Prayer CXXI
Help and strengthen us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, for the race that is set before us; and may we have the mind that was in Christ, and by His strength may our feeble feet be quickened, and grace given to us to run, not uncertainly, and to run so that we obtain.
O Lord! we need Thy help at every moment. Life is often very hard; it is always full of effort, and sometimes full of dangers and sorrows; and we need Thee to be beside us, and we need to keep beside Thee, when we wander away from Thee, and forget Thee, and try to do our work in our own strength, and fail to keep before us the great quickening impulse, and to grasp the great enabling power of Thy Holy Spirit. But we beseech Thee that day by day Thou wouldst be near us, to keep us that whether it be Thy commandment that we should walk in the minutest recurrence of small duties and commonplace events, or whether it should be Thy will that we have to run in the crises of trials and difficulties and sorrows, we may have Thee to help us. Make our feet as hinds’ feet; by Thy grace may we run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.
We pray Thee, O Lord, to help to make our worship real, to deliver us from dependence upon these external means, and yet to enable us to get all the good out of them to the last drop that is in them. Guide us in hearing and in speaking what purports to be Thy word. May it be so really, and whatever human element and alloy must necessarily be mixed with it, do Thou clear it, and let the pure gold of Thy revealed will and manifest commandment enter into all our spirits and enrich us. May we live our convictions more as we learn. And what we feel in our worship here may it issue in action in our daily life. May there be none of us who, knowing these things, are so miserable as not to do them.
We beseech Thee to help and bless each of us according to our different circumstances in the present, and our different characters and spiritual needs. Comfort all sad hearts among us. Be very near to all solitary souls; stay all who may be reeling before temptations, or all but cast down by sorrows. Guide any that are perplexed. Deliver us each from the errors which we do not know, and from the sins which we have never seen. And do Thou help us in our daily lives to avoid many a temptation because we press toward the mark, and to be kept from undue disturbance because we set the Lord always before us, and so shall not be greatly moved.
Graciously grant us Thy help and presence, we beseech Thee, for our Lord and Saviour’s sake.