Prayer XXXII
O Lord, our God, we thank Thee that we can cry-Abba! Father! Our Saviour prayed so in His agony, and we bless Thee that through Him we too become sons of God, and can take that great Name on our lips with joy and filial confidence. Help us then, we pray Thee, that we may all, by humble faith and true obedience, enter into the liberty and the glory of being the children of God. And do Thou deliver us thereby from bondage, from servile fear, from all doubt, and dark thoughts of Thee, and make us feel that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Lord! truly Thou art our Portion, and though we have often behaved as though Thou wert not ours and we not Thine, yet in our deepest hearts we have been sure that there is no abiding for any of us except in possessing God. We pray Thee that this conviction may be deepened in us, and that we may more and more claim and possess the riches of the glory of our inheritance in Thee, and may carry into all our daily life the assurance that we have Thee for our enduring substance and our righteousness.
Give us, we beseech Thee, the help which Thou knowest we sorely need, and we hope though feebly we all sincerely seek. Teach us to understand the great depths of Thy law, and to see more than we ever have seen, the revelation of Thyself in Jesus Christ. And may that great message, which we venture to take upon our lips to proclaim, be given to the speaker in its purity, and come to the hearers in its power. We pray that Thou wouldst help us all, bowing here before Thee this morning, and coming in contact with Thy word and will, to bow our hearts and minds, and not only our hearts and minds, but to regulate and conform all our action to what we know to be the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
We beseech Thee to bless each of us in our daily struggle and pilgrimage, teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight, be the covering of our heads in the day of battle. May no sin have dominion over us, and no evil thing lead us captive. May we be more than conquerors through Him that loved us; and grant, we pray Thee, that into all the darkness of the darkest life there may shine the bright hope, the hope of immortality. We pray Thee to give us patience to wait for all which Thou dost give us faith to expect, and we pray that our waiting may not be indolent, but that we may ever be trying, day by day, to bring into our lives, characters, and conduct more and more of the powers of the world to come.
O Lord, bless each of us in our several spheres of service and duty, in all the various relationships of life, in all the tasks and trials and joys which Thou dost give us. May they all tend to bring us nearer to Thyself. Make us masters of the world because we are the servants of God, and may we find Thee everywhere because we take Thee everywhere. And if any of us have special burdens, and seem to ourselves to stand in special need of Thy help, shape Thy gifts, O Lord, according to our necessities, and give to each of us that which we most need in order to get the highest good out of everything that befalls us.
We pray for all Christian people, for all communities of such. We pray that Thou wouldst strengthen the hands and purify the hearts of Thy servants, and that Christian men by Christian lives may, in their own spheres, be the apostles of Jesus Christ. And now we beseech Thee to bless us, to forgive all our sins, and to grant us Thy help and presence as we worship this morning, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.