Dear God, I am a Vile, Wretched, Monster of Iniquity!

Dear God,

Of late, my heart has wandered far from where it once was in it’s affections towards You. In my life of holiness and in my profession of faith in Christ, I am utterly in shame. Shamed for my apathy. Shamed for my lackadaisical attitude over the watching of my soul.

I feel my conscience to be seared at times, unfeeling and disappearing in the face of temptations and afflictions. I gave much way to my sin and the rebellion of my flesh that I have almost forgotten what it means to weep and be broken before You. I have, at a moment, forgotten what it means to fear You, God and grieve in anguish for my sin.

I despise myself in dust and ashes!

Oh, I have forgotten how it is to depend upon you, oh God! I remembered not your faithfulness, the steadfastness of Your love and the power of Your grace. Instead I went headlong running in a desert of forgetfulness. The wilderness of darkness and sin. My heart was held captive by the things of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. I gloried in my own strength. I gloried in my own selfish and temporal joys. I drowned myself in my lusts and sought to satisfy my sin like I never have before, all the while thinking that I will repent and find my way back to you?

What a despicable and vile, monster of iniquity I am! It’s not that I willfully thought that grace was a license for sin. But Lord, I didn’t give a care at all about grace, about the power of your Word and Spirit that works in us a life and heart of holiness. Oh, what grave rebellion I have done before You!

And yet Lord You have allowed me to live another day?

And yet You have given me a new opportunity to give myself in repentance back to You?

And though as vile and despicable as I am, still you see not my sin, you see not the darkness that I wasted my life and time in those hours, but you see the perfection of Your Son?

Instead of revealing your wrath against me in the exercise of Your justice, holiness and hatred against sin, You still see me as your child?

How is it Lord, that You would still even care to bring to bear the full weight of these things before my heart after all that I have done against You and You alone? How is it Lord, that after all that I thought, said and did, still by the Holy Spirit, You would bother to convict me of my sin and reveal to me the depth of the bloody blot darkness that I dwelt in?

And now Lord, I finally am beginning to understand the weight of the words of your blessed saint of time past:

“We are hidden in Christ. God seeks for us; and when at last He discovers us in our hiding-place, it is not we that He finds, but Christ; so complete is the exchange of persons, so perfect and so glorious the disguise. Yet it is not a disguise which shall ever be taken off, nor of which shall have cause to be ashamed. It remains ours for ever. It is an everlasting righteousness.”—Horatius Bonar, Everlasting Righteousness, p. 79-90

I fall in grief, in anguish lost
in darkness of my sin
Pardon shines upon the Cross
for one’s that who are His.

How can it be that He would still
count and see me as His son
Died He for me, a wretched man
accepted in the Beloved One?

Divine operation of Grace and Truth
I weep before mine Lord!
Tremendous grace in love pursued
confidence through His True infallible Word!

Dear heavenly, gracious Father, in the name of Thy dear Son I pray these things. Please show yourself to be mighty. As your grace was perfected in the weakness of Paul of old, do so as well in mine weakness. For dear God, my God, I am weak, terribly weak. And I confess that I have denied my weakness in the time of my rebellion toward you as I fell into sin. But now Lord, I again confess my utter helplessness. I need Thee every hour, my holy God. I need Thee in every moment, reminding me of the infiniteness of Your love and mercy, the reassuring love of the Truth of Your Word.

Please keep me in the way of holiness. Continue to work in me a love and a sovereign delight in You that I would never again prefer the things of this world above You.

You, oh Lord, are my sovereign Joy.

Amen.