Father Hear Your Children

In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him.: God is a refuge for us. Selah. … God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God. Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work. Psalm 62:7, 8, 11, 12

Every time I listen to this song it becomes my prayer and I “pray” (replay) it over and over because I love its simplicity, directness, and child-like trust and acceptance of the Solution.

The beautiful thing is that as you hear it you, too, can pray this prayer and allow your Father, God, to take you just as you are and make you pure. His mercy is sure.

Father, hear Your children call
Humbly at Your feet we fall
Prodigals, confessing all
To the cross we bring our blame
All our life-long sin and shame
Penitent, we breathe Your name
Penitent, we breathe Your name

By Your love, by Your grace
By the blood of Jesus wash our sins away
Make us new today
Hear us as we pray

We’re blind, but pray for eyes to see
Where we’re bound, Lord make us free
Stained, we plead for purity
Where we’re sick, apply Your cure
Take our guilt and make us pure
For Your mercy Lord, is sure
For Your mercy Lord, is sure

Lord, we have no other place to go
Only You can heal the wounding of our soul
Let forgiveness flow
Let forgiveness flow

Traditional Hymn, Public Domain
Additional Lyrics by Steve Green

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Psalm CVII (No. 1 & 2)

No. 1

THANK and praise Jehovah’s name
For his mercies, firm and sure,
For eternity the same
To eternity, endure
Let the ransom’d thus rejoice,
Gather’d out of every land,
As the people of his choice;
Pluck’d from the destroyer’s hand.

In the wilderness astray,
Hither, thither, while they roam,
Hungry, fainting by the way,
Far from refuge, shelter, home: —

Then unto the Lord they cry,
He inclines a gracious ear,
Sends deliverance from on high,
Rescues them from all their fear.

To a pleasant land He brings
Where the vine and olive grow,
Where from flowery hills the springs,
Through luxuriant valleys flow.

O that men would praise the Lord
For his goodness to their race;
For the wonders of his word,
And the riches of his grace!

 

No. 2

THEY that mourn in dungeon-gloom,
Bound in iron and despair,
Sentenced to a heavier doom
Than the pangs they suffer there; —

Foes and rebels once to God,
They disdain’d his high controul;
Now they feel his fiery rod
Striking terrors through their soul,

Wrung with agony they fall
To the dust, and gazing round,
Call for help; —in vain they call,
Help, nor hope, nor friend are found.

Then unto the Lord they cry,
He inclines a gracious ear,
Sends deliverance from on high,
Rescues them from all their fear.

He restores their forfeit-breath,
Breaks in twain their gates of brass;
From the bands and grasp of death,
Forth to liberty they pass.

O that men would praise the Lord,
For his goodness to their race;
For the wonders of his word,
And the riches of his grace!

Source: Songs of Zion, Imitations of Psalms by James Montgomery.

A Heart that Forgives

His hand was thrust out to shake mine.

“Germany was a land in ruins, cities of ashes and rubble, but more terrifying still, minds and hearts of ashes. Just to cross the border was to feel the great weight that hung over the land.

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there–the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” (The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom)