecture, music, technology, food, sustainability, charity, business, art, and education. Of course, their failures are spectacular, too. Writes Glaeser: “Our city’s gleaming spires point to the greatness that mankind can achieve, but also to our hubris.”
Last week, Pastor Wes and I spent the better part of two days hoofing through the glorious built environment that is New York. We traversed the corridors of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, discovered quiet respites in the manicured gardens of Central Park, and marinated in the eclectic flavors of Brooklyn’s simmering neighborhoods. Human greatness and hubris was everywhere.
How easy it would be to mistake these monuments of achievement for our ultimate hope. I found myself deeply tempted by that distortion. Is this not heaven, or at least evidence of mankind’s ability to usher it in? What of the ceilings in the New York Public Library, the soaring atrium of Grand Central Station, the stone edifice of the American Museum of Natural History? Beautiful. Timeless. Eternal?
No. Every human structure will fail. Every artifact of culture will decay. Every planted garden will wither. Even our best efforts ultimately are powerless to resolve earth’s conflicts or usher in global peace. We are not the change we have hoped for. Nevertheless, our labor is not in vain. Great cities cannot change the world in any eternal sense. But they can and do provide a shadowy picture of the eternal world to come. New creation will be a city – a city full of architecture, music, technology, food, sustainability, charity, business, art, and education. In that sense, the city will triumph, though not as Glaeser means it, nor as we are tempted to believe it. The city’s triumph will be passive, the inevitable end of redemptive history – but not its hero, not its savior. We do not hope in the power of kingdom. We hope in the power of the King.
Brotherhood: Prayer of Confession
Sun, May 22nd
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
He forgives our sin, he heals our diseases, he redeems us from the pit. He crowns us with steadfast love and mercy. He satisfies us with good, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
Authority: Prayer of Confession
Sun, May 8th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers
The moon and the stars, which you have set in place
What is man that you are mindful of him?
And the son of man that you care for him?
Father forgive us,
We have rejected your authority
We have gone our our ways
as though we know best
Father forgive us,
We have mocked your servants
We have ignored the counsel
of your appointed shepherds
Yet you have never disowned,
but pursued in love
With mercy to pardon
With discipline to correct
With grace to restore
May we look to your Son and find hope
That our rebellion is hidden in his fidelity
That our disobedience is hidden in his submission
That our arrogance is hidden in his humility
That our sin is hidden in his blood
The Vision of The Painted Door
Sun, Apr 10th
We are a people realizing who we already are:
We are family, sharing life together.
We are hosts, welcoming others to our table.
We are dependents, counting ourselves among those in need.
We are citizens, engaging in neighborhood life.
We are ambassadors, sending and going to image Jesus across the street and to the nations.
Recap of our Party!
Sun, Apr 3rd
At The Painted Door, we love grace. And we tasted a little Sunday at our church’s first birthday party. Thanks to our deacons and all those who helped pull it off. Here are a few video highlights:
Addiction: Prayer of Confession
Sun, Mar 6th
Each week, the people of The Painted Door gather around the table of Jesus to hear Gospel proclamation, join in Gospel song and foster Gospel community. As part of that gathering, we engage in reading together a confession of our sin and God's grace.
Father, we echo your pronouncement that all you have made is good. We marvel at your handiwork and relish the reflection of your glory in everything.
You fashioned nothing in the form of evil. Every pain, every crime, every lust is mere distortion; a funhouse mirror warped with folly, marble columns cracked from war.
We confess, we are the agents of perversion. All wreckage flows from our deformed hearts. Yet we would pin blame on your noble creation, as though running from poison fruit could save us from ourselves.
Forgive us for abandoning the carnage of our doing, for doubting the power of redemption, for seeking shelter in a fortress of imagined righteousness, for condemning what you intend to save.
Help us to see beauty amid ruin, to weep as you do for the tragedy of sin, to carry hope into the darkest corners, to believe in the promise of resurrection.