Give us a greater hunger, Lord, than we have ever known.
Help us to wait in one accord until Your pow’r is shown.
Keep us Your children on our knees, beseeching You with mighty pleas
Till floods of blessing like the seas sweep over all Your own.

Give us a sense of urgency that will not be denied.
Give such desire Your work to see, till ease we cast aside.
Give us soul-hunger and soul-thirst, till hearts with longing almost burst,
Till we could wish ourselves accursed if souls but reach Your side!

Lord, now begin Your mighty work; make bare Your holy arm.
0 God, forbid that we should shirk, or to this age conform!
Reveal Your Spirit’s mighty pow’r;
oh, come upon Your church this hour!
By Your own working, Lord, empow’r, till Satan’s forts we storm.

Help each of us to do our part; 0 Lord, may we not fail.
Give clearest guidance to each heart, till highest mounts we scale.
Use us however You may choose; we would no burden, Lord, refuse;
But get us, Lord, where You can use and mightily prevail.

Oh, send the promised Holy Ghost upon us as we kneel.
We need His holy working most, till men conviction feel.
Lord, this is still the day of grace; have mercy on our dying race.
Revival send to every place; Your miracle reveal.

-Wesley L. Duewel

All my life, I’ve critiqued prayers.

In third grade Sunday school class, I giggled when the Schroeder boy asked God for a new bicycle. We all giggled, knowing we weren’t supposed to pray for things like that. We were supposed to pray for the missionaries and our soldiers in Vietnam.

In my teens, I rolled my eyes at every “thee” and “thou.” Too flowery and old-fashioned for me. And our preacher’s voice in prayer at the beginning of a sermon? Too dramatic, too rehearsed, with the appropriate octavelong drop beseeching his “Gawd.”

Soon, my giggles and peeves turned to cynicism. No one was immune, not the struggling dieter who wanted God to keep her from overeating, nor the group in a prayer meeting that ticked off a review of sick relatives.

I began sitting through prayer meetings, biting my lip to keep from making sarcastic remarks about prayer lists — numbered requests to check off when things turned out the way we wanted so everyone could agree, “Isn’t God good?” Sometimes, I’d draw my mouth into a thin line to keep from sneering at all the other devices I wrote off as gimmicks designed to make us feel God would somehow hear us better.

Then in prayer group one morning, everything stopped, like the drop of the curtain on a theater stage, bringing the drama to its muffled halt. Only not in the room, not in the eight women in our prayer circle. In me.

Discreetly tucked away in a corner, where I had disentangled myself from what I labeled formula and shallow language, I heard my name.

“Barbara, would you lead us in prayer?”

Dear Lord, as this new year is born
I give it to Thy hand,
Content to walk by faith what paths
I cannot understand.

Whatever coming days may bring
Of bitter loss, or gain,
Or every crown of happiness;
Should sorrow come, or pain,

Or, Lord, if all unknown to me
Thine angel hovers near
To bear me to that farther shore
Before another year,

It matters not my hand in Thine,
Thy light upon my face,
Thy boundless strength when I am week,
Thy love and saving grace!

I only ask, loose not my hand,
Grip fast my soul, and be
My guiding light upon the path
Till, blind no more, I see!

–Martha Snell Nicholson