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TOPIC: MacDuff, John - Gates of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 17 Day 17
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17th Morning—THE GREAT PROPITIATION
"Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." Rom. 3:25
Most Blessed God, Father of all mercies and God of all grace, do hear in heaven Your dwelling-place these my morning supplications. When You hear forgive, and grant me an answer in peace.
You have mercifully guarded me during the unconscious hours of slumber—permitting me to lie down in sleep and to awake in safety. And now that I am about to enter on the duties and engagements—it may be the temptations and trials—of a new day, I would invoke Your presence. Give me Your benediction and blessing. If You are for me, who can be against me? I will go in the strength of the Lord God, making mention of Your righteousness.
Blessed be Your name for the Great Propitiation—that I can look away from myself, and my own guilty doings, to Him who has done all, and suffered all, and procured all for me. Oh sprinkle the lintels and door-posts of my heart with the covenant token. Countless multitudes have already washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and are now before Your Throne the trophies and monuments of redeeming grace and love. To His cross I desire anew, in simple faith, to look—to the horns of that bloodstained altar I desire anew to cling. I have no other Savior, and blessed be Your name, need no other. Gracious Redeemer, You are able to save and willing to save to the uttermost. You have a balm for every wound; an antidote for every sorrow. To whom can I go but unto You, You have the words of eternal life.
May I be enabled, this day, to bear about with me the dying of the Lord Jesus. May that blood of sprinkling purge my conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Give the quickening energy of Your Holy Spirit, to disarm the power of temptation—to dethrone self—to deliver from the seductive influences of the world. Keep me from the intoxication of success—the pride and alienation of prosperity. Keep me from undue depression and guilty murmuring in adversity. Forbid that I should ever take encouragement to sin from abounding grace—but be led, rather, thus to judge, that if one died for all, then all were dead, and in that He died, He died that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. Impart to me increasing aspirations after that holiness of heart and life without which no man can see the Lord. Thus continuing, from day to day, in the enjoyment of Your fear and favor, when I come to die, may I be enabled to fall asleep in Jesus—in the blissful hope of a glorious immortality.
Let every blessing I ask for myself, be largely bestowed on all near and dear to me. Seal, to each of them, a saving interest in the blessings of the everlasting covenant. As the beloved of the Lord may they dwell safely. Let not one be found lacking on the day when You make up Your jewels.
Speed the gospel through the nations of the earth. Give Your faithful servants everywhere grace to proclaim, in all its fullness, Your own glorious message—the only remedy for a ruined world—peace through the blood of the cross. Arise, Lord, and plead Your own cause. Hasten the day, when the Prince of Peace shall be welcomed to the Throne of universal empire, and when all the ends of the world shall see the salvation of our God. Bless all Your churches at home. Imbue Your ministering servants with the healthful spirit of Your grace. Restore the lost; reclaim the backslider; comfort the mourner; shield the tempted; support the sick; sustain the dying. Bless the young. Enable them to lay the green ears of early consecration on Your holy altar, and to cry, "My Father, You shall be the guide of our youth." Bless manhood in its prime. May the best energies of soul and body be willingly surrendered to Your service. Bless old age. May the hoary head be a crown of glory, found in the way of righteousness.
I ask these and all other needed blessings in the name of Him whom You hear always; who has loved me, and washed me from my sins in His own precious blood; Jesus Christ—my only Lord and Savior. Amen.
17th Evening—VICTORY OVER DEATH
"O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. 15:55-57
O God, I desire, as the Gates of the evening are again closing around me, to draw near into Your gracious presence, adoring You as the God of my life, in whose hands is the breath of every living thing. You have watched over me during another day—protecting me from danger, guarding me from temptation, sustaining me with the blessings of Your goodness. I thank You for this great gift of being—that I am still this night among the living to praise You, while others have slept the sleep of death.
You are ever giving impressive intimations and remembrances of our frailty and mortality. As for man his days are as grass—as the flower of the field so he flourishes. The wind passes over it and it is gone, and the place that once knew it knows it no more. I bless You that as by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead. Adored be Your name, that we can look, through the bars of the grave, on hopes fall of immortality, and hear the voice of the divine Redeemer saying, "Fear not; I am he who lives and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the grave and of death,"—"I am the resurrection and the life, he who lives and believes on me shall never die." I bless You that in His cross and passion victory has been obtained over the King of terrors; that to all His true people the portals of death have been transformed into the gate of heaven, and that in His resurrection they have the pledge of their own. Grant me now, O God, a saving interest in all those spiritual blessings He died to purchase, and which He is exalted to bestow; that thus I may be enabled to look forward with calmness and fortitude to the hour of departure, whenever and wherever You see fit to call me hence. May I be so living in near and conscious fellowship with Him, that when the summons of death comes, it may be to me like an angel whispering—"The Master has come, and calls for you."
While I bear about with me continually the dying of the Lord Jesus, may the life also of Jesus be made manifest in my mortal flesh. May it be my habitual aspiration, that my character be a reflection of His—in its gentleness and meekness—its purity and unselfishness—its benevolence and sympathy. In life, doing His will and imbibing His spirit; in death, ready to use His words of filial trust and self-surrender, "Father, into Your hand I commend my spirit."
I pray for any who may be living unready for the great change—lulling themselves in self-security, or risking their hopes for eternity on a deathbed repentance. Let them no longer remain in a state of guilt and danger; but lead them to know, in this their day, the things that belong to their peace, before they are forever hidden from their eyes.
Bless all near and dear to me. May they be united to You and to one another, in the bonds of the everlasting covenant. May their lives now be hidden with Christ in God, that when their last summons also comes, they may have nothing to do but to die, and to wake up in glory everlasting.
Look in great kindness on all who are in any way afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate. May those who are mourning their loved and lost, be enabled to sorrow, not as others who have no hope—for if they believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, those also who sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him. We pray for those who are drawing near to the gates of death. May the unwavering eye of faith be directed to death's great Abolisher. In Him, may they see the last enemy vanquished and the grave spoiled. Let them plead Your promise with unfaltering hope, "O death, I will be your plagues—O grave, I will be your destruction."
Pity a fallen world, still under the ghastly dominion of sin and death. Hasten the time when its ashen robes shall be laid aside. Destroy the kingdom of Satan, which is the kingdom of disorder, and set up the kingdom of Christ, which is the kingdom of peace. Bless Your Church everywhere. May the anointing oil, poured on her great Head, flow down to the skirts of her garments. Rouse all slumbering and lifeless churches with Your own summons—"Awake, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life"—"Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain which are ready to die." Oh give us all, as individual believers, grace to be up and doing, cultivating a wakeful vigilance—living dying lives—remembering, that as death leaves us, so will judgment and eternity find us, and that as the tree falls, so must it lie.
Watch over me, this night, during the unconscious hours of slumber. Grant me the sleep of Your beloved; and when I awake, may I be still with You. And all I ask is for the Redeemer's sake. Amen.