A Prayer for a Child-Like Spirit

John MacDuff, 1856 

"My soul is even as a weaned child." Psalm 131:2

O my Father, I rejoice that I am permitted with filial confidence to approach Your blessed presence. What a privilege it is to have such liberty of access to the Mercy-seat - to look upwards to You, the Infinite One, whom the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain - and call You my Father and my God! Earthly love may grow cold or changeable, or perish; but "You are the same." The mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting. Like as a father pities his children, so does the Lord pity those who fear Him.

Alas! I have to mourn too often an unthankful spirit amid all Your manifold mercies. I have been rebellious and wayward, ungrateful and selfish! You might righteously have surrendered me to my own perverse will; left me to the fruit of my own ways, and to be filled with my own devices. It is of the Lord's mercies, that I am not consumed! Infinite is my need - but infinite too is my help.

 I would seek to stand before You, O my God, in the nothingness of the creature, and to know the boundless resources treasured up for me in the great Redeemer. Unite me to Him by a living faith, as Your own child by adoption; may it be my great desire to glorify You, my Father in Heaven; cherishing towards You a spirit of filial love and devotedness, seeking to do only what will please You, and having a beneficial fear of offending so kind and forbearing a Parent.

Oh keep me from any sullen fretfulness, or unbelieving misgivings, under the strokes of Your chastening hand. Let me place no harsh constructions on Your dealings. May I see all Your chastisements tempered with gracious love - all to be needful discipline. Give me an unwavering trust and confidence in Your faithfulness. Nothing befalls me - but by Your direction; nothing is appointed - but what is for my good.

Let Your varied dealings conform me to the image of my adorable Lord. Let me be willing to suffer patiently for Him, who so willingly and so patiently suffered for me. Let me not so much seek to have my afflictions removed - as to have grace given me to glorify You in them, and in the spirit of a weaned child to say, "Even so, Father - for so it seems good in Your sight!" O may my heart become a living temple, my life a living sacrifice, breathing the incense of gratitude and love. Let me give myself no rest until in this soul of mine, I find a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.

Sanctify trial to all Your sons and daughters of sorrow. Draw near to those bereaved of beloved relatives. Compensate for every earthly loss. May they know that You are faithful who have promised, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Have mercy on Your whole Church. Heal divisions. Bless Your preached word. Strengthen Your ministering servants, that they may be enabled to proclaim the whole counsel of God.

Take the charge of me, and of all near and dear to me, this night. Give Your angels charge over us. May no unquiet dreams disturb our rest, and when we awake - may we be still with You. And all I ask is for Jesus' sake. Amen.

"Let my prayer be set forth before You as incense - and the lifting up of my hands, as the evening sacrifice."

This Prayer is an excerpt of John MacDuff prayer written in 1856  The ebook is  now available on Kindle for only $0.99 

 

Prayer for Support in Death!

John MacDuff, 1856 

"Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me." Psalm 23:4

O my Father, I come to You this night through Jesus Christ, the Son of Your love - beseeching You to have mercy upon me, and to impart unto me that Peace of Yours which passes all understanding. Blessed be Your great and glorious name, for those hopes full of immortality which have been opened up to me in the Gospel.

I rejoice in Christ as the great Abolisher of death. I rejoice that the rainbow of covenant faithfulness spans the entrance to the dark valley; that all that is terrible in the last enemy is in Him taken away, and that I can regard these closing hours of existence - as the introduction and doorway into everlasting bliss!

Give me grace, O my Father, to be living in constant preparation for death. Let me not unprofitably squander my present golden moments. Let me live while I live - let me live a dying life. Let me feel that life is a trust given me by You. O You Great Proprietor of my being, may this all important talent of time be more consecrated to Your glory. Let it not be mine, when the hour of death arrives - to bewail lost and forfeited opportunities, when it is too late. 

Let me not leave until then, what best can be done and what only may be done now. May it be my earnest endeavor while it is called today to secure a saving interest in the everlasting covenant, and then I need not fear how soon the silver cord may be loosed, and the golden bowl broken. Through Jesus the darkness has been taken from death; and to His own true people - its shadows will melt and merge into the brightness of eternal day.

You are ever giving me impressive remembrances that "at such an hour as I think not," the summons may come, "Prepare to meet Your God!" The race is not to the swift - nor the battle to the strong. Truly every moment there may be but a step between me and death. Let me be so living a life of habitual faith in the Son of God - that this step may be changed into a step between me and glory.

O my Father, prepare all who may now be laid on dying couches for their great change. May their eyes be directed to Jesus. Pillowing their heads on his exceeding great and precious promises - may they fall asleep in the glorious hope of a joyful resurrection.

