Robert Hawker: Piercing Heaven – Puritan’s Prayers

Precious Lord Jesus! Oh for grace to love you, who have so loved us! You stoop to call such poor sinful people your own, and love them as your own, and consider every thing done for them and done to them as to yourself.

Show my poor heart a portion of that love, that I may love you as my own and only Savior, and learn to love you to the end, as you have loved me and given yourself for me, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Precious Lord, continue to surprise my soul with the tokens of your love. All the tendencies of your grace, all the evidences of your favor, your visits, your love-tokens, your pardons, your renewing’s, your morning call, your mid-day feedings, your noon, your evening, your midnight grace.

All, all are among your wonderful ways of salvation, and all testify to my soul that your name, as well as your work, is, and must be, wonderful.

Jesus, you put forth your hand and touched a leper! Deal with me the same way, precious Lord. Though I am polluted and unclean, yet reach down to put forth your hand and touch me also.

Put forth your blessed Spirit. Come, Lord, and dwell in me, abide in me, and rule and reign over me. Be my God, my Jesus, my Holy One, and make me yours forever.

Yes, dearest Jesus, I hear you say that you will be for me, and not for another. So will I be for you. Oh! You condescending, loving God, make me yours, “that whether I live, I may live to the Lord; or whether I die, I may die to the Lord; so that living or dying, I may be yours.”

Amen.