The reality of prayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
The reality of prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Jesus Christ -- Prayers; Prayer -- Christianity
The affluence of God’s provision of two Intercessors in executing the
plan of salvation finds its counterpart in the prayer promise in its
unlimited nature, comprehending all things, great and small. “All things
whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” All things we
have in Christ, all things we have in the Holy Spirit, and all things we
have in prayer.
How much is ours in God’s plan and purposes we have in these two
Christs, the one ascended to Heaven and enthroned, there to intercede
for our benefit, the other Christ, His Representative, and better
Substitute, on earth, to work in us and make intercessions for us!
The first Christ was a person. The other Christ, a person, but not
clothed in physical form nor subject to human limitations as the first
Christ necessarily was. Transient and local was the first Christ. The
other Christ not limited to locality, not transient, but abiding; not
dealing with the sensible, the material, the fleshly, but entering
personally into the mysterious and imperial domain of the spirit, to
emancipate and transform into more than Eden beauty that waste and dark
realm. The first Christ left His novitiates that they might enter into
higher regions of spiritual knowledge. The man Christ withdrew that the
Spirit Christ might train and school into the deeper mysteries of God;
that all the historical and physical might be transmuted into the pure
gold of the spiritual. The first Christ brought to us a picture of what
we must be. The other Christ mirrored this perfect and fadeless image on
our hearts. The first Christ, like David, gathered and furnished the
material for the temple. The other Christ out of this material forms
God’s glorious temple.
The possibilities of prayer, then, are the possibilities of these two
Divine Intercessors. Where are the limitations to results when the Holy
Spirit intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, when He
so helps us that our prayers run parallel to the will of God, and we
pray for the very things and in the very manner in which we ought to
pray, schooled in and pressed to these prayers by the urgency of the
Holy Spirit! How measureless are the possibilities of prayer when we are
filled with all the fullness of God; when we stand “perfect and complete
in all the will of God”?
If the intercession of Moses so wondrously preserved the being and
safety of Israel throughout its marvelous history and destiny, what may
we not secure through our Intercessor, who is so much greater than
Moses? All that God has lies open to Christ through prayer. All that
Christ has lies open to us through prayer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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