Prayer XXXIII
O Lord, our gracious Father, and ever-present and loving Friend, draw us, we beseech Thee, near to Thyself now, for we feel that we need Thy help to lift up our hearts’ desires to Thee, and to leave behind and beneath us the things of time and sense. Four into our minds some clear and blessed thoughts of Thyself, not only in Thy glory but in Thy gentleness which makes us great. And fulfil Thine own promises of speaking to our hearts that they may return loving answers to Thee. We feel, O Lord, that the cares of this world, and the necessary duties that have come upon us, have too often drawn us away from Thee; and we gather this morning wearied with our day’s work, and finding it hard to rise above our ordinary selves, and to enter into Thy presence. O Lord,
‘Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.’
And help us now to gather ourselves together, and turn our faces to seek the Lord.
We bless Thee, Father, for all Thy mercies to us. Surely Thou dost seek to draw us to Thyself lovingly, with wise surprises in Thy mercy, and wonders in Thy continual grace besetting us behind and before. We beseech Thee that we may recognise more fully the movements of Thy hand in all our daily affairs, and be concerned to find out the deepest meaning of these, and to draw from them the highest blessings. And may we always believe and feel that they are working together for our good, and that the will of God in them all is our sanctification. O cleanse our hearts, and help us to cleanse them; strengthen in us all the feeble good, and cast out all the strong evil.
Give us, O Lord, the grace to live according to our highest thoughts, and make these highest thoughts more in accordance with Thy holy will, and Thy blessed manifestations of Thyself. Teach us the rigid and wise judgment of ourselves. May we examine ourselves, to find there all that is discordant with Thy holy will and therefore disturbing our peace and rest, and give us grace to cast it out. We are very apt to read ourselves wrongly, and leniently to interpret our own faults and failures; and because they are ours, and natural to us, they blind our eyes and silence our consciences often. We pray for a clearer vision of all we ought to be, and might be. May no self-love ever come between us and the clear sight of duty and transgression. Help us day by day to labour as those who have received Thy forgiving love, and to make ourselves less unworthy of Thy mercy, and more capable of receiving it.
O Lord, we beseech Thee to lift up all our hearts into the full blessedness of this hour of worship. May it not be to us a mere form, or a task, but the very gate of Heaven. Grant that, as we bow before Thee now, the presence of our brethren may help our feebleness. Grant that the cares that infest us may steal away, and be lost to our consciousness; and that we may feel the realities which we so often forget, and understand better that great love which we so often neglect and put away from us.
Draw near to us now in the fulness of Thy grace, the largeness of Thy pity, the tender compassion of Thy promises; and in Thy faithfulness give to each of us as we severally reqviire, making this an hour of true communion with Thyself, in which we shall see the things that are, and grasp in hope the things that shall be hereafter. In Thy great mercy hear, answer, and bless us, for our Lord Christ’s sake.