New Every Morning

A New Start Everyday

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:22-24

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance. Martin Luther, first of the 95 Theses. 

We are beggars! This is true. Luther's last written words. 

God be merciful to me, a sinner. John's Murray's last audible prayer. 

It might be said that Morning Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer is obsessed with both sin and righteousness. The Opening Sentences remind us we are sinners who need forgiveness, the presiding Minister calling himself and all God's people to confession with verses from Scripture. For instance:

I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Psalm li. 3 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Psalm li. 9. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Psalm li. 17. Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Joel ii. 13. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws which he set before us. Daniel ix. 9, 10. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. Jer. x. 24. Psalm vi. 1. Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. Psalm cxliii. 2.

There follows the Prayer of Confession. Every day we confess the reality about ourselves to the Lord and ask his forgiveness:

Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But, as we ask forgiveness for Christ's sake, even with that request we have an eye on the life God calls us to live. We do not want to continue to sin, but for God to work change in our lives:

And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

 The minister assures us of God's forgiveness:

God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness, and live; and hath given power, and commandment, to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins : He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel 

In the Absolution, we are called to think about the reality of our confession for God "pardoned and absolveth all them that truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel." The minister does not stop there, but calls upon us to pray for sincere repentance and resolve to live in a different way:

Wherefore let us beseech him to grant us true repentance, and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him, which we do at this present; and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure, and holy; so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

There follows the Lord's Prayer, which we will repeat again later in the service, which includes our request that our trespasses may be forgiven:

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

In the Lord's Prayer there is the challenge whether forgiving grace has made us forgiving people, for we pray that God may forgive us as we forgive them that trespass against us. What is our attitude to toward those whom we think may have wronged us? Do we let grudges grow? Do we harbor resentments? Do we nurture bitterness? Or do we forgive them, even as we ask God to forgive us?

The call to us to worship God ends with a warning:

O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and shew ourselves glad in him with Psalms. For the Lord is a great God: and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the corners of the earth: and the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down: and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts: as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness; When your fathers tempted me: proved me, and saw my works. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said: It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways. Unto whom I sware in my wrath: that they should not enter into my rest. (Psalm 95)

I seldom can say that without the prayer that I will not harden my heart as Israel did in the wilderness, that the Lord would not find it necessary to say of me that he is grieved by my whole life, that I might not err in my heart or be among those who have not known the ways of the Lord. Most I pray that God may not in wrath exclude me from the eternal rest he promises his people.

As we say the beautiful ancient Te Deum Laudamus, we join with the angels, prophets, apostles and martyrs and with the church all over the world to praise God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we cannot close unless we pray about out our proneness to sin and plead for mercy:

Vouchsafe, O Lord: to keep us this day without sin. O Lord, have mercy upon us: have mercy upon us. O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us: as our trust is in thee. O Lord, in thee have I trusted : let me never be confounded.

In the Benedictus  of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79), we give thanks that God in his mercy has remembered his covenant to deliver us from our enemies (at which time I think of Satan, sin, guilt, and condemnation), we do not forget the reason for our deliverance:

That we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies: might serve him without fear; In holiness and righteousness before him: all the days of our life.

When we say the Apostles' Creed there is a confession of belief at which I marvel and which I sometimes must strive to appropriate, this bold statement:

I believe...in the forgiveness of sins.

With the Collect for Grace we still have in mind our proneness to sin:

O Lord, our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day; Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always that is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 As the service nears its end with the General Thanksgiving we are still mindful of who we are and of how we should respond to all the blessings God bestows on us:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Ch for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful; and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

I have to ask: "What am I to make of all this?" Every single day, I come before God reminded that I am a sinner, confessing my sins, receiving forgiveness, being charged to lead a new and better life - but I do it every day. Here is the way I make sense of it. What ties it all together is that God is a merciful and gracious God. Grace is the thread that runs throughout the service and its daily repetition. If God were not gracious he would not let us keep coming back every day with the same words upon our lips.

We never approach God with the knowledge that, even as Christians, no matter how much we may grow in grace, we are sinners. Sometimes there are fresh sins weighing heavily on our hearts. Sometimes there come to mind especially grievous sins we have committed whether recently or in the past, and when these come to mind, we are embarrassed and ashamed, and almost find it hard to believe that it is we who have done those things. But on every day, even when the remembrance of sins is not so fresh and vivid, we know who we are - sinners in need of mercy and forgiveness. And that is how we not only must but may come to God in daily worship. 

And every day, despite the fact that we asked for forgiveness just yesterday, and perhaps by ejaculatory prayers many times since, we may still ask for forgiveness again today and be assured that he "pardoneth and absolveth" our sins. Failures and misdeeds since yesterday do not disqualify us from asking pardoning mercy today.

Everyday we are reminded in several ways that God calls upon us to be different - to lead new and better lives, to be holy in character and righteous in conduct - and we pray for grace that it may be so. But, even if yesterday has been better than the day before, and especially if it has not, we still may come before God with the earnest desire that this day and all the days to come may be more pleasing to him.

It seems to me that woven throughout Morning Prayer are woven the triple themes of the Continental catechism, the Heidelberg - of Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude. That's the whole Christian life, not just at the outset, but every day till we arrive in glory.

What the daily repetition of Morning Prayer means is that every day we get a new start with God. We keep coming as sinners; he keeps forgiving us; we keep aspiring to lead lives more pleasing to him. There is no day we cannot start here. And starting here everyday gives us encouragement. We are Christians seeking to worship God and to receive from him those things which are "requisite and necessary, as well for the body as for the soul."

Yes, Morning Prayer is obsessed with sin and righteousness. But even more, by its existence for daily use, it is obsessed with grace.

And never does God allow us to leave the service without his blessing us: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen." We always go from the service with the blessing of the Triune God imprinted on our hearts once again. Yes, grace, love, fellowship are for each and every believer each and every day.