Preface to Streams of Mercy

Here is the preface to Streams of Mercy: Prayers of Confession and Celebration by Barbara R. Duguid and edited by Iain M. Duguid.

PREFACE

As I wrote in my foreword to Prone to Wander, “Confession is good for the soul.”* That remains true for all of us. We are deeply sinful creatures, even after we have been redeemed by God. Our thoughts, our words, and our deeds are often shaped by our idolatries far more than they are by the gospel. We think, say, and do things that we ought not to think, say, and do. And often we don’t think, say, and do the things we should. Indeed, even when we are doing the very best things—reading our Bibles, praying, serving our families and our churches—our motives are shaded by all kinds of self-interest and self-promotion. In his letter “Man in his Fallen Estate,” John Newton details at length the sad state of our fallen condition, not merely before our conversion but after it, and not merely in the worst of people but in the very best.†

That is why the Bible tells us not to pretend that we are practically perfect, but instead to confess our sins, remembering that God is faithful and just and will forgive all our sins for the sake of Jesus Christ (see 1 John 1:8–9). Our firm hope of salvation rests not on our own progress toward holiness, which is always far less than it should be, but rather on Christ’s death, which atoned for every one of our sins, and on his perfect righteousness, which now clothes us like a spotless festival garment (see Zech. 3).

Historic church liturgies therefore always featured corporate confession as a central element.‡ Yet we live in a therapeutic culture that is uncomfortable with acknowledging and owning the fact that we ourselves are unclean, as is the community around us (see Isa. 6). Even in our private prayers, we have often neglected the teaching of Jesus’ model prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12), or we repeat those words verbatim as a mindless slogan, never reflecting on what our own specific personal debts might be.

It is for these reasons that Barb and our son Wayne began writing corporate prayers of confession for each Sunday’s service at Christ Presbyterian Church in Grove City, Pennsylvania—a practice that Barb has continued more recently at Christ Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. These prayers are built around the theme of the Scripture passage for each week’s sermon, and they seek to expose the specifics of our own struggles with sin. In that way, we are regularly pointed back to the good news of the gospel and we may hear afresh the affirmation of our own forgiveness through God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ.

The structure of these confessions is straightforward. We begin with a scriptural call to confession, which roots and grounds our confession in God’s Word. We want to be clear that the actions and attitudes we are calling people to confess are genuinely sinful, not simply breaches in the traditions and rules of men (see Mark 7:5–13). The Bible is to be our sole rule of faith and practice, and the scriptural call to confession underlines that reality. In most cases, the prayers are explicitly Trinitarian, confessing our many failings to the Father, giving thanks to the Son for his death on the cross as well as for his perfect (and specific) obedience in our place, which is credited to us by faith, and asking the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to pursue lives of new obedience.

The purpose of confessing our sins is always to remind us of what a great Savior we have. We confess that “there is no health in us” in order that our hearts may be drawn afresh to the Great Physician of our souls, who has provided for our desperate need for cleansing in the gospel. For that reason, we always follow each prayer of confession with a scriptural assurance of pardon: God’s authoritative declaration that each and every one of the sins of his people is forgiven in Jesus Christ. This is our only hope in life and death. These assurances, too, we have endeavored to make specific, providing gospel encouragement that is tailored to our particular failings and that points us afresh to the new life that is ours in Christ.

These prayers may be used as an aid in private devotions or as a help to those who lead God’s people in worship. We have supplied indexes of themes, of Scriptures cited, and of the sermon passages that originally gave us the focus for these particular prayers when we shared them with our congregations. There is also an index of hymns and songs, which lists some of the music that went with the prayers in their original worship context, as well as allusions to hymns and songs within the prayers themselves. We give permission for people to adapt and adopt this material for such use in corporate worship services as will bless the church.

Our debt to others in this compilation is not hard to see. Arthur Bennett’s The Valley of Vision* was a model for us, in both its scope and its rich and evocative language of devotion. We are also indebted to the team at P&R for many hours of hard work in helping us bring this material to its final form.

It is our prayer that God will continue to use these prayers in the lives of many people, so that we may once again rediscover that, as Martin Luther put it in the first of his ninety-five theses, “the entire Christian life is to be one of repentance.”

Iain M. Duguid

* Barbara R. Duguid and Wayne Duguid Houk, Prone to Wander: Prayers of Confession and Celebration (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2014), 11.

† See “Man in His Fallen Estate (1),” in Select Letters of John Newton (repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011) 117–23.

‡ See Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009) 89.

* Arthur G. Bennett, The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975).