And yet, by Your Grace, I am unafraid.

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JM

Puritan Board Doctor
Found this during my morning devotion it's from a prayer titled, "Devotion at the Approach of Death."

Have mercy on me, O Lord, I fear your judgments, for they are just and true.

"The wages of sin is death," and my death is just and well deserved. I am a sinner, from the moment You breathed life into me until the day of my death; I am a child of Adam, doomed to die. My sin is always before me, now more than ever as I lie on my bed and ponder my life. O Father, how I have sinned against You and those around me! I am ashamed even to admit it. I sometimes try to minimize it to others and say, "I've lived a good life," but I know the truth. Every day of my life has been soilded with sin. I am afraid of dying. I fear the unknown; I fear losing hold on my life.

And yet, by Your grace, I am unafraid.

Your psalmist says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints," and the Holy Spirit cries out from heaven, "Blessed are [those] who die in the Lord." I cling to these words. Your Son, Jesus, my Lord, became man to take up my sins and my sinfulness in His own sinless humanity and to bury it all in His perfect death. He embraced me on His cross, and in Him I already am judged and crucified.

Grant me to trust this with all my heart!

From the Lutheran Book of Prayer
 
That was good brother. O that we would dwell on eternity more!


Thoughts On Death

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To debar death from our thoughts, and the future eternal world from our meditations—will neither render us immortal, nor afford us a triumphant dismissal from this into the eternal world—but must make our exit dreadful, and our latter end a scene of ineffable anguish. While, on the other hand, we never enjoy the pleasures of life, the sweets of society, and the endearments of our friends and families, with a better relish—than when serious thoughts of death and eternity predominate in our mind. We should study—

1. To have a practical belief in the future eternal states of both heaven and hell.

2. Not to be much elated with prosperity.

3. Not to be much dejected by adversity.

4. To more and more be weaned from the world, and to have our conversation more and more in heaven.

5. To have frequent meditations on death and eternity; and then, when death comes, we may be made, not only submissive to our dissolution—but long to depart, and be ravished in the prospect of our being forever with the Lord.

JAMES MEIKLE 1730-1799
 
Often I forget about the warning Edwards gives us, "Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail." This mornings devotional was important to me and much needed.

j
 
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