A Diary of Private Prayer - review

A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie is a series of written prayers for morning and evening. This was recommended to me by a friend and it has been wonderful. Among many evangelicals, written prayers aren't all that common, probably due to the fear that they will become heartless mantras that are chugged through. But I found that these prayers were stimulating and often times could better communicate my own own desires than I could. The book is cheap and small, the prayers are written in an older style of English (KJV English, written in 1949), but I really enjoyed the content. Here is a sampling:

Twenty-Fifth Day, Evening

Holy God, to whose service I long ago dedicated my soul and life, I grieve and lament before Thee that I am still so prone to sin and so little inclined to obedience:

* So much attached to the pleasures of sense, so negligent of things spiritual:
* So prompt to gratify my body, so slow to nourish my soul:
* So greedy for present delight, so indifferent to lasting blessedness:
* So fond of idleness, so indisposed for labour:
* So soon at play, so late at prayer:
* So brisk in the service of self, so slack in the service of others:
* So eager to get, so reluctant to give:
* So lofty in my profession, so low in my practice:
* So full of good intentions, so backward to fulfill them:
* So severe with my neighbours, so indulgent with myself:
* So eager to find fault, so resentful at being found fault with:
* So little able for great tasks, so discontented with small ones:
* So weak in adversity, so swollen and self-satisfied in prosperity:
* So helpless apart from Thee, and yet so little willing to be bound to Thee.

O merciful heart of God, grant me yet again Thy forgiveness. Hear my sorrowful tale and in Thy great mercy blot it out from the book of Thy remembrance. Give me faith so to lay hold of Thine own holiness and so to rejoice in the righteousness of Christ my Saviour that, resting on His merits rather than my own, I may more and more become conformed to His likeness, my will becoming one with his in obedience to Thine. All this I ask for His holy name's sake. Amen.