Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 4

This is the fourth of the four prayers I wanted to share with you. One thing I love about how Stanley Hauerwas prays is that he always seems to be able punch through the sentimental crap and fluff with the stuff of real life in reflection of truthful grace. I invite you to pray this with me.

Gracious God, humble us through the violence of your love so we are able to know and confess our sins. We want our sins to be interesting, but, God forgive us, they are so ordinary: envy, hatred, meanness, pride, self-centeredness, laziness, boredom, lying, lust, stinginess and so on. You have saved us from “and so on” to be a royal people able to witness to the world that the powers that make us such ordinary sinners have been defeated. So capture our attention with the beauty of your life that the ugliness of sin may be seen as just that—ugly. God, how wonderful it is to be captivated by you. Amen.