The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"A Trail of Blood"
Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ certainly view prayer in terms of solemn responsibility.
"Pray without ceasing" (I Thessalonians 5:17).
"Men ought always to pray" (Luke 18:1).
Our Heavenly Father commands that we pray, constituting fellowship with Him in the "ought" of duty. However, a Biblical consideration of prayer reveals that fellowship with God must first be considered in terms of a privilege made possible by the most costly of gifts:
"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Hebrews 10:19-22).
The Lord Jesus paved the path to the throne of grace by His suffering, sorrow, sacrifice, and death on the cross of Calvary. There, He cried out in agonized forsakenness - "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" - making possible our confident access to God - "Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him" (Matthew 27:46; Ephesians 3:11-12). Yes, the simplest utterance of prayer finds its way to the Father because He poured out His wrath against the Beloved Son who was "made to be sin" for us" (II Corinthians 5:21).
A trail of Blood marks the path
leading to the throne,
where God receives the trusting heart
approaching by His Son.
Without the cross, there could not be
this access freely known.
Without such sorrow, pain, and loss,
we'd have nowhere to go.
Yes, every prayer flows to the Throne
on flood tides of Christ's blood.
We come with grateful, trusting hope,
in wonder of such love…
A trail of Blood marks the path leading to the Throne.
We fulfill our responsibility to pray far more faithfully when we remember the gift and the cost that makes fellowship with God possible. In His grace and truth though Christ, the responsibility of prayer ever flows with the current of the gift of prayer. We would have no interest in prayer, nor power to pray apart from our Father's freely given favor and enabling administered through the Savior. "Without Me, ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). Through Christ, however, our sincere and genuine prayers find their way to God, as traveled on the trail of His Blood. On this holy path of grace, "I have to pray" is true. However, "I get to pray" even more expresses the reality of the gift of communion with God. We will pray better and more as the reality of such grace increasingly fills our hearts with the wonder that our God beckons us to Himself along a path stained by a far greater cost than we will ever know.
"But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."
(Ephesians 2:13)
Weekly Memory Verse
But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."
(Ephesians 2:13)
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