Father God, we need your help. No, seriously. I know many times we’ve come to prayer asking for this and that, but this time, we really mean it. God, this Christianity thing isn’t supposed to look like this is it? Forgive me for being critical, but the things we do really upset and frustrate me—but I am not pointing fingers, I’m also a member of this club. I see us walking right into sin, seeking immediate gratification—pleasures that illicit and illegitimate because they distract us from our total surrender and worship to you; I see us placing our trust and faith in the dollar bill, Dr. Phil, cheap thrills—these broken cisterns that can’t hold any water at all; I see us reading articles and watching the news on tv, putting up statistics on facebook, buzzing pictures of this horror and that tragedy—yet spend not one moment of our day asking for your kingdom come, your will be done; God we are repeating history today, all the way back to Adam. And if this is the case, then it’s true we are still in need of a savior who keeps on saving us. Gracious Father, we ask for forgiveness and know that it’s only by your blood, and for such kindness to lead us to repentance. In Jesus name,

Dr. Karl Barth was considered by many scholars to be one of the most brilliant theologians of the 20th Century. He was a prolific writer and wrote volumes on the meaning of life and faith. He was asked about the greatest truth he learned. He paused and said: “The greatest truth that I have ever learned was at my mother’s knee, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’”