A Prayer Primer
Psalm 130 (ESV)
July 28, 2024
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations
“We need daily, personal, sincere repentance in the spirit of the gospel. Repentance that lays hold of the mercy of God in Christ. The kingdom of heaven is marked by repentance.”
~ David Dickson (1583–1663), Scottish minister and theologian
“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”
“May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint! I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
~ Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Protestant Reformer
“A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out. The good news is we can take it one day at a time; in following Jesus He is slowly making us new, a process that will take us the rest of our lives and won’t be complete until we arrive and see His glorious face. We aren’t dependent on ourselves to be righteous, but rather by turning from ourselves to Him day after day we allow Him to perform His work on us, and through us.”
~ C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), British author and Christian apologist
“He [God) cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance–he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.”
~ Tim Keller (1950-2023), American pastor, theologian, apologist
Sermon Passage
Psalm 130 (ESV)
A Song of Ascents
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
2 O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.