May 22 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2).

Devotional

Thank God for any errand that sends you to him. Maybe you have felt no heart to pray for yourself. You have not been aware of any special drawings to the throne for your own soul. But you have gone on behalf of another. The burden, the trial, the affliction, or the immediate need of some member of God's family has pressed upon you, and you have taken his case to the Lord. You have borne him in your arms to the throne of grace. And, while interceding for your brother, the Lord has met you, and blessed your own soul.

Perhaps you have gone and prayed for the church, for the peace of Jerusalem, for the prosperity of Zion, that the Lord would build up her waste places and make her a joy and a praise in the whole earth.

Perhaps it has been to pray for your minister, that the Lord would teach him more deeply and experientially, and anoint him more abundantly with the rich unction of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps it has been to pray for Christian missions, that the Lord would raise up laborious and self-denying missionaries and make them eminently successful in spreading the knowledge of a precious Savior and in calling his people in.

And thus, while for others you have been besieging the throne of grace and pouring out your heart before the Lord, the Lord himself has drawn near to your own soul. You have been made to experience the blessing that ever attends and rewards intercessory prayer.

In that case, let every event, every circumstance, every providence be a voice urging you to prayer.

If you have no needs, others do—take them to the Lord. If you are borne down by no cross, smitten by no affliction, or suffering from no need, others are—go for them and plead with your heavenly Father. And the petitions you send up to the mercy-seat on their behalf may return into your own bosom loaded with rich covenant blessings. The falls, the weaknesses, the deteriorations of others make them grounds for prayer.

Thus, and only thus, can you expect to grow in grace, and grace to grow in you.

Before our Father's throne
we pour our ardent prayers;
our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
our comforts and our cares.

We share our mutual woes,
our mutual burdens bear,
and often for each other flows
the sympathizing tear.

(John Fawcett, 1782)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.