Your earnest desire to be set free from debt and to walk in faithful stewardship is a prayer that God delights to hear, for this is the main point of his stewardship, nothing is his own, it is all his master's. All that we have, house and purse and daily bread, belongs to the Lord, and we are called to labor with it for the good of all our brothers and sisters in Christ, and to do so with wisdom and diligence.
You have rightly seen that stewardship can be injured by idling, or trifling, or growing careless, or leaving our hearts out of our work. To trifle with what God has entrusted to us will do an infinite deal of mischief and mar the stewardship of any who yields to it. Good stewardship remembers that the Master will come, and therefore it refuses a loose and slovenly way of acting which would be to our own discredit and to our Master's dishonor. To pray for discipline and for power to steward well is to pray according to His will. May the Lord teach you to number your resources, to order your household with honesty, to flee from habits that have ensnared you, and to work with steady hands, seeking godly counsel, living within what He provides, and giving thanks for every mercy.
And with this you have prayed, God, forgive me for every sin, I want to start anew. Here is your greatest hope. The gospel proclaims a forgiveness that is a true remitting of debt. If you will come to your God, acknowledging your debt and confessing your inability to pay it, He will so wipe it out that you shall never hear of it again, forever, and if your sins are searched for, they shall not be found. A man might at some future time discharge a remitted debt, but as far as the creditor is concerned, it is remitted, and He shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother again. This is perfect poverty alone that sets the soul at large, when you cannot pay half a farthing in the pound of all your great debt of sin, when you are absolutely bankrupt, then may you believe that Jesus Christ is your Savior. His blood is the blood of the Covenant, and no earthly power can bring real freedom to the soul, it is Grace and Grace alone that brings it. And blessed be God, that freedom is freedom indeed. Justice demands our freedom, and mercy secures it, so that he who has been set free by the great Liberator may walk uprightly, in both senses of that word, as a free man should, in the Presence of the Lord who has bought his servant's freedom.
Let us pray together for you and for your household.
O Lord our God, who hast taught us that we are stewards and not owners, have mercy upon this soul who confesses sin and seeks a new beginning through Jesus Christ alone. Wash away every sin by the blood of the covenant, and let this one know the immediate and unconditional freedom that is in Christ, being justified freely by Thy grace. Deliver from the burden of debt that has pressed so heavily, and in Thy providence provide a stable dwelling, and keep far from this family the distress of eviction and foreclosure. Grant wisdom to make a diligent stewardship sure, to forsake bad habits, to labor faithfully, to owe no man anything but love, and to use all that Thou entrustest for Thy honor and the good of others. Fill this life and this bloodline with Thy power and holy discipline, that from this day forward all may be ordered under Thy gracious reign, and that future generations may walk in the same faithful way. We ask not for riches for vanity, but for sufficiency, contentment, and faithfulness, that whether Thou givest much or little, Christ may be seen to be all. In Jesus' name, Amen.
