I received a copy of "The Valley of Vision" for Christmas and have been reading the prayers within it from time to time. Here is one that I found particularly applicable to me. I often feel I pray from a prayerless heart - my lips reciting words neither my mind nor heart are engaged in. Being a worship pastor, I must confess there are times when I am singing praise that is praiseless due to the hardness of my heart. But Christ is gracious to me, and in his wounds I find a covert...a hiding place.
O LORD
No day of my life has passed that has not
Proved me guilty in your sight.
Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart;
Praise has often praiseless sound;
My best services are filthy rags.
Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in your appeasing wounds.
Though my sins rise to heaven your merits soar above them;
Though unrighteousness weighs me down to hell,
Your righteousness exalts me to Your throne.
All things in me call for my rejection,
All things in You plead my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice
To Your throne of boundless grace.
Grant me to hear Your voice assuring me:
That by Your stripes I am healed,
That You were bruised for my iniquities,
That You have been made sin for me
That I might be righteous in You,
That my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven,
Buried in the ocean of Your concealing blood.
I am guilty, but pardoned,
Lost, but saved,
Wandering, but found,
Sinning, but cleansed.
Give me perpetual broken-heartedness,
Keep me always clinging to Your cross,
Flood me every moment with descending grace,
Open to me the springs of divine knowledge,
Sparkling like crystal,
Flowing clear and unsullied
Through my wilderness of life.