This Prayer is an excerpt of John MacDuff prayer written in 1856  It is now available on Kindle for only $0.99 

 

Prayer for the Life of Faith!

John MacDuff, 1856 

"The life which I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Galatians 2:20

O my Father, I desire to draw near unto Your blessed presence, on this evening of another day, adoring You for all the loving-kindness which You are continually making to pass before me. May I ever be enabled to look up to You as the Author and Bestower of all my mercies. May no created good ever be allowed to dispossess You of my affections. May all that I enjoy, alike temporal and spiritual - be traced to You, the Fountain of all happiness. 

May prosperity be hallowed, by receiving it as a pledge of Your favor; and may trial lose its bitterness, by the consciousness that every thorn in my path is permitted by You, and every bitter drop in the cup appointed by You.

May I thus seek, O my Father, from day to day, to live a life of simple faith and dependence on Your grace. With confiding love, may I commit my every care and need and perplexity to Your better direction, feeling sweetly assured that You will guide me by a right way to the city of habitation.

Above all, would I seek a renewed interest in those covenant blessings which Christ died to purchase - and which He is exalted to bestow. All my hope is in Him! Weak, helpless, perishing - I flee to Him, as the help and hope and portion of all who seek Him. Hide me, O blessed Jesus, in Your wounded side. I would overcome alone, through the blood of the Lamb. "Wash me thoroughly in Your precious blood. May I hear Your own voice of pardoning love saying, "Your sins which are many, are all forgiven."

After all You have done for me - let me harbor no guilty and unworthy suspicions of Your faithfulness. Let me feel assured that Your tender love regulates all Your allotments. You are pledged to use the dealing and discipline best suited for Your people's case, and what will best effect Your own will concerning them, even their sanctification. Carry on within me Your own work - in Your own way. 

Fortify me against temptation; let me not surrender myself to the base compliances of a world lying in wickedness. But, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might - may I know that He who is with me is far greater, than all who can be against me. Oh enkindle afresh my expiring, languishing love; let me live more under the influence of "eternal realities," having the eye of faith more upwards and homewards, looking for that blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of my great God my Savior.

Let Your kingdom come! Arise, O my Father, and plead Your own cause. May all the ends of the earth soon be gladdened with the Gospel's joyful sound!

Bless all Your people in sorrow, all bereaved of near and dear friends; may they see no hand in their trials, but Yours. You give us our blessings; and when You see fit - You revoke the grant. Let us see love in every threatening wave, all rolling at Your bidding.

O my Father, take the charge of me this night. Abide with me, blessed Savior, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent. Oh, may it be mine to feel that each successive evening as it brings me nearer to eternity - is ripening me for its never-ending joys. And all I ask is for Jesus' sake. Amen.

"Let my prayer be set forth before You as incense - and the lifting up of my hands, as the evening sacrifice."

This Prayer is an excerpt of John MacDuff prayer written in 1856  The ebook  is now available on Kindle for only $0.99 

 

A Prayer for Gratitude of the Past!

John MacDuff, 1856 

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all His benefits!" Psalm 103:2

O God Almighty, draw near to me at this time in Your great mercy - and accept my evening sacrifice! I bless You for all that gladdens my earthly lot - for food and clothing, for friends and home, for health of body and soundness of mind. Lord, I delight to trace the wondrous way by which You have hitherto led me! You have compassed my path, and my lying down. You have supplied my ever-recurring necessities. My needs have been infinite - but infinite too has been Your gracious supply. With a grateful heart I would set up my Ebenezer, saying, "Hitherto has the Lord helped me!" And remembering Your faithfulness in the past - I would confidently trust You for the future.

May I thankfully employ the manifold gifts of Your bounty. Impress upon me the feeling that I am but a steward, responsible to You for all that I possess. Let me not selfishly appropriate the varied means of usefulness which you have put within my power - but willingly employ these in Your service for the good of others. When You come to demand a reckoning - may I be able to give a faithful account of my stewardship, paying You Your own, with interest.

O my Father, while I bless You for the other proofs and tokens of Your love - far above all would I bless You for Jesus! Where would I have been this night but for Him? How dreary would have been the past! How dismal and hopeless the future! Thanks, eternal thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift! Let me feel, more than I have done, the exceeding riches of Your grace - in Your kindness toward me through Christ Jesus. Let all Your dealings only serve to confirm my love to Him, and to lead me to cleave to Him with fuller purpose of heart. May he have my undivided homage. Let no earthly gift or blessing - supplant the Giver. May every rill of temporal bliss be doubly precious to me - as flowing from Christ's atoning sacrifice!

