A Prayer For Contentment

I often use the book, Valley of Vision during my Bible reading/prayer time. This little book is helpful in that it gives me much to meditate on and quite honestly is continually used by God to draw me deeper into communion with Him and is often what I need to pray through. Today I would like to share one of those prayers that just left me thinking and agonizing over with God in my spirit.

Heavenly Father,
If I should suffer need, and go unclothed,and be in poverty, make my heart prize thy love, know it, be constrained by it, though I be denied all blessings. It is thy mercy to afflict and try me with wants, for by these trials I see my sins, and desire severance from them. Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, temptations, if I can thereby feel sin as the greatest evil. and be delivered from it with gratitude to thee, acknowledging this is the highest testimony of thy love. When thy Son, Jesus, came into my soul instead of sin, he became more dear to me than sin had formerly been; his kindly rule replaced sins tyranny. Teach me to believe that if ever I would have any sin subdued I must not only labor to overcome it, but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it, and he must become to me more than vile lust had been; that his sweetness, power, life may be there. Thus I must seek a grace from him contrary to sin, but must not claim it apart from himself. When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but in Christ I am reconciled and live; that in myself I find insufficiency and no rest, but in Christ there is satisfaction and peace; that in myself I am feeble and unable to do good, but in Christ I have ability to do all things. Though now I have his graces in part, I shall shortly have them perfectly in that state where thou wilt show thyself fully reconciled, and alone sufficient, efficient, loving me completely, with sin abolished. O Lord, hasten that day.