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TOPIC: MacDuff, John - Gates of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 07 Day 07
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7th Morning—OUR FATHER
"Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name." Matt. 6:9
O Lord, God Almighty, the God of my life and the length of my days, I come to You this morning, seeking to realize You in Your paternal character. I bless You if I am able to utter that gospel word—that gospel name—"My Father;" if I am able to feel that the Gates of prayer are the gates leading to a Father's house, a Father's presence and love. I bless You that I have the warrant of Your adorable Son in appropriating the words "My Father and your Father, my God and your God;" that I have His own encouraging assurance "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him." I would avail myself of the privilege. I would bring all my needs and sins, my difficulties and trials and perplexities, and pour them into the loving ear of a most loving Parent. Deliver me from bondage-worship and bondage-fear, and enable me with the sweet confidence of Your children to say "Abba! Father."
Lord, how unworthy have I proved myself of this holy relationship. If You have been a Father, where has been Your honor? If You have been a Master, where has been Your fear? Thus unfaithful and unfilial, You might justly have disowned and disinherited me—left me an alien and an outcast from Your presence, and refused forever to "set me among the children." But adored be Your name, O Father-God, that in the midst of deserved wrath, You have remembered and are still remembering, mercy. Your hand of love and forgiveness and pity is stretched out still. Your paternal voice is still heard, "Return, you backsliding children." Although often, by reason of my own truant wanderings, I have been ready to perish for hunger, there is bread enough still in my Father's house and to spare. Lord, evermore, and more and more, give me this bread of life! Graciously forgive and forget the past, and arm me with Your grace for the future. Give me childlike repentance—childlike faith, childlike obedience. Enable me to lean with calm trustfulness on You. Prevent me from inflicting any wound on my own conscience that would alienate me from Your favor. Keep me from living as if this world were my final rest, and home, and portion. May I seek, rather, to live from day to day as one whose true home is above—as if on the threshold of the Father's house with its many mansions, and ready for the summons "Come up here."
As a child, may I be jealous of Your honor. May I seek to make manifest the reality of my filial relationship, by meekness and gentleness, by obedience and love. Give me that charity which is the bond of perfectness. Put a sanctified restraint on my thoughts. Preserve me from uttering unkind words, or entertaining ungenerous suspicions. May I seek to hold the character and reputation of others, sacred as my own.
O You who does compassionate, even "like as a father pities his children," do pity and commiserate all the members of suffering humanity, especially those who are of the household of faith. Lord, there are many sorrows no human sympathy can reach. There is nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. But You can gauge the depth of all. Impart to Your tried children, everlasting consolation and good hope through grace. Let them trust a Father's love, a Father's hand, a Father's heart, a Father's rod; regarding Your dealings as needful discipline; and honoring You by simple, confiding, unreserved submission. Prepare the dying for death. If it be Your holy will, bring back the shadow on life's dial, and utter the word "You shall live and not die."
Bless all my beloved friends near or at a distance. Let them, too, become Your own children by adoption—exulting in the fullness and beneficence of Your paternal love—listening to Your voice amid all the changes of this changeful scene, "I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters."
Prosper every missionary effort. Blessed be Your name, the day has come, when "neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, do men worship the Father;" but that gracious Fatherhood extends to every region and every tongue. Give to all nations peace and concord, that the furrows of the earth may be prepared for the insertion of the divine seed. Let Your ministers be diligent sowers and abundant reapers—baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Give greater unity of effort in Your cause. May this be, more and more, the motto and watchword of all Christians and all Churches—"Doubtless You are our Father."
Be with me throughout this day. As the Gates of the morning are now opening, may I realize Your blessing, and carry it along with me into all my duties. Hear me, Gracious Father, for the sake of Your dear Son, Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior. Amen.
7th Evening—AN IMMUTABLE SAVIOR
"Jesus Christ—the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Heb. 13:8
O God, who has again brought me in peace and safety to the close of another day, I bow my knees this night at the throne of the heavenly grace; beseeching You, before I retire to rest, to give me Your blessing. It is in the name of Him who holds in His hand the Key and the Gates of Prayer—who opens and no man shuts—that I can alone venture to come into Your presence. I rejoice to think that He has wrought out and brought in an everlasting righteousness—that He has thrown the luster of a sublime vindication over every requirement of Your law. I rejoice especially in His unchanging faithfulness. While recalling, with devout gratitude and thankfulness, all He did and taught and suffered on earth; how oftentimes He delighted to minister to the sick, and support the tempted, and heal the broken-hearted, and offer peace and rest to the weary and heavy laden—it is my comfort to feel assured, that, though now exalted at Your right hand, He still retains, in His glorified humanity, the unchanged human heart with its yearning love and sympathies; that, amid all other vicissitudes, there is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning," in Him. His name and memorial continues to this hour what it was, when He trod, a Pilgrim wanderer, this valley of tears—"Jesus Christ—the same yesterday, today, and forever."
O God, before the Gates of another evening be closed, and I again lie down to sleep, grant me the forgiveness of all the day's sins, of thought, word, and deed—of omission and commission. Blot them out of the book of Your remembrance; sprinkle anew the lintels and door-posts of my heart with the covenant token; hide me anew in the clefts of the Smitten Rock; seal to me anew the blessed sense of reconciliation through the blood of the cross. And while I look to this immutable Savior—this Rock of Ages—for pardon and peace, give me grace that I may be more and more assimilated to His holy image, and more and more molded in conformity to His holy will. Impart to me His meekness, His humility, His gentleness, His forgiveness of injuries—His tender consideration for others; that patience under provocation which made Him stand as a Lamb silent before His shearers; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judges righteously. Make me more lowly and loving—more resigned and submissive. May I live under the power of renewed affections. Influenced and guided by lofty principle, may my eye be single, that my whole body may be full of light. Raise me above all fretting cares and timid fears, above all morbid anxieties and solicitudes about trifles. Let me have the fear of God and no other fear. When heart and flesh faint and fail, may I triumph in the immutability of Him who has promised to be the strength of His people's heart, and their portion forever.
Extend Your cause and kingdom everywhere. How long shall the wicked triumph? save Your people, bless Your inheritance; feed them also, and lift them up forever. I would rejoice in the thought, that Your gospel is the power of God unto salvation—that as such, under its blessed instrumentality, every mountain of unbelief and error will in due time become a plain before the true Zerubbabel. Do demonstrate now, as in the previous history of Your Church, that it is not the vaunted armor of earth's great ones, but the sling of faith and the few pebbles from the running brook of truth, which will conquer the world's unbelief. Bring in Your ancient people with the fullness of the Gentile nations. Have respect unto Your covenant—the oath which You did swear unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Arise, O Lord, and plead Your own cause.
Bless all related to me by ties of kindred or affection. The Lord watch between us when we are absent one from another. May they be among the beloved of the Lord who dwell safely—may the joy of the Lord be their strength.
Compassionate the case of poor afflicted ones. When their hearts are overwhelmed, O unchanging Savior-God, lead them to Yourself—the Rock that is higher than they. Whatever be the cause of their trials, may they be enabled, in unmurmuring, uncomplaining submission to say, "Even so, Father!" In the midst of impaired health, and thwarted schemes, and disappointed hopes, and broken hearts, and voices hushed in death, may it be theirs exultingly to exclaim, as they look to One who survives all blanks and losses, "They shall perish, but You remain; as a vesture shall You fold them up, and they shall be changed; but YOU are the same, and Your years shall not fail."
These, and every needed blessing, for myself and for others, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior. Amen.