The reality of prayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
The reality of prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Jesus Christ -- Prayers; Prayer -- Christianity
It means far more than sentiment, verbiage, and nomenclature. It means
to stand in His stead, to bear His nature, to stand for all for which He
stood, for righteousness, truth, holiness and zeal. It means to be one
with God as He was, one in spirit, in will and in purpose. It means that
our praying is singly and solely for God’s glory through His Son. It
means that we abide in Him, that Christ prays through us, lives in us
and shines out of us; that we pray by the Holy Spirit according to the
will of God.
Even amid the darkness of Gethsemane, with the stupor which had settled
upon the disciples, we have the sharp warning from Christ to His
sluggish disciples, “Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation. The
spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How needful to hear
such a warning, to awaken all our powers, not simply for the great
crises of our lives, but as the inseparable and constant attendants of a
career marked with perils and dangers on every hand.
As Christ nears the close of His earthly mission, nearer to the greater
and more powerful dispensation of the Spirit, His teaching about prayer
takes on a more absorbing and higher form. It has now become a
graduating school. His connection with prayer becomes more intimate and
more absolute. He becomes in prayer what He is in all else pertaining to
our salvation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. His
name becomes all potent. Mighty works are to be done by the faith which
can pray in His name. Like His nature, His name covers all needs,
embraces all worlds, and gets all good.
“Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?
The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the
Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
“Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me: or else
believe me for the very works’ sake.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works
that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he
do; because I go unto my Father.
“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son.
“If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it.”
The Father, the Son and the praying one are all bound up together. All
things are in Christ, and all things are in prayer in His name. “If ye
shall ask anything in my name.” The key which unlocks the vast
storehouse of God is prayer. The power to do greater works than Christ
did lies in the faith which can grasp His name truly and in true
praying.
In the last of His life, note how He urges prayer as a preventive of the
many evils to which they were exposed. In view of the temporal and
fearful terrors of the destruction of Jerusalem, He charges them to this
effect: “Pray ye that your flight be not in winter.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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