I rejoice in the midst of trial and perplexity - to think of You, the tried and suffering One. I rejoice that amid my sorrows - I can remember Yours, that amid my very tears - I can remember Jesus wept. You can enter into all the peculiarities of Your people's case, for You were in "all points tempted."

Let me feel, even amid the troublous changes of life, that what I am apt to call painful vicissitudes - are the sovereign decrees and allotments of Your infinite wisdom! What I cannot now comprehend - be it mine to wait the disclosures of that blessed morning when, standing at the luminous portals of Heaven, I shall joyfully acknowledge that, "You have done all things well!"

Bless my beloved friends; may they be growing in your fear and favor; may they all at last, as sheaves in your heavenly garner - be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

I commend myself, gracious God, to Your care; let me retire to rest this night in the blessed consciousness of Your favor; and if spared to see the light of a new day, fit me for whatever You have in store for me. And all I ask is for Jesus' sake. Amen.

"Let my prayer be set forth before You as incense - and the lifting up of my hands, as the evening sacrifice."

This Prayer is an excerpt of John MacDuff prayer written in 1856  It is now available on Kindle for only $0.99 

 

Wholly Sanctified - The Sanctified Spirit is a Spirit Filled - 4

A. B. Simpson

Is it empty in your spirit or is it filled with some other face, or is it dedicated to and occupied by your blessed Lord? Is it His shrine and His home and has He accepted it and made it the seat of His glorious abode and throne of His blessed kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? Or are there some who read these lines who have not yet even learned the meaning of their own spirit and do not know whether it has yet been quickened from the dead and prepared to be the seat of Christ's indwelling? 

All that they know of life consists in the physical organism, their mental faculties and their human affections. They have a keen, quick, human life, all aglow with emotion and mental activity, but the spirit, alas, alas! is so dead and cold that it has not even caught the grasp of these higher thoughts that we have been contemplating.

Ah, beloved! There is one world that you have not yet entered, and that is the eternal world to which you are hastening. The life you are living can never introduce you to the sphere of heavenly beings, for “flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life, nor corruption in corruption.” Your physical life will wither like the flowers of summer, your mental endowments will rise to the highest human rank, but will not touch the joy of that celestial realm. You must have another nature before you can enter the kingdom of heaven. “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Just suppose for a moment a man going to a great musical festival in Germany. He enters the great Concert Hall but he does not know a single word of the language spoken nor has the faintest germ of musical taste. To him the words are unmeaning gutturals, and the notes a jargon of confusing noises. He could understand a problem in mathematics, he could discourse with them with eloquence in English on questions of politics or philosophy, but he is out of place, he does not possess the key to their society or enjoyment.

And so let us suppose the highest intellect of earth entering the society of heaven. To him their songs and joys would all seem as incomprehensible as the conversation of a cultivated home circle would be to the little dog that sits at their feet or the canary that sings in the window. It belongs to a different race and cannot touch their world. Nor could such a man have one point of contact with these heavenly beings. It would be another world, a world unknown, a world as barren as a wilderness; and from its scenes he would be glad to hasten to find some congenial fellowship. He cannot reach its range because it is a spiritual race of beings, and he has but an intellectual nature. And, on the other hand, they would have as little in common with him as his range is infinitely below theirs.

We can imagine the porter of yonder gates asking him what he knows, and he begins to tell them about the lore of classical culture, the mythologies of Greece or the monuments of Egypt. The angel smiles with pity and answers, “Why, these splendid memories of which you speak are not worthy of comparison with the world in which we dwell. The grandest temple of Egypt would not make a pedestal for one of the stairs of heaven.” Perhaps he tells them of astronomy, the distance or magnitude of the stars. “Why,” the angel answers, “we have no need of these dim and distant calculations here. 

There is not one of yonder worlds we have not visited and we could tell you ten thousand times more of its mysteries than you have ever dreamed of, but the glories of these cannot be compared with the glory of Him who sits upon the throne, whom you have not eyes to see, or the sweetness of these redemption songs which you cannot even hear because you have not ears to hear. One thrill of the rapture we feel you cannot ever know because your heart has not been quickened in one heavenly chord. You do not belong here. You live in the lower realm of mind alone, but this is the Home of God and those who have received His nature, His Spirit, and are admitted as His children to dwell in His presence and share His infinite and everlasting joy.

Beloved, this is the high calling which is given to every one of Adam's race who has heard the gospel. You may become a son of God, you may receive a new spirit which can know and enjoy Him, and that spirit can be so sanctified, so cleansed, so enlarged, so filled with Himself, as to be able to reach the highest sublimity of His grace and glory and joy. Will you separate it from all that defiles and dwarfs it? Will you dedicate it to Him to be exalted to its highest possible destiny and will, henceforth receive Him to be its life and purity, its satisfaction, its nature, and its ALL and in ALL?

