Preparing for corporate worship: Past hopelessness

We will gather this Sunday as the church of Christ to worship corporately the one true God with at least this in common -- we were at one time hopeless. Just the first several verses of Eph. 2 demonstrate the desperate plight that marked our lives. We:

-- Were "dead" in our "trespasses and sins" (v. 1);

-- "[W]alked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air" (v. 2);

-- "[L]ived in the lusts of our flesh" (v. 3);

-- "[W]ere by nature children of wrath" (v. 3);

Hopelessness turned to hope because the richly merciful God "made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)," Eph. 2:5 says.

Thus we of all people should worship this merciful God who is now our Father by His choice with passion in our praise, gladness in our thanksgiving, contrition in our confession and boldness in our petition. May it be so this Sunday.