Prayer XII
Help us, O our gracious God, we beseech Thee, to come into Thy presence with the offerings of our hearts. Thou art not worshipped with men’s hands; Thou needest nothing. We praise Thee when we bring our empty hands to Thee, and hold them up in faith to be filled out of Thy fulness. And we would recognise that Thou art He that giveth unto all men all things liberally, and art indeed the giving God.
O Lord, let Thy love be upon us, and such of its tokens in outward things as Thou knowest to be best for us; and help us ever rigidly to keep our desires within the limits of Thy manifest providence, and not to mar the gifts that we have by vain murmurings for those that we have lost, or have never possessed. We would come to Thee now, with lowly thankfulness; for surely when we measure Thy benefits by our deserts it becomes us to accept the least of all Thy gifts as the manifestation of the love, great beyond all our thoughts. Thou stoopest from Thy Heaven. Thou dost not deal with us according to our sins, but according to Thy own heart, and the depth and the fulness of
Thy own loving purposes. So we have to render thanks for our smallest benefits, but, alas! Thine assiduity in giving robs us often of our thankfulness; and we have become so accustomed to Thy manifold and uninterrupted light that we do not recognise it, or know that we are walking in it, until sometimes a cloud comes, and the beams are shorn.
O Lord! may we not lose our good gifts before we understand and appreciate them. May we make them a thousandfold better because our clear eyes behold, and our grateful hearts recognise, their connection with Thyself. And into every corner of our daily life, whether looked at as Thy gift, or as devolving upon us our duties, may we carry the strengthening and the calming, the purifying thought, that God is here, and that we rest upon Him. We come to Thee this morning, especially, with devout thankfulness for all which this day has, for so many days, brought to our memories, of Thy greatest and most wondrous gift. We thank Thee ’ for the Christ that died, yea! rather, that is risen again. Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us.’ We thank Thee for that risen life. We pray that even whilst we are passing the time of our sojourning here we maybe sitting with Him in the heavenly places; and may, in the depths of our being, partake of that glorified life of our Brother and our Saviour. May it be true of us that ’ our lives are hid with Christ in God.’
O Lord, look upon our gathering now, and since Thou hast given us the opportunity of bringing our own dying embers of faith and love together, may our united supplications break into a brighter flame; and may we find here that whilst Thou hast benefits to give which only those who are left alone with Thee do ever truly receive, Thou hast also benefits to give to the great congregation. Give us these, O Lord, and help each of us, bearing, as we must do, our own individual burdens, that we may receive from Thee the common grace which takes in our spirit the shape that is most required, and help us to bear each his own burdens, and so far as may be his brother’s.
We pray for one another, therefore we beseech Thee that Thou wouldst be near each of us, according to all the variety of our callings and our circumstances and characters. Deliver us from the faults of our qualities, and from the temptations of our vocations. Deliver us from the weaknesses that creep over us all by reason of associations and circumstances. And help us, day by day, to renew and to increase, and to be faithful to, our consecration of ourselves to Thee, that we may adorn the teaching in all things. Let Thy counsel guide us, and may we not be of those who have no understanding, and can be taught by nothing but blows and bridles. Guide Thou us with Thine eye, and may we be so near Thee that we can see what that eye means, and catch at once its directions and its benedictions. If any of us have any special weight of sorrows, cares, perplexities, losses, regret or mourning upon our minds and hearts, we pray that Thou wouldst come near to such. Thou emptiest places, but it is that Thou mayest fill them. And we pray that we may ever find in our trials, be they great or small, in all our losses be they reparable or no, that God Himself is our gain, and God Himself is our strength.
We beseech Thee to bless all Thy faithful servants who, in any communion and in any land, tongue, or fashion, are this day trying to make Christ’s glory shine more widely, and His Name to be more loved and trusted. The Lord be with all those that love Jesus
Christ in incorruption; and upon all faithful efforts, however humble and poor, let Thy blessing rest, we pray. Be with us all, and may our meeting together this morning be a help to each of us, in the road that we ought to travel, and draw each of us nearer to Jesus Christ, and help to make us in some small measure more like Him.
Give Thy blessing to us when we try to meditate together on Thy word, and guide the thoughts of hearers and of speaker, we beseech Thee; and grant that Thy voice may manifestly be heard even through the imperfect instrument to which Thou hast been pleased to commit the task of preaching Thy word. And we ask that here Christ’s Kingdom may be established and His name magnified. O Lord! in like manner bless all good people who are in their several ways doing the same work. Establish Thou the work of their hands upon them. May it be the work of Thy hands, that so Thy glory may pour into Thy servants.
Now we desire to commend ourselves to Thy gracious care. We beseech Thee to be near us and bless us; accept our thanks for all Thy mercies to us, and still manifest Thy grace and love in its strange fulness and condescension to such poor empty lowly creatures as we are, whom Thou dost exalt and enrich by the unspeakable gift of Thy dear Son. In His Name we ask all.