Prayer for Pardoning Grace
“For Your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity — for it is great!” Psalm 25:11
Gracious God! Look down upon me this night in Your great mercy. May I have now the inner sunshine of Your presence! Before I retire to rest, let me pitch my tent near Yourself, and enjoy the tokens of Your favor and blessing. Your loving-kindness has been new to me every morning, and Your faithfulness every night.
I desire to render the thank-offering of a grateful heart to You. My life is one wondrous attestation to Your patience and forbearance. The kindness of the best earthly friend, has been nothing to You. You might long before now, have left me to reap the fruits of my own guilty estrangement, withdrawing the grace and Spirit I have so long resisted, executing against me the awful doom of the cumberer. But I am still spared — a living monument of mercy! Your ways are not as man’s ways — nor Your thoughts as man’s thoughts.
O my Father, I would seek anew this night, to close with the sole Sovereign remedy — Jesus! There is no other prop but You — to support a sinking soul and a sinking world. There is nothing between me and everlasting destruction — but Your glorious work and finished righteousness. I rejoice to think that it is all I need — living or dying, for time or for eternity! O blot out my many, many sins in Your precious blood. Nothing in my own hands I bring — simply to Your cross I cling. Mercy and truth have met together there; righteousness and peace have embraced each other. Reposing in what You have done, and in what You are still willing to do — I can rejoicingly say, “Return unto your rest, O my soul.”
Bring me to live more habitually under the constraining influence of redeeming love. Purchased at such a price, may I be willing freely to consecrate soul and body to Your service. Let me feel that the bitterest of all trials — is the forfeiture of Your favor and love; and the loftiest joy — is the assured possession of Your gracious friendship. May my spirit be brought into blessed unison with Yours. May I become more gentle, and resigned, and submissive, and unselfish; more heavenly-minded; more Savior-like! May I be led to regard all, even Your darkest dealings with me here — as needful parts in Your plan of stupendous wisdom. May I rest contented in the assurance that what I do not understand now — I shall know hereafter.
Unite me to all my dear friends, and them to me, in the bonds of Christian love. Amid all the fluctuations of this mortal life, may we ever have grace given us to cleave unto the Lord with full purpose of heart. Treading the same pilgrim-journey — may we arrive at last at the same pilgrim-home.
I would retire to rest this night with my eye on the opened fountain. O give me that peace of Yours, which the world knows nothing of, which the world cannot give, and, blessed be God, which the world cannot take away! Abide with me, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent. Give your angels charge over me during the unconscious hours of sleep, and, when all my evenings and mornings shall be finished — may it be mine to wake up with Yourself in glory everlasting, through Jesus Christ my only Lord and Savior. Amen.
-John Macduff
