Paradoxes

Paradoxes

O CHANGELESS GOD,
Under the conviction of Your Spirit I learn that
     the more I do, the worse I am,
     the more I know, the less I know,
     the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
     the more I love, the more there is to love.
O wretched man that I am!
O Lord,
     I have a wild heart,
     and cannot stand before You;
I am like a bird before a man,
How little I love Your truth and ways!
I neglect prayer,
     by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly,
     by knowing You have saved my soul.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite,
     who sins more safely because grace abounds,
     who tells his lusts that Christs blood cleanses them,
     who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved,
     who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily.
My mind is a bucket without a bottom,
     with no spiritual understanding,
     no desire for the Lords Day,
     ever learning but never reaching the truth,
     always at the gospel-well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition,
     with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
     so I forget easily lessons learned,
     and Your truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace.


Taken from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), p. 72.

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Soli Deo Gloria
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