go no higher than the proverbial ceil ing? Then it may be there is some thing in your life which needs to be made right with God. A minister had heard about a disease of the heart which affects the eyes. He con tacted a physician friend who gave him the medical term for the disease. It seems that ulcers build up on the inner heart walls with no apparent pain. The blood vessels then swell, finally breaking. As a result, some people have gone blind. His friend concluded, “The non-technical name for the problem is sometimes called a dirty heart.” Spiritual blindness is caused by a heart that needs to be cleansed by the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ. Y6u may not feel the pain. You may have become insensi ble to your ways and actions. We need to stop and allow the Lord to make our hearts and minds pure and clean. The Bible assures us that “God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us [to keep right on cleansing us] from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). The trouble is that we don’t want to stop, taking the time to make things right. It is, however, a prime essential. Perhaps you’ve heard about the man who was chopping wood and getting very little done because his axe was terribly dull. A stranger happened along who immediately rec ognized the man’s plight. He kindly suggested, “Things would go much easier if you just took a few mo ments to sharpen your axe.” The dis gruntled workman disagreed: “Don’t you understand? This job is too hard already without stopping to sharpen the axe.” Aren’t we all like that to some degree? We tell ourselves, “I’m so busy, there are so many things to do, I just didn’t have time to pray.” We’re very ready to excuse ourselves. The third essential for prayer is to come in confidence, believing that God does want to do something. In John 16:24, Christ assu res us, 12
“Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” God wants to do for us not only those things which we may desire, but also that which is far beyond our human comprehension. One of the most blessed verses in the Bible is Ephe sians 3:20. Memorize and apply it in your own heart and life. Doubtless you’ve heard the story of the little girl who joined the crowd attending the Wednesday night prayer meeting at her church where everyone had gone to beseech the Lord for rain. There had been a severe drought in the area. This trusting lass was evidently the only one who believed enough to take along an umbrella. No wonder the Lord Jesus had to say, even as He does today, “0 ye of little faith!” The fourth essential of prayer is that we come with our petitions ac cording to God’s will. During World War II a farmer in Sussex, England, along with many of the other farm ers, was experiencing a great deal of difficulty because of a severe drought which had hit his area. Not only were the fields parched for wa ter, but the crop itself was rather poor-looking. The farmer, who was a Christian, wrote to the missionary society explaining that his money had run out, and asking for prayer. Water had to come from some place. They, of course, promised to join with him. Several weeks later, an other letter came. This time he was telling how God had worked. He ex plained how that one night a German bomber was flying over Sussex. Anti aircraft shells knocked it from the sky and it fell right in the middle of his finest farm land which was completely destroyed in flames. What was even more amazing was the fact that when the plane hit and explod ed, the force was so great that it uncapped an underground sp rin g which gushed forth with sufficient
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