“O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to thee. I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me. I am undeserving, but I look to Thy tender mercy. I am full of infirmities, wants, sin; Thou art full of grace.
I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my wilful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man’s-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.
I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt. Lord, dost Thou have mercy on me?
Thou hast struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false god of self, and I lie in pieces before Thee. But Thou hast given me another master and lord, Thy Son, Jesus, and now my heart is turned towards holiness, my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to Thee. Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride. Save me from the love of the world and the pride of life, from everything that is natural to fallen man, and let Christ’s nature be seen in me day by day. Grant me grace to bear Thy will without repining, and delight to be not only chiselled, squared, or fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long, and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ for ever.”
What God’s Grace Makes Me–A Puritan Prayer
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Beautiful!
Thank you for this. I am going to print it out.
Thankyou for sharing this heartfelt prayer. I have never really thought about self as a false god before, but it’s so true – thanks for the challenge.
Have a wonderful day
Renata:)
It is a beautiful and repentive heart. But I also feel it is a deceived heart. Once we are redeemed by Christ’s blood, death and resurrection, we are the co-heirs with Christ. The righteousness of Christ.
Imagine that we adopted a child. Told them that all we have is theirs, they are our heir as our birthed children were our heirs. Now imagine they told us they would settle for scraps off of the table like dogs.That because they were not birthed by your womb, they were not worthy to be called all we told them they were. That they threw the credit card we gave them in the trash, because they had not deserved it. That they were ashamed before us because of what they came from. How our hearts would grieve their false view of themselves! We would mourn who they could be because they were focusing on what they were!
Only Satan wants to keep us in the past, in the knowledge of our former idiot sin. We are not redeemed by our works. Nor are we condemned by our former works (once we are one with Christ). We are a new creation in Christ, the old has passed away. We are co-heirs with Christ. We are the righteousness of Christ. We are redeemed from the curse of the law. We are Heir to the blessings of Abraham.
Was I a sinner? Yes, now I am redeemed by the blood. I will not dwell on who I was, but I will guard against what the enemy wants to bring me back to in my mind. I will renew my mind in the image of Christ so I will not fall.
“I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt. Lord, dost Thou have mercy on me”
Jesus said He is the vine and we are the branches. Is He bearing no fruit through us? Is He fading? Is He a barren winter tree? To even ask the Lord if He has mercy on us is to not know the Word of God. His answer to the mass murder as well to the liar is “YES, EVERMORE!!!!!” To think that we are ever by ourselves is to deny Holy Spirit and all His purposes in and for us!
I am sorry if this seems subvertive towards your blog, Kelly. My heart is really towards those who are already in Christ (I’ll preach when told to, though). I cannot stand the thought of Christians living as though they were beggars on the street, grateful for any scrap from the table of the King when we are rightfully seated at the table of the Most High King through His Grace and Mercy.
I think the prayer is a reflection of the doctrine of the depravity of man, which not all Christians believe.
The heart of the prayer can be heard in this line:
“I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself”
It is an acknowledgment that we are nothing apart from Christ as opposed to a more modern view of Christianity that asserts that “we aren’t all that bad, really”.
I completely agree that apart from Christ we are despicable sinners, unable to approach the throne of grace. I just don’t think God likes us calling what He has already redeemed us from suggesting Christ’s blood was not enough to cleanse us and make us righteous in Him. I am not sure we should identify ourselves by what we once were. Sorry if I was verbose and it didn’t come across right.
Well-said, Kelly L.
Beautiful. I think I’m going to print this up …
Amen.