O ETERNAL and holy Jesus, who by death
hast overcome death, and by Thy passion
hast taken away its sting, and made it the
gate of heaven, and an entrance to felicity;
have mercy upon me now, and at the hour
of my death. Let Thy grace accompany me
all the days of my life, that, by a holy con-
versation, and a habitual performance of my
duty, I may wait for the coming of my Lord,
and be ready to enter in with Thee, at what-
ever hour Thou shalt come. Lord, let not
my death be in any sense unprovided, un-
timely, or hasty. Let my sense and under-
standing be preserved entire to the last of
my days; and grant that I may die the death
of the righteous, and my last end be like
his. Preserve me ever in the communion
and peace of Thy Church; and bless my
death-bed with a holy spiritual guide, with
the assistance and guard of Thy holy angels,
with a strong faith, a firm and humble hope,
a sincere repentance, a perfect charity, and
above all with the presence of Thy loving
kindness, which is better than life; that my
soul may rest in Thee, and by Thee be gra-
ciously received into Thy glorious kingdom,
Lord Jesus: to whom, with the Father, and
the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory,
world without end. Amen.
What once bothered us doesn't bother us anymore. What once activated our conscience doesn't seem to anymore. What we knew was outside of God’s boundaries, and therefore functionally outside of ours, lives inside our boundaries, and it doesn’t matter to us anymore. It is a scary place to be. The hard heart is a stony heart. It is not malleable anymore. It’s hard and resistant to change, no longer tender and responsive to the squeeze of the hands of the Spirit. There is evil in our hearts and in the acts of our hands, and we’re okay with it. Could there be a more dangerous place for a believer to be?
Paul David Tripp