Daily Devotionals: (June 17th): A Prayer for Restoration

Reading: “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation.”—Psalm 51:12

O Lord, I come again this morning with a sense of estrangement. Leave me not in this state of distance and alienation. “O Lord, I beseech You, deliver my soul.” Snap these chains of earthliness that are still binding me to the dust, that, on the wings of faith, I may soar upwards and find rest and quietude where alone it can be found—in Your renewed love and favor. May past backslidings drive me more to Your grace. Nothing in myself, may I find and feel that my all in all is in You. Reveal to me my own emptiness and the overflowing fullness of Jesus. May I every day see more of His matchless excellencies, His incomparable loveliness, the sweets of His service, that I may never feel tempted to wander from His fold and carefully avoid all that would risk the forfeiture of that favor in which indeed is “life.”

Lord, let me know this day something of this happiness. Let me not be content with the name to live. Let religion be with me a real thing. Let it be everything—life-influencing, sin-subduing, self-renouncing. Let me diffuse all around me the happy glow of a spirit that feels at peace with God.

And now, Lord, what do I wait for? “My hope” for myself, my friends, and all for whom I ought to pray, “is in You.”

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

All this I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Adapted from the Rev. John McDuff, D.D., The Morning Watches, 1852.

John Ross Macduff was born at Bonhard, near Perth, on May 23, 1818. After studying at the University of Edinburgh, he became parish minister of Kettins, Forfarshire,  in 1842. In 1849 he moved to St. Madoes, Perthshire, and in 1855 to Sandyford, Glasgow. He received the degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1862, and from the University of New York about the same time. He retired from pastoral work in 1871, moved to Chislehurst, Kent where he died in 1887.