Prayer for the Spirit of Adoption
“We have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Abba, Father!” Romans 8:15
Blessed Lord! I desire to draw near this night with holy boldness to the footstool of Your throne, rejoicing that I can look up to You as my Father in Heaven. “Behold what manner of love is this which the Father has bestowed on me — that I should be called a child of God!” You might have righteously left me orphaned, friendless, portionless forever! But in the midst of wrath, You have remembered mercy. The kindness of no earthly parent, O my Father — could equal yours. You have borne with all my obstinacy, all my perverseness, and waywardness, and ingratitude. I am at this hour the monument of a love — as wondrous, as it is undeserved.
Oh teach me to cultivate more and more a spirit of child-like obedience to You; to cherish a holy fear of offending so kind and forgiving and beneficent a Father. While You are strewing my wilderness path with unmerited blessings — may I be enabled to rise above every earthly gift and mercy — to the better inheritance I have in You, the bountiful Bestower of all!
Let this hour of prayer be doubly hallowed — by the thought that I am permitted to frequent my Heavenly Father’s presence, and pour my needs into my Father’s ear!
Let me feel every temporal blessing to be doubly sweet — as emanating from my Heavenly Father’s hand, and being a proof and pledge of my Father’s love!
Let this season of sorrow be sweetened by the thought that the rod is in my Heavenly Father’s hand — and that the voice, through apparently rough — is the tender whispering of paternal wisdom and love!
Blessed Jesus! I desire to remember that it is You and You only who has not left me “comfortless.” It is You who has devised and completed a way by which “Your banished” may not be “expelled” from a Father’s presence. You have opened a door of welcome to the chief of sinners. It is Your blessed voice and Your glorious work, which utter the gracious declaration, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Oh let me lean with a more simple and entire dependence on You; let me live from day to day with an unfaltering trust in Your mercy. May every new evening, as it finds me laying the incense-offering of gratitude and love on Your altar — find me also a stage nearer my Father’s house, nearer home, and nearer You.
Take all my beloved friends under Your shadowing wings this night. The darkness cannot screen them from You; the curtains of night can not exclude Your kind and watchful eye. Guide, guard, protect them, and bring them all at last to Your heavenly kingdom.
Bless Your Church everywhere; lengthen her tent-cords and strengthen her stakes. Be a wall of fire around Your spiritual Zion, and the glory in the midst thereof. Clothe her ministers with salvation, let her saints and people shout aloud for joy.
Bless Your people on whom You have laid Your afflicting hand. May they take refuge in the arms that are chastising them, and be enabled to say in unmurmuring submission, “May the Lord’s will be done!” Hear me, gracious Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, my blessed Lord and Savior. Amen.
“Let my prayer be set forth before You as incense — and the lifting up of my hands, as the evening sacrifice.”
-John MacDuff
