The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Upward, Outward, and Away"
A recurrent theme through the years of these messages has addressed the blessed gift of seeing our personal challenges as opportunity to pray for others facing difficulty, pain, sorrow, and suffering. The indwelling love and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ motivates this seeing of our own needs as opportunity to look unto our Heavenly Father and His desire to meet the needs of other through us.
"My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up" (Psalm 5:3).
"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others" (Philippians 2:4).
We know the Lord Jesus lived a life of continual personal challenge, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). How many prayers for others ascended from the heart of our Savior during His earthly journey, many based on sorrows He experienced as "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?" (Isaiah 53:3). Doubtless, more than we will ever know. A careful and prayerful reading of John 17 provides some indication as the Lord Jesus, facing His hour of unspeakable agony, prayed not for Himself, but for His disciples and all who would trust Him through the ages. How many answers descended from our Heavenly Father as prayers for others prayed from personal pain moved the heart and hand of God? Again, doubtless more than we will ever know as the Son prayed, the Father answered, and the Spirit moved to reveal the light and love of God in the darkness and need of others' hearts.
This sublimely unselfish Christ now lives in us. He lives in us prayerfully. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6). As tempted as we are in our flesh to focus on ourselves when we hurt, our Lord can motivate, lead, and empower us to look upward, outward, and away from ourselves unto our Heavenly Father and the needs of others. Yet again, the Lord Jesus walks the earth, this time in sons and daughters through whom He works to reveal the altruistic character of the living God. "Charity (love) seeketh not her own" (I Corinthians 13:5). How many prayers have been offered for others by hurting believers through the ages of the church as Christ lives - and prays - in His people, and they live and pray through Him? We do not know. How many answers have proceeded from a Father who yet again responds to His Son, and to the sons and daughters in whom He lives? We do not know. The Apostle Paul declared the measureless glory revealed in us: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21; emphasis added).
Somebody, somewhere just now hurts as we hurt. Or they may hurt in some different mode or measure of pain. Regardless, our challenges serve as an altar for them. The Holy Spirit moves within us to lead us to this place of grace within our hearts, whereupon we offer sacrifices of the unselfish love of Christ to seek God's balm for others. How might He answer such prayers? Who might be helped by His working in response to our praying? In many, perhaps most cases, we will not know. This will not matter, because this we do know: the God and Father of the Lord Jesus, our God and Father, will surely respond to our request for others' comfort, deliverance, provision, protection, and rescue in a manner "exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think." He alone will be glorified, others will be blessed, and deeply within our hearts, we will know that we have been blessed by a gift of grace that led us upward, outward, and away from ourselves into the very heart of God.
"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.So then death worketh in us, but life in you."
(II Corinthians 4:10-12)
"And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends."
(Job 42:10)
Weekly Memory Verse
God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (II Timothy 1:7)
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