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THE KING’S BUSINESS
that He may make you a man, a woman, of prayer? Will you put your life under the control of the Holy Spirit that He may make you an intercessor after God’s own heart? Two verses I have asked the Holy Spirit to imbed in our consciousness today. The one a severe, forbidding one, “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Sin not to pray? Sin not to make use of the omnipotent power of God freely put at my disposal for the blessing of others? Sin to steal through lack of prayer the birthright of salvation through Christ Jesus from hundreds of Chinese men and women? “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” But let us turn from the word that compels to the one that woos us into it. “Verily, verily, 1 say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father.” “The works I do and greater.” Are we doing them ? How can we do greater works than He did on earth ? He answers, “Because I go unto my Father” and there at His right hand unceasingly intercedes for you. I also take up my abode in you and to the extent to which you yield yourself to me for a life of intercession, I will intercede through • you. God waits for intercession, I will intercede through you. God waits for interces sors. In this day of God’s willingness and power, will you give yourself anew to Him to become an intercessor after His own heart?
time to pray. The devil feats noth ing as he fears a praying saint. Intercession costs vitality. We read of our Lord, “He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.” Can you see Him com ing in the morning from those nights of prayer on the mount? Have you listened to Him in Gethsemane, and heard Him from the Cross ? Can you believe siich intercession did not cost Him life itself ? Do your prayers bleed? Do they cost you anything? Have you ever spent yourself in pray er? At Kuling a young man came home one evening utterly spent from baseball. It was good for him, for all day he had been hard at mental work. We do spend ourselves at tennis, at baseball, at language study, at preaching, but have we ever spent ourselves at intercession? David Brainerd did. He said, “I wrestled for the ingathering of souls, for mul titudes of poor souls, personally, in many distant places. I was in such an agony from sun half an hour light until dark that I was wet all over with sweat.” Dr. Jowett rightly says, “All vital intercession makes a drain upon a man’s vitality. True interces sion is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice, a perpetuation of Calvary, a filling up of the suffering of Christ.” Un questionably, if our intercession blesses, it must bleed. Does yours? “And He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no in tercessor.” Does He say it as He looks upon your station, your city ? Will you yield your life to God today
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<(/~^OLD mountains and the midnight air V / Witnessed the fervor of Thy prayer; The desert Thy temptations knew, Thy conflict and Thy victory too.”—
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