Instruments for Righteousness

"Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer had dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."

Romans 6:8-14

In response to this verse, may our prayers mirror the Puritan's from the Valley of Vision:

"Incomprehensible, great and glorious God, I adore thee and abase myself. I approach thee mindful that I am less than nothing, a creature worse than nothing. My thoughts are not screened from they gaze. My secret sins blaze in the light of thy countanace. Enable me to remember that blood which cleasneth all sin, to believe in that grace which subdues all iniquities, to resign myself to that agency which can deliver me from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Thou hast begun a good work in me and canst alone continue and complete it. Give me an increasing convicion of my tendency to err, and of my exposure to sin. Help me to feel more of the purifying, softening incluence of religion, its compassion, love pity, courtesy, and employ me as thy instrument in blessing others. Give me to distinguish between the mere form of godliness and its power, between life and a mane to live, between guile and truth, between hypocrisy and a religion that will bear thy eye. If I am not right, set me right, keep me right; And may I at last come to thy house in peace. "

Amen!