and free in speaking of them to God, we come into the state of peace and rest, and coming into this state, we are ready for any thing. We can. do or suffer trium phantly when the conscience has been cleared by honest confession and the blood of Christ. Submission Another thing which prayer does is to bring us into a state of honest and happy submission to God. When we reflect upon what God is and upon what we are, and hon estly confess our own failures in view of God’s character, we natu rally find it easy to submit to the will of God. This is another source of peace, of restfulness, and when wè rest we gather energy—we be come fit. It is safe to say that one of the most common sources of weakness and incapacity is a rest less fretting, a secret rebellion against the will and plan of God. Here is a mother praying for a sick child, a n d she really prays. She adores; she confesses. By and by she will come to submit, if she continues to adore and to confess, and when she really submits, when she comes to say: “Not my will, but thine,” she will be a thousand times more competent to care for her sick child than when she is really, even if unconsciously, rebelling against the plan of God. Her own nerves will I quiet, her own eyesight will clear. Her own courage will stay and by the very change produced in herself, it is entirely possible that God may save the life of her child. Take the case of a man who de sires a certain position. Motives are mixed. There is an element of the divine. There is an element of the human. The position is attractive, the compensation may he large, the associations may be desirable. At the same time opportunity for service may be great and the man himself
in all states of mind. The differ ences between men are very large ly in their desires and their desires are occasioned by their characters. Men desire different things because they are different persons, and men who desire with a proper thought of God desire and ask in a totally different maimer from that em ployed by different sorts of people. Some do not ask because they are too proud to ask. They do not re alize the difference between them selves and God. Some do not ask because they rely upon their own efforts to secure the thing which they desire. Some do not ask be cause they are not in condition to ask. A child in rebellion against his father will never he free in his petitions, but a loving child who knows the power and goodness of his father and his own helplessness, and is willing that his father should do what he wills, is in good condi tion to make requests, and I can testify from experience, as many other fathers can, that it is very difficult, to refuse the request of such ar"child. “ Ye have not, because ye ask not.” What a complete explanation of the failure of the prayer lives of men, as well as of their failures in other respects is found in these words. I do not think that the Holy Spirit in this expression had in mind unsaved people. The Bible was (most of it) written for per sons who were at heart right with God. The Bible message to an un repentant sinner is very short. God does not have a great deal to say to him. “ Repent, and believe the gos pel” is pretty much all that he needs to hear, hut we children — babes in the house of God — need to learn to talk, we need to learn to take hold of things. We need to come into the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph. 4:13). This is why there is so much re-
may find these varying motives so entangled that he cannot exactly say which one is predominant. But coming before God for this position which he desires, he thinks of God as Maker and Ruler of the universe, as high and holy and lifted up. He thinks of himself as sinful by na ture, as having oftentimes added to the sinfulness of his nature the guilt of actual transgression. He becomes submissive. He puts him self at the disposal of God. He con sents to what the providence of God shall reveal. Cannot anyone see that under these circumstances the man is more likely to secure what he de serves than if, with a stiff neck and a high head and an unsubmissive heart, he were to struggle for it? The very state of mind into which he comes will make it more possible for God to give the thing which he desires. Asking things from God is the principal element in prayer, though the other items which have been mentioned are, either in conscious or unconscious form, necessary pre cedent conditions. But if there is no request, there is no prayer. Nor is there meditation upon the char acter of God, upon our own char acters. “ Ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:2). The Holy Spirit thus recorded the failure of men and women who thought they prayed thousands of years ago, and this difficulty still remains. The poet says: “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed.” But sincere desire does not mean simply wanting things. It means desiring things when we have in mind the greatness and goodness of God, our own ill desert and an humble willingness to receive the thing that God chooses to send. Men do not desire the same things
The King's Business/June 1958
19
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker