A Blessed and Happy New Year!  A good place to start off this New Year is in prayer and meditation on how to best serve the Lord Jesus Christ in 2005 in all aspects of your Christian walk.  An excellent tool, in addition to your yearly reading through the Bible, is a daily devotional and other excellent books like Arthur Bennett's "The Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions" to encourage your prayer life. Make this year the most blessed for your good and God's glory by making use of these excellent tools He has provided to the praise of His glorious grace.  Visit our Devotions, Prayer and Recommended Reading pages for excellent recommendations as you get your New Year off on the right foot.  And now, may our Glorious God and Saviour bless your New Year with all of the joys and blessings of serving Him. 

The following is a selection from "Valley of Vision." 

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Incomprehensible, great, and glorious God,

I adore thee and abase myself.

I approach thee mindful that I am

less than nothing,

a creature worse than nothing.

My thoughts are not screened from thy gaze.

My secret sins blaze in the light of thy countenance.

Enable me to remember that blood which cleanseth

all sin,

to believe in that grace which subdues

all iniquities,

to resign myself to that agency which can

deliver me from the bondage of corruption

into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

Thou hast begun a good work in me

and canst alone continue and complete it.

Give me an increasing conviction of my tendency

to err,

and of my exposure to sin.

Help me to feel more of the purifying, softening

influence of religion,

its compassion, love, pity, courtesy,

and employ me as thy instrument

in blessing others.

Give me to distinguish

between the mere form of godliness and its power,

between life and a name to live,

between guile and truth,

between hypocrisy and a religion that will bear

thy eye.

If I am not right, set me right, keep me right;

And may I at last come to thy house in peace.

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