17 days and counting

Confirmation begins tonight! As it does, parents are continuing to keep the promises they made for their children in Holy Baptism, promising to raise their children in the church, bring them to worship and to the Lord’s Supper, teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, and nurture them in God’s Word, in prayer and in faith, so they may grow up to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. Over the years, through Bethlehem’s 100 years of ministry, thousands of young people have affirmed the promises God made to them when they were baptized. We pray these students, too, might be nurtured in faith and in the love of this community as they come together tonight.

Prayer
We give you thanks, O God, that through water and the Holy Spirit you give your daughters and sons new birth, cleanse them from sin, and raise them to eternal life. Sustain these young people with the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. Amen.

--Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 231