These four short lines of simple poetry express the depth and height of holiness, namely, as a great need and an infinite supply for that need in God. Beloved, will they express, henceforth, your emptiness and your divine filling?

In the heart of man-A cry;

In the heart of God-Supply.

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Wholly Sanctified - The Sanctified Spirit is a Spirit Filled - 3

A. B. Simpson

3. The sanctified spirit is a spirit filled with the presence and the Spirit of the Lord.

What it gives to Him is only a possibility. It is His presence that makes it a reality. Even when dedicated it is but a vessel, empty and meet for the Master's use. It is He who fills it and pours it out for the supply of the needs of others or to satisfy the desire of his own heart. Even the consecration which we make to God, the very act of dedication itself, has to be made perfect by His grace. We cannot even yield ourselves to Him in a manner that is without imperfection, but we can choose to be His, and then He will come into our dedicated will and make the living sacrifice worthy of His holy altar.

We can lie down upon that altar in full surrender and because He, the great Burnt-Offering, offered Himself to God for us, once for all, we too can become to God a sacrifice of sweet-smelling savor. This was, really, the meaning of the Burnt-Offering of old. The offerer did not offer himself, but touched the spotless lamb and it became the perfect offering. So with our hand upon the head of Christ, our consecration is accepted in Him, and He comes into our will and our spirit, and so unites Himself with us that the sacrifice is acceptable and complete. 

And so, again, our knowledge of God and fellowship with Him are dependent upon His own grace to be made effectual. We dedicate our spirit to God, and then He reveals Himself to us, opening the eyes of our understanding, showing us the person of Christ, unfolding His truth to our spiritual apprehension, and making us to see light in His own light.

It is wonderful how the untutored mind will thus often, in a short time, by the simple touch of the Holy Spirit, be filled with the most profound and scriptural teaching of God and the plan of salvation through Christ. We once knew a poor girl, saved from a life of infamy and but little educated, in a few days rise to the most extraordinary acquaintance with the Scriptures and the whole plan of redemption, through the simple anointing of the Holy Spirit. We simply give to Him our spirit that it may know Him and He fills it with His light and revelation.

So, again, we choose to be transformed to His image, but we cannot create that image by our own morality or struggles after righteousness. We must be created anew in His likeness by His own Spirit, and stamped with His resemblance by His heavenly seal impressed directly upon our heart from His hand. And thus He does become to us our holiness, for Christ is made unto us our sanctification, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. We turn from the sin, choose to be holy, and God fills our proffered hand with His own spotless righteousness.

So, again, our faith is but the filling of His Spirit and the imparting of the faith of God. We choose to trust and He makes that choice good by enabling us to believe, and to continue in the faith grounded and settled, and so living by the faith of the Son of God. Our love is but a purpose on our part, the power is His; for when we choose to love He sheds abroad that love within us and imparts to us His own Spirit and nature which is love. All our struggles will not work up one throb of genuine love to God, but He will breathe His own perfect love into any heart that chooses to make Him the one object of affection.

We cannot love our enemies but we can choose to love them, and God will make us to love them. Often have we known consecrated characters placed in circumstances where they were obliged to come in contact with uncongenial companions whom they could not love; but, choosing at His bidding to act in the spirit of love, God has so inbreathed His very heart, that without a struggle they could adjust themselves to this relationship and meet the uncongenial associate, or even enemy, with quietness, and even tenderness, and a holy desire for his highest good.

So, again, it is with His joy in us. And so, likewise, the power to glorify Him is nothing more nor less than simply this, to let God Himself be manifested in us and so glorify Himself, as others see Him reflected through us. Sanctification is thus God's own life in the spirit that is yielded up to Him to be His dwelling place and the instrument of His power and will. So also of our spiritual senses of which we have spoken. They are sanctified when they become the organs of God's operation, when our spiritual ear is quickened by His Spirit, our spiritual eyes opened by His touch, our spiritual taste, and touch, and smell, made alive by His own quickening life within us.

Now, beloved, have you ever learned this wonderful secret of regenerated spirit and God's Spirit, the Guest and Occupant of that consecrated abode? Will we illustrate this somewhat lofty conception by a simple illustration? Here is a common leather case which represents the body. Within it is a silver casket, which stands for the soul. We touch a spring and it opens and discloses an exquisite golden locket, which we will consider as the symbol of the spirit or higher nature, and within that golden locket is a place all set with precious gems for a single picture.

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