"My times are in Your hand!" Psalm 31:15
Firmly believing that my times are in God's hand, I here submit
myself and all my affairs for the ensuing year, to the wise and
gracious disposal of God's divine providence. Whether God appoints
for me . . .
health or sickness,
peace or trouble,
comforts or crosses,
life or death,
may His holy will be done!
All my time, strength, and service, I devote to the honor of the
Lord Jesus, and even my common actions. It is my earnest
expectation, hope, and desire, my constant aim and endeavor, that
Jesus Christ may be magnified in me.
In everything I have to do, my entire dependence is upon Jesus
Christ for strength. And whatever I do in word or deed, I desire
to do all in His name, to make Him my Alpha and Omega. I have
all from Him and I would use all for Him.
If this should prove a year of
affliction, a sorrowful
year to me, I will fetch all my supports and comforts from the
Lord Jesus and stay myself upon Him, His everlasting consolations,
and the good hope I have in Him through grace.
And if it should be my
dying year, then my times are
in the hand of the Lord Jesus. And with a humble reliance
upon His mediation, I would venture into the eternal world looking
for the blessed hope. Dying as well as living, Jesus Christ will,
I trust, be gain and advantage to me.
Oh, that the grace of God may be sufficient for me, to keep me
always in a humble sense of my own unworthiness, weakness, folly, and
infirmity, together with a humble dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ
for daily grace and strength.