Oh, Lord, I am prone to depart from you and give into lukewarmness and indifference when I ought to have holy zeal. My temptations are many. I often yield to them. I have no strength of my own to resist them. I beseech you, therefore, oh my God, to be merciful to me, a sinner. Incline and enable me to come to Jesus Christ, weary and heavy laden as I am, to find rest in Him. Teach me my own guilt and ruin, and help me to rely on His blood and build all my hopes on His righteousness. Oh, grant that being grafted in Christ, I may live to Him. Isaac Watts.

This is our comfort and our confidence that God accepts us because He accepts His beloved. And when he shall cease to love Christ, he shall cease to love the members of Christ. This is our comfort in dejection for sin. We are so and so indeed, but Christ is the chosen servant of God in whom He delights, and delights in us in Him. It is no matter what we are in ourselves, but what we are in Christ when we are once in Him and continue in Him. God loves us with that inseparable love with which He loves His own son. Richard Sibbes.