Holy are you, O Lord Jesus. You are the One who is, and who was, and who is to come. You are Lord of the church. You are the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. You, O Lord, are the ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev 1:4-5). You love me. You freed me from condemnation (Rom 8:1), from separation (Rom 8:35) and from individualism (Rom 8:14) through your blood. You grafted me into the place of great privilege to become a priest in your kingdom.
As a priest, I come to you personally and enter into your sanctuary. I ask for the forgiveness of my sins. I don’t bring a bull or goat, but I bring the cup and the bread. With these, I remember that night that you paid the price for my sins. I remind myself that I am forgiven. I am free from sin and guilt. With the freshness of this reminder in my mind, I fall on my knees and worship you with gladness. I exalt you for your love, mercy, grace and kindness.
As a priest, come to you with my personal requests. I ask you to work in my family. I look at the glassy see before your throne and hear the echos of the angels praising you and I boldly ask you to continually draw my family closer to you. Protect them from the evil one and Provide for them today all that they will need to live and thrive. I pray for the church I serve. I pray for new believers to join the family, to grow in faith. I pray that we would demonstrate miracalous love and grace for one another beyond our natural ability to love and enjoy one another. May they know we are Christians by our love for one another.
As I priest, after I get done worshipping you, I then take the requests others have asked me to make on their behalf and I present them to you. I pray for those issues that are on the hearts of those I represent. I ask you to work, to heal, to restore and refresh. Bring their children to faith, heal their pain, renew their strength and strengthen their faith.
As a priest, I represent you to the people. Help me today to wear the priestly garments of righteousness, grace, truth and joy. Help me, Lord Jesus, be a reflection of you. Draw people closer to you through my words, through my actions, through my way of life. I don’t want anyone to say, I don’t want to believe because Paul is a believer and if he is a believer I want nothing to do with His God.
Finally, one day Lord, I will cry out, “Look up! Wow! You’ve got to see this! It is absolutely amazing. Look! Can you see it!! I will jump for joy! I will dance in the street. Tears will run down my cheeks with the realization that my faith was right. It is all true. One day, I will look up and I will see Jesus coming on the clouds. I will celebrate with great joy. May I not do it alone. May I have people next to me, with me, beside me all engaged in amazing joy as I see you riding on the clouds returning to collect your faith-filled faithful ones.
Lord, God Almighty, come soon. Until then, may I be found diligently doing what you have asked me to do as a priest, representing you in my life to everyone I come in contact with today. Amen.