Heart Corruptions

Today’s Freedom Fighter is a great follow-up to yesterday’s post on “Victory Over Sin” from Experiencing God.

It is a powerful prayer for the book, “Valley of Vision – Prayers of the Puritans”:

O God,
May Your Spirit speak in me that I may speak to You.
I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me.
I am undeserving, but I look to Your tender mercy.
I am full of infirmities, want, sin – You are full of grace.

I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my willful sin;
All my powers of body and soul are defiled:
A fountain of pollution is deep within my nature.

There are chambers of foul images within my being;
I have gone from one odious room to another – walked in a no-man’s land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.

I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself;
I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles;
I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away;
I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt.

Lord, do you have mercy on me? You have struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false God of self, and I lie in pieces before You.

But YOU have given me another Master and Lord, Your Son, Jesus – and now my heart is turned towards holiness and my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to You.

Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride.
Save me from the love of the world and the pride of life, from everything that is natural to fallen man, and let Christ’s nature be seen in me day by day.

Grant me to bear You will without repining, and delight to be not only chiseled, squared, fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long, and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ forever. Amen.

Isn’t that a powerful prayer, brothers? I know I needed to hear that today. How about you? Have a blessed weekend. – Bill Welte is the principle Freedom Fighter blogger and serves as President & CEO of America’s Keswick in Whiting, NJ

Team YOU: Psalm 97-99; Proverbs 17; Romans 16

Motivations: The world will never believe in a religion in which there is no power. A rationalized faith, a socialized church, and a moralized gospel may gain applause, but they awaken no conviction and win no converts. Samuel Chadwick

Practice to Remember: Level 1:Philippians 3:9-10; Level 2: Philippians 3:1-11

Powered Up:  Prayer doesn’t bring us into contact with the rationality of human existence but into accordance with eternal Reality! The great Reality of Redemption, and Redemption is the platform of prayer. Oswald Chambers