Heavenly Father, I know it’s not all about me. But I can’t help myself. I try to make it about my faith as if, by straining harder, it’s going to make all the difference and bring about what I believed You’ve promised. And when that doesn’t come to pass, I can ignore the desolation of my heart by slapping on a band-aid that’s branded: my faith wasn’t enough.

I’m sorry that I didn’t recognise that my faith wouldn’t ever be enough. That it would never be more than a crumb. And that that’s all You ever ask of me: a crumb that sticks to be faith of Jesus and allows Him to be my all-sufficiency for every circumstance.

Father, sometimes I feel as if even my tiny crumb is on the verge of being blown away forever. So I ask the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow through my heart and whirl my crumb of faith back into the hands of Jesus.

Whenever I’m tempted to think it’s my faith that does the heavy lifting, Lord, remind me that I am not my own mediator before You. Jesus is the perfect mediator of a new covenant and His blood speaks better things: forgiveness, mercy, peace, reconciliation. He is the One who makes all things possible, it’s not my faith. My faith could reach to the other side of the universe and back and it would still be a pile of crumbs compared to the fullness of faith available if I cling to Jesus.

But even clinging to Him needs His help.

Father, there are matters I need to repent of: sinful attitudes, rotten spiritual fruit in my life, ungodly behaviours, sickening habits. There are some I know about, and many, many, many more that I’m completely unconscious of. I’ve hidden them so well from myself that I don’t even suspect their existence.

So, Lord, I ask You to expose the corruption that is buried and bring it into Your Light. I present to You those things I know about and I name them as an unholy stench in Your sight. I’m thinking right now of some specific issues and I acknowledge that I’ve tried to get rid of them in my own strength and through my own willpower. It never lasts long. I can’t do it.

So now I say that I repent, I turn away, I change direction, I put behind me all these ways and wanderings—and I ask Jesus of Nazareth, my perfect mediator, to empower the words I have just spoken and to give me the desire to manifest the fruit of repentance in my life. And I ask that He comes again and again, again and again, again and again and again—not just seven times or seventy times seven but as many times as I need Him so that the stronghold of these particular sins comes tumbling down.

In Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.