This Lord’s day I thought of sharing so many things, diverse and helpful, provoking the mind and soul to reflection. But I think it better to share something more solemn, more true and more intimate than such things. Perhaps more than sharing something it is more of an invitation for you to join me in something.
Dear reader, would you join me in prayer this Lord’s Day?
You who are King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we worship You.
“Before Jehovah’s awful throne
We bow with sacred joy.”We can truly say that we delight in God. There was a time when we feared You, O Lord, with the fear of bondage. Now we reverence You, but we love as much as we reverence. The thought of Your omnipresence was once horrible to us. We said, “Whither shall we flee from His presence?” It seemed to make hell itself more dreadful, because we heard, “If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.”
But now, O Lord, we desire to find You. Our longing is to feel Your presence, and it is heavenly that You are there. The sick bed is soft when You are there. The furnace of affliction grows cool when You are there. The house of prayer when You are present is none other than the house of God, the very gate of heaven.
Come near, our Father, to Your children. Some of us are very weak in body and faint in heart. Soon, God, lay Your right hand on us and say, “Fear not.” Perhaps the world is attracting some of us. Come near to kill the influence of the world with Your superior power. Even to worship may not seem easy to some. The dragon seems to pursue them, and the floods out of his mouth wash away their devotion. Give to them great wings as of an eagle, that each may fly away into the place prepared for him, and rest in the presence of God today.
Father, come and give rest to Your children. Take the helmet from our brow. Remove from us the weight of our heavy armor for awhile. May we just have perfect peace and be at rest. O help us now, we pray. As You have already washed Your people in the fountain filled with blood and they are clean, now wash us from defilement in the water from Your fountain. With the basin and with the ewer, O Master, wash our feet again. It will greatly refresh. It will prepare us for innermost fellowship with Yourself. So the priests washed before they went into the holy place.
Lord Jesus, now take from us everything that would hinder the closest communion with God. Any wish or desire that might hamper us in prayer remove, we pray You. Any memory of either sorrow or care that might hinder the fixing of our affection wholly on our God, take it away now. What have we to do with idols any more? You have seen and observed us. You know where the difficulty lies. Help us against it, and may we now come boldly, not into the holy place only, but into the Holiest of all, where we would not dare come if our great Lord had not rent the veil, sprinkled the mercy seat with His own blood, and bidden us enter.
Now, we have come close to You, to the light that shines between the wings of the cherubim. We speak with You now as a man speaks with his friend. Our God, we are Yours. You are ours. We are now concerned in one business, we are united together for one battle. Your battle is ours, and our fight is Yours. Help us, we pray. You who strengthened Michael and his angels to cast out the dragon and his angels, help poor flesh and blood that to us also the word may be fulfilled: “The Lord shall bruise Satan under your feet, shortly.”
Our Father, we are very weak. Worst of all we are very wicked if left to ourselves, and we soon fall prey to the enemy. Therefore, help us. We confess that sometimes in prayer when we are nearest to You, at that very time some evil thought comes in, some wicked desire. Oh, What poor simpletons we are. Lord, help us. We want to come closer to You still and hide under the shadow of Your wings. We wish to be lost in God. We pray that You may live in us, and not we live, but Christ live in us and show Himself in and through us. Lord, sanctify us. Oh, may Your spirit come and saturate every faculty, subdue every passion, and use every power of our nature for obedience to God!
Come, Holy Spirit. You have often overshadowed us. Come, more fully take possession of us. As we feel we are standing now right at the mercy seat, our very highest prayer is for perfect holiness, complete consecration, entire cleansing from all evil. Take our hearts, our heads, our hands, our feet, and use all of us for You. Take our substance; let us not hoard it nor spend it for ourselves. Take our talents: let us not educate ourselves so that we may have the reputation of being wise, but let every gain mentally be still that we may serve You better.
May every breath be for You. May every minute be spent for You. Help us to live while we live. And while we are busy in the world as we must be, for we are called to it, may we sanctify the world for Your service. May we be lumps of salt in the midst of society. May our spirit and temper as well as our conversation be heavenly. May there be an influence about us that will make the world better before we leave it. Lord, hear us in this thing.
And now that we have Your ear, we pray for this poor world in which we live. We are often horrified by it. Lord, we wish that we did not know anything about it for our own comfort. We have said, “Oh, for a cabin in some wilderness.” We hear of oppression, robbery, and murder, and men seem let loose against each other. Lord, have mercy upon this great and wicked city. What is to be done with these millions? What can we do? At least help every child of Yours to do his utmost. May none of us contribute to the evil directly or indirectly, but may we contribute to the good that is in it.
When Your servant Abraham stood before You and spoke with such wonderful familiarity to You, he pleaded for Sodom. We would follow the example of the Father of the Faithful: we plead for our city, for all great cities, and indeed for all nations. Lord, let Your kingdom come. Send forth Your light and Your truth. Chase the old dragon from his throne, with all his hellish crew. Oh, that the day might come when even upon earth the Son of the woman, the Man–child, should rule the nations, not with a broken staff of wood, but with an enduring scepter of iron, full of mercy, but full of power, full of grace, and irresistible! May this might soon come, the advent of our Lord! We long for the millennial triumph of His Word.
Until then, O Lord, gird us for the fight, and make us to be among those who overcome through the blood of the Lamb and through the word of our testimony, because we “love not our lives unto the death.”
We lift our voice to You in prayer, also, for all our dear ones. Lord bless the sick and make them well as soon as it is right they should be. Sanctify to them all they have to bear. There are also dear friends who are very weak, some that are very trembling. God, bless them. While the tent is being taken down, may the inhabitant within look on with calm joy, for we shall by–and–by “be clothed upon with our house that is from heaven.”
Lord, help us to be very loosely attached to all these things here below. May we live here like strangers and make the world not a house but an inn, in which we sup and lodge, expecting to be on our journey tomorrow.
Lord, save the unconverted, and bring out, we pray You, from among them those who are converted, but who have not confessed Christ. May the church be built up by many who, having believed, are baptized in the sacred Name. We pray that You will multiply the faithful in the land. Turn the hearts of men to the Gospel again! Your servant is often very heavy in heart because of the departures from the faith. Oh, bring them back. Let not Satan take away any more stars with his tail, but may the lamps of God shine bright. Oh, You that walk among the seven golden candlesticks, trim the flame, pour forth the oil, and let Your light shine brightly and steadily.
We leave a broken prayer at the mercy seat with this at the end of it: We ask in the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son. Amen.
—The Prayers of Spurgeon
