Rich Blood Spent

Once while I was tuned into a Christian radio station I listened as a minister of the gospel read off a number of prayer requests. Then he announced that he was going to present the requests to the Lord, asking his radio audience to join in with him. To be straight and to the point I was very surprised in the way that the man prayed over these needs. For all intents and purposes all that he did was to read them off again, and in the same rather lifeless tone of voice. But someone may wonder where the problem lies in this. My answer would be that according to his manner I highly doubt that he bled as much as a drop. But I do not judge him. Possibly his way is just a peculiar one and his heart was in fact in the right place. Whether that was the case or not is irrelevant. The point is this. There are swarms of believers who speak to God on behalf of others every day while carrying not even a splinter of their burden or having not an ounce of compassion. They pray as if under law and not under grace. A scenario may go something like this: Someone has asked if we’d pray for their need in our time with the Lord. We agree to, but is it more because we’ll feel a sense of guilt if we don’t intercede? And so we pray to escape the weight of guilt. Our objective is not so much for God to intervene – comfort, set at liberty, heal, etc., as it is to meet the obligation, ease our conscience, and rid ourselves of the thing lest it become a haunt. And in this we pray under law and not grace. Such prayers are like clouds without rain, mere formalities; they are vain exercises; they are doing the rule for the sake of the rule. Does God hear such prayers? If He looks upon the heart as we know that He does, then how can He hear them, for the heart is the very thing that is absent when we pray in this manner. But when we pray under grace and not law it is altogether different.

All those who have resigned themselves from law, from the works of the flesh, and have taken upon themselves the grace of God, who have captured it forcefully with both hands and have robed themselves in it, not with merit but with the free gift, the same are those who pray according to Spirit and Truth. There is also this wonderful feature about them. Their eyes have been opened and they have come to love those made “in the image.” They look upon people, especially those in need, at times even in rags, and in them they see the Saviour. Since they have learned to love Him, they now can love “the image.” Some may even behold shades of glory about the image that once they could not detect. And so they beseech the Holy One for them with the fervency of the inner man, with passion and delight, though also with a burden.

Does it all sound too emotional? Can we read of such intercession in the scriptures? I believe so. There is an incident in the book of Genesis when Jacob wrestles with God by way of an angel. I’m sure it is uncontested among all theologians that this is a picture of prayer. And one cannot read of this happening without realizing that every fiber of Jacob’s being was intensely at work in the encounter of his life. Next it is all but impossible to not imagine David as very emotional in his many petitions to the God whose heart he was in constant pursuit of. And I’m sure that the same mood can be detected in some New Testament prayers. Emotions will come when we bleed the crimson flow. And bleed we will when we’ve come to love “the image” as we lift it up to God. But is there any labor at all involved in our requests when we so matter-of-factly present them to the Lord? Shouldn’t prayer cost us? If not, why is it that we speak of its sacrifice? If virtuous energy doesn’t go out from us then what have we spent when we speak with Him before His throne? There He watches the output of our hearts. He takes note of the strength of its flow. Yet the spending is never in vain, and what is lost He replenishes even as the blood of the flesh. He replenishes so that we can spend and spend and spend without ceasing. Such is the practice of the one who makes war against the armies of hell and of evil.

Once in speaking with a friend he shared with me a secret about himself. He told me that he had come to the point that when he prayed for others he would in turn feel the weight of their trial. If their problem was depression, he felt that depression. If their problem was loneliness, he felt their loneliness. And so on it went. While in prayer for his brothers and sisters he felt the weight of their doubts, their fears, their confusion, worries, temptations, and we know that the list is endless. The weight that he felt was the weight of the burdens they bore. Not that it need be this way for us, but that’s how it was for him. By his sacrifice of prayer he was drawing near and taking some of their load upon himself. He was easing their pains and relieving their spirits until the day that they put their burdens down. And I’m sure that the putting down of those burdens along with the hand of God’s deliverance was the very thing that he sought his Lord for. This man knew about prayer. Sad indeed it would have been if none were helping him along his rugged path. But I do not mean by way of a quick and painless intercession, through a vain exercise or mere formality. He deserved nothing short of the spent blood of the inner man, and even as he let it flow for others.

Our heavenly Father calls us to do for one another what Christ did for the world. The cross that Jesus bore He bore for the people of the earth, for it was to us that the cross belonged, and not to Him. And His intercession to God for us while being crucified was anything but a vain exercise, costing nothing. It had cost Him untold suffering and the shedding of blood, rich to overflowing. Calvary was His interceding to the Father for a world filled with sin, and this by the sacrifice of His life. Likewise our intercession for one another must be of the same sacrifice; the bearing of each others burdens, the losing of our lives, and the flowing crimson streams; not the blood of the flesh, but that of the invincible spirit man.

As I was driving along one day, and thinking on this subject matter, the Lord gave to me a proverb: “For those who sow in blood and tears, the blossoms come up singing.”


J. Pecoraro

The Wild Stallion

A wild stallion once was I,
Running the grasslands, spirits high.
And though my life was filled with ease,
A greater one I could not please.

This greater one, a son of man,
Desired to put me on his land.
To break my will, and to break my heart,
And require of me my every part.

So why did I take to such a notion
Of boundless loyalty and devotion?
Had I become witless, or did I merely need change,
For life had grown wearisome on that range?

One brisk autumn morning a rider drew near,
But somehow I knew there was nothing to fear.
Unlike other times when I’d just run away,
I willfully laid down my freedom that day.

There were hard times ahead and stubborn was I
For the ways of the free do not easily die.
But my master was gentle and loving and kind
And when the task was complete there was newness of mind.

I no longer run for my own foolish pleasure.
I’ll reveal you a secret, an invaluable treasure.
A horse of the wild may run freer and faster,
But the horse that’s fulfilled is the horse with a master.



J. Pecoraro