Jul
08
2012
Perfect Your Work Within Our Hearts
Lord, forgive us all our sin.
If any cloud has arisen to hide you from any believing eye,
take that cloud away.
If in our march through this world, so full of mire as it is, we have any spot on us,
dear Savior, wash our feet and declare us “clean.”
May we know that there is no condemnation, no separation;
sin is removed as to its separating as well as its destroying power,
and may we enter into full fellowship with God.
Perfect your work within our hearts.
We are saved, but we would be saved from sin of every form and degree;
from sins that lie within, and we are scarcely aware that they are there.
If we have any pride of which we are not conscious,
any unbelief of which we are not aware,
if there is a form of idolatry which we have not yet perceived,
we ask you, Lord, to search us as with candles
till you spy out the evil and then put it away.
We are not satisfied with pardoned sin,
We pray, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.”
Save us, we pray, from ordinary religion;
give us the peculiar grace of a peculiar people.
May we abide in Christ,
may we live near to God.
Lord, arouse us to a deep concern for all with whom we come in contact from day to day.
Make us all missionaries at home or in the street, or in our workshop,
wherever Providence has cast our lot, may we there shine as lights in the world.
- Charles Spurgeon, adapted