Daily Devotionals: (May 21st): Thanksgiving in Mercies

Reading: “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits towards me?”—Psalm 116:12

O God, I adore You as the Author and Giver of every good and every perfect gift. You are daily loading me with Your benefits. Every returning morning brings with it fresh causes for gratitude—new material for praise. I bless You for Your temporal bounties—“How great has been the sum of them!” While others have been pining in poverty, or wasted by sickness, or racked in pain, or left friendless and penniless, You have been making showers of blessing to fall around my dwelling. I laid me down last night and slept. I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.

I might never have seen the morning light. Mine might have been the midnight summons to meet a God in whose righteous presence I was all unfit and unprepared to stand. And yet I am again spared, a monument of Your goodness. Oh, enkindle a flame of undying gratitude to You, on the clay-cold altar of my heart. I mourn and lament that I am so little and so feebly affected by the magnitude of Your mercies, and especially by the riches of Your grace and love manifested in Jesus—that my affections are so little alive to the incalculable obligation under which I am laid to Him who has “loved me with an everlasting love.”

I am doubly Yours, Lord. Creation and redemption combine in claiming all I am, and all I have, for You and Your service. Take me, O Lord, and use me for Your glory. In the name of my blessed Redeemer, 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.

Daily Devotionals: (May 17th): Prayer of Thanksgiving for God’s Mercy

Reading: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”—2 Corinthians 9:15

O eternal Lord, whose nature and whose name is love, I bless You that I am again invited into Your presence. What am I, that I should be permitted to speak to the infinite God! I might have been left through eternity a monument of Your righteous vengeance. I might have known You only as “the consuming fire.” But “Your ways are not as man’s ways”; mercy is remembered when wrath might have come upon me.

I desire to begin this day, blessing and praising You for “Your unspeakable gift,” Jesus the Son of Your love. Adored be your name, that the guilt of my sin, which the holiness of Your law could not permit otherwise to be cancelled, has to Him been transferred—that, as the scape-goat of His people, He has borne the mighty load into the land of oblivion, never more to be remembered. May I be enabled to show forth my lively gratitude to You for this wondrous token of Your Love, not only by lip homage, but by heart and life devotion. Sanctify and seal me in body, soul and spirit; and present me at last “faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy.”

O my God, I rejoice to know that my interests for time and eternity are confided to Your keeping. Though often “wonderful in counsel,” You are ever “excellent in working.” You are “God only wise”—“righteous in all Your ways, and holy in all Your works.” I commit my way and my doings unto You whose mercy has saved me, 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.

Daily Devotionals: (May 21st): Thanksgiving in Mercies

Reading: “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits towards me?”—Psalm 116:12

O God, I adore You as the Author and Giver of every good and every perfect gift. You are daily loading me with Your benefits. Every returning morning brings with it fresh causes for gratitude—new material for praise. I bless You for Your temporal bounties—“How great has been the sum of them!” While others have been pining in poverty, or wasted by sickness, or racked in pain, or left friendless and penniless, You have been making showers of blessing to fall around my dwelling. I laid me down last night and slept. I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.

I might never have seen the morning light. Mine might have been the midnight summons to meet a God in whose righteous presence I was all unfit and unprepared to stand. And yet I am again spared, a monument of Your goodness. Oh, enkindle a flame of undying gratitude to You, on the clay-cold altar of my heart. I mourn and lament that I am so little and so feebly affected by the magnitude of Your mercies, and especially by the riches of Your grace and love manifested in Jesus—that my affections are so little alive to the incalculable obligation under which I am laid to Him who has “loved me with an everlasting love.”

I am doubly Yours, Lord. Creation and redemption combine in claiming all I am, and all I have, for You and Your service. Take me, O Lord, and use me for Your glory. In the name of my blessed Redeemer, 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.

Daily Devotionals: (May 17th): Prayer of Thanksgiving for God’s Mercy

Reading: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”—2 Corinthians 9:15

O eternal Lord, whose nature and whose name is love, I bless You that I am again invited into Your presence. What am I, that I should be permitted to speak to the infinite God! I might have been left through eternity a monument of Your righteous vengeance. I might have known You only as “the consuming fire.” But “Your ways are not as man’s ways”; mercy is remembered when wrath might have come upon me.

I desire to begin this day, blessing and praising You for “Your unspeakable gift,” Jesus the Son of Your love. Adored be your name, that the guilt of my sin, which the holiness of Your law could not permit otherwise to be cancelled, has to Him been transferred—that, as the scape-goat of His people, He has borne the mighty load into the land of oblivion, never more to be remembered. May I be enabled to show forth my lively gratitude to You for this wondrous token of Your Love, not only by lip homage, but by heart and life devotion. Sanctify and seal me in body, soul and spirit; and present me at last “faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy.”

O my God, I rejoice to know that my interests for time and eternity are confided to Your keeping. Though often “wonderful in counsel,” You are ever “excellent in working.” You are “God only wise”—“righteous in all Your ways, and holy in all Your works.” I commit my way and my doings unto You whose mercy has saved me, 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.