Reading: “I die daily.”—1 Corinthians 15:31

Lord, You know my besetting sin, the plague of my heart, which so often leads to a guilty estrangement. Lord, cut down this root of bitterness. Let me nail it to Your cross. Let me be ever on the watchtower, ready to resist the first assault of the enemy. Let it be to me at once a precept and a promise: “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” Oh show me that my strength to repel temptation is in Jesus alone. Put me in the cleft of the rock when the hurricane is passing by. May I be as willing to surrender all for my Saviour—my heart sins and life sins—as He willingly surrendered His all for me. May I be enabled to say, “Lord, I am Yours.”

Every idol I utterly abolish. Save me, blessed Saviour from a deceitful heart and a seductive world. Let me see more and more the beauties of holiness. Let me ever be basking in the rays of Your love, approaching nearer and nearer You, the “Sun of my soul.” May Your loveliness and glory eclipse all created beams and may I look forward with bounding heart to that time when all that helps to lighten up earth’s pathway shall be obscured in the shadow of death, and I shall be ushered into the glories of that better and brighter scene, where “the sun shall no more go down … where the Lord my God shall be my everlasting light.”

And what I ask for myself, I desire in behalf of those near and dear to me. “Sanctify them wholly.” May they, too, crucify sin and “die daily.” May this be the happy history of all of us: “Being made free from sin, and having become the servants of God, we have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” Amen.