A Prayer of Repentance

O Father in heaven, who didst fashion my limbs to serve Thee and my soul to follow hard after Thee, with sorrow and contrition of heart I acknowledge before Thee the faults and failures of the day that is now past. Too long, O Father, have I tried thy patience; too often have I betrayed the sacred trust Thou hast given me to keep; yet Thou art still willing that I should come to Thee in lowliness of heart, as now I do, beseeching Thee to drown my transgressions in the sea of Thine own infinite love.

My failure to be true even to my own accepted standards:
My self-deception in the face of temptation:
My choosing of the worse when I know the better:
O Lord, forgive.
My failure to apply to myself the standards of conduct I
I demand of others:
My blindness to the suffering of others and my slowness
to be taught by my own:
My complacence towards wrongs that do not touch my
own case and my over-sensitiveness to those that do:
My slowness to see the good in my fellows and to see the
the evil in myself:
My hardness of heart towards my neighbours' faults and
my readiness to make allowance for my own:
My unwillingness to believe that Thou hast called me to a
small work and my brother to a great one:
O Lord, forgive.

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and give me the strength of a willing spirit. Amen.

Taken from: John Baillie, "Second Day, Evening," A Diary of Private Prayer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), 15.