This very attack has always been and always will be the place of attack upon the sons of God. I do not mean to suggest that there could ever be another Gethsemane in the same sense that Christ faced it. I only mean to say that there is in a measure a place in our prayer life that answers to Gethsemane. That this was a crucial moment in the life of our Lord none can or will deny. Christians, too, face a crucial moment, a moment in which the call for them to identify them selves with Christ on the Cross pre sents itself very forcefully. We defi nitely believe that it comes at the place of prayer. If we as Christian people were to honestly face ourselves in our Christian lives, most of us would have to confess with a degree of inexpressible shame, that we have permitted Satan to defeat us at the place of prayer. Just as the life of Christ was in danger at this very level of His life; just so, the life of Christ in me or in any Christian will be threatened at the level of prayer. Satan did not desire that Christ should go to the Cross to accomplish the great and eternal purpose of God. Converse ly, the same is true of Christians. Christians who do not identify themselves with Christ on the Cross are no threat to Satan. Every scholar knows that it was at the Cross that Satan was defeated by Christ. It was there “ that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Heb. 2:14. When the believer, at the place of his dedication, the place of prayer, yields his will to the Father and decides that it must be the Cross for his life, he, too, will die to self, but then the tomb represents the heart that is empty of self. There must be the resisting of Satan in the place of prayer in order that self may be identified with Christ on the Cross, thereby realizing the glori ous resurrection life of Christ. This is an act of the will. It will never be forced upon us. We, too, must say, “ I come to the garden alone.” It is not until this declaration of the will is settled, that one may say with Paul the Apostle, “ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Man in Adam lost his place of fellowship with God in a garden; he must in Christ be reinstated in a garden. The first was in yielding to Satan; the last in yielding to Christ. END. *Dr. Richardson is pastor of the North Redondo Chapel, Redondo Beach, Calif. He is also Chairman of the Revival Prayer Fellowship and member of the Biola faculty.
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OCTOBER, 1959
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