The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Prayers For a Friend, By a Friend”
Through the years, I have shared thoughts with you on this date regarding my first best friend. Bruce and I knew each other as little boys for about five years before he moved away to another neighborhood. I saw him only once after that, and do not know what became of him. However, I pray for him on this day each year, remembering his birthday because it precedes mine by a day (we loved that as kids because it meant concurrent celebrations and birthday parties each year!).
The thought occurs to me on this day of what a marvelous gift God gives to born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to intercede for others. As we frequently suggest in these messages, prayer must be viewed as a gift, a privilege, and an “I get to” before we rightly accept it as a responsibility and matter of obedience to God. Indeed, the infinite, eternal Lord of all things calls finite creatures such as ourselves into loving communion with Himself, to the degree “the prayer of the upright is His delight” (Proverbs 15:8). Moreover, for even the simplest offering, a sacrifice had to be offered, the immeasurable measure of which we will never begin to fully know…
“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).
My attendance at the throne of grace each year for Bruce (and for every prayer) required the attendance of the Lord Jesus at Calvary and its bloody cross of agony, sorrow, forsakenness, and death.
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.
I likely have thought of this on October 28th each year, in my prayers for Bruce. It will be my focus this year as I pray for my first best friend, as based on the person and merits of our eternally best Friend. What a gift indeed, that God calls us to Himself by the price of blood, and of untold other aspects of His beloved Son’s sacrifice. In this holy and solemn light, I will pray for a friend today, as made possible by a Friend.
“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
We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
(II Corinthians 4:7)
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