Dear God, dear loving God, I am at a loss as to how to process the unthinkable enormity of Your gift of covenant to humanity. That You should conceive of something so astoundingly wonderful is too marvellous for words. It has an incomparable beauty that tells of Your own loveliness.

To change us from Your creatures into Your children through the blood of Your Son is beyond amazing. And then to bestow on us all the benefits of adoption into Your family—to give us a priceless heritage and raise us up as princes and princesses in Your kingdom is even more astonishing. It’s true we often forget that we’re servant-princes and servant-princesses, so please nudge us when we fail to honour You by ignoring our neighbour.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your provision of covenant so that we can be one with You, rather than like You but separate from You. Forgive us for the times we’ve fallen into believing that you’ll reward us when we’re good and punish us when we’re bad. Forgive us for putting our trust in a ‘Santa Claus’ who keeps a naughty-and-nice list and who operates according to transactional principles rather than grace and relationship. Help us to think in relational terms and to see, instead of rewards and punishment, there are love-gifts and consequences of betrayal.  Help us to realise that You all too often stand partly in harm’s way for us when we are ignorant of the honourable response to Your covenant but You allow us to reap small troubles so we can become aware of what You require and avoid large evils. Help us to know how terrible the rupture is when we deliberately betray You, so terrible that those repercussions flow from generation to generation. Lord, help us too to become aware of any treachery our ancestors have committed against You, so that we may repent of any lingering complicity in ourselves with their actions. Help us to know what covenants with ungodly spirits our ancestors may have raised, so that we can ask You to annul them.

Lord, forgive us for the times we’ve trivialised Your covenant promises and thought of them as our entitlement, rather than Your grace. Forgive us our faithlessness to You as our Daddy. And yet we ask You to fulfil that pledge Paul recorded for us:

This is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with Him,

we will also live with Him;

if we endure,

we will also reign with Him;

if we deny Him,

He will also deny us;

if we are faithless,

He remains faithful,

for He cannot deny Himself.

 2 Timothy 2:11–13 BSB

Help us, through our oneness with You to grow in faithfulness, to maintain covenant fidelity and reverse the curse of our forebears, and to ever deepen our intimacy with You.

May we live in the blessing Jesus our Brother has won for us.  In His name. Amen.