Confessing with Our Bodies

This prayer invites us to embody our confession through the simple motion of placing our hands on our hearts, then touching our lips and then our head before holding out our hands. Consider using this prayer throughout Lent to help your congregation engage this act of worship in a deeper way. —RW

 

Call to Confession

Worship always involves reorientation. When we gather for worship, when we sing the songs, when we pray the prayers of the faith, when we open God’s Word, we are reminded of the way things really are—of the story that is true. And when we hear this story, it confronts us in the places of our hearts and lives where we have headed off in the wrong direction, the places where we have sinned, the places where we need to be reoriented, the places where we need to repent and ask for forgiveness.

We will do that together now. But I would like to ask us this morning to recognize in our confession the same parts of our bodies that we have used to participate in sin this week. As I lead this prayer, I will ask you first to place a hand on your heart, then to place a hand on your lips, then to place a hand on your head, and last to hold out your hands. Let us pray.

Prayer of Confession

Most gracious heavenly Father, we come before you this morning in a time of confession. We place our hands on our hearts, knowing from the prophet Jeremiah that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). Lord, we confess that this is true of us. We know that our hearts are fickle. We confess that our hearts at times feel divided by warring allegiances and that we can feel torn between two masters. We desire wrong things, and we desire good things in wrong ways.

We acknowledge the sin

that resides in our hearts.

We repent, and we return to you.

We place our hands on our lips, knowing Jesus’ words that “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). Forgive us, Lord, for the times when we did not speak the words of truth or confrontation that we should have. Forgive us for the times when we spoke words that attacked and injured rather than healed and encouraged. And forgive us for the times when we spoke the right words but failed to back them up with right actions.

We acknowledge the sin

that infects our words.

We repent, and we return to you.

We place our hands on our heads, knowing that Paul calls us to “set [our] minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). We admit that we have often failed to do so. We are so easily distracted from meditating on your Word. We are convinced by hollow and deceptive philosophies. We are quick to judge but ever-so-patient when holding grudges.

We acknowledge the sin

that takes our minds captive.

We repent, and we return to you.

We hold our hands open before you, knowing James’s admonition that our wisdom and understanding should be shown by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom (James 3:13). You have called us, Lord, not just to feel or think rightly, but to act rightly, and we have often neglected to do so. We have used our hands to grab and stockpile rather than to give and share. We have used our hands not simply to work in and cultivate your world, but to ravage and abuse it. We have used our hands to build up our earthly kingdoms, forgetting that you have called us to be those who usher in your heavenly kingdom.

We acknowledge the sin

we have committed with our hands.

We repent, and we return to you.

Lord, we thank you that in Jesus you know what it is to be human. And we thank you that there is no attitude or action of sin—spoken or silent, visible or invisible—that falls beyond the bounds of your grace. We thank you that where our sin abounds, your mercy abounds all the more. And we thank you for Jesus, God incarnate, who has rescued, redeemed, and restored us. We pray this all in his matchless name. Amen.

Dr. Anthony Bolkema serves as the pastor of worship and ministry at First Reformed Church in South Holland, Illinois. Anthony’s heart as a worship pastor is to plan and lead liturgies that are biblically based, spiritually formative, missionally oriented, and appropriately contextualized. Anthony and his wife, Kim, have five children, and they greatly enjoy living, working, and worshiping together in South Holland.

Reformed Worship 150 © December 2023, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Used by permission.