A PRAYER FOR KNOWING GOD'S LOVE

We are preaching through a series on prayer at Generations right now, but more importantly we are in a season of prayer as a church. My own personal prayer life has been enriched by the collection of Puritan prayers compiled in the book, The Valley of Vision. I wanted to begin offering some of these prayers for the edification of our church family and as a help to them in their personal prayer and communion with God. This prayer, in the book is titled, A Convert's First Prayer, but it is actually a wonderful prayer worth offering at any time in one's journey with Christ. It's really more of a prayer that God's grace would continually grip our hearts and that His great love for us in Christ would increasingly shape us. I have altered the original language, replacing the "thee's and thou's" for the sake of readability... This is my prayer today and I hope you'll make it yours:

MY FATHER,
I could never have sought my happiness in your love,
            unless you first loved me.
Your Spirit has encouraged me by grace to seek you,
            has made known to me your reconciliation in Jesus,
            has taught me to believe it,
            has helped me to take you for my God and portion.

May he grant me to grow in the knowledge and experience of your love,
            and walk in it all the way to glory.
Blessed for ever be your fatherly affection,
            which chose me to be one of your children
            by faith in Jesus:
I thank you for giving me the desire to live as such.
In Jesus, my brother, I have my new birth,
                                             every restraining power,
                                             every renewing grace.
It is by your Spirit that I call you Father,
            believe in you, love you;
Strengthen me inwardly for every purpose of my Christian life;
Let the Spirit continually reveal to me my interest in Christ,
            and open to me the riches of your love in him;
May he abide in me that I may know my union with Jesus,
            and enter into constant fellowship with him;
By the Spirit may I daily live to you,
            rejoice in your love,
            find it the same to me as to your Son,
            and become rooted and grounded in it as a house on rock;
I know but little -
            increase my knowledge of your love in Jesus,
            keep me pressing forward for clearer discoveries of it,
            so that I may find its eternal fullness;
Magnify your love to me according to its greatness,
            and not according to my deserts or prayers,
            and whatever increase you give, let it draw out greater love for you.
                                                          (The Valley of Vision, A Convert's First Prayer, p. 53)