A Puritan Prayer

Here’s the Puritan prayer I mentioned in my previous entry.

O Lord God, who inhabitest eternity,
The Heavens declare thy glory,
The earth thy riches,
The universe is thy temple;
Thy presence fills immensity,
Yet thou hast of thy pleasure created life, and communicated happiness;
Thou hast made me what I am and given me what I have;
In thee I live and move and have my being;
Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,
And wisely administers all my affairs.
I thank thee for thy riches to me in Jesus,
For the unclouded revelation of him in thy Word,
Where I behold his person, character, grace, glory,
Humiliations, sufferings, death, and resurrection;
Give me to feel a need of his continual saviourhood,
And cry with Job, “I am vile,”
With Peter, “I perish,”
With the publican, “Be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Subdue in me the love of sin,
Let me know the need of renovation as well as of forgiveness,
In order to serve and enjoy thee for ever.

I come to thee in the all-prevailing name of Jesus,
With nothing of my own to plead,
No works, no worthiness, no promises.
I am often straying,
Often knowingly opposing thy authority,
Often abusing thy goodness;
Much of my guilt arises from my religious privileges,
My low estimation of them,
My failure to use them to my advantage,
But I am not careless of thy favor or regardless of thy glory,
Impress me deeply with a sense of thine omnipresence,
That thou art about my path, my ways, my lying down, my end.

(From Valley of Vision, p.5)