The reality of prayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
The reality of prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Jesus Christ -- Prayers; Prayer -- Christianity
If we have the two Christs covering the whole realm of goodness, power,
purity and glory, in Heaven and on earth—if we have the better Christ
with us here in this world—why is it that we sigh to know the Christ
after the flesh as the disciples knew Him? Why is it that the mighty
work of these two Almighty Intercessors finds us so barren of Heavenly
fruit, so feeble in all Christly principles, so low in the Christly
life, and so marred in the Christly image? Is it not because our prayers
for the Holy Spirit have been so faint and few? The Heavenly Christ can
only come to us in full beauty and power when we have received the
fullness of the present earthly Christ, even the Holy Spirit.
Living always the life of prayer, breathing always the spirit of prayer,
being always in the fact of prayer, praying always in the Holy Spirit,
the Heavenly Christ would become ours by a clearer vision, a deeper
love, and a more intimate fellowship than He was to His disciples in the
days of His flesh.
We would not disguise nor abate the fact that there is a loss to us by
our absent Christ as we will see and know Him in Heaven. But in our
earthly work to be done by us, and above all to be done in us, we will
know Christ and the Father better, and can better utilise them by the
ministry of the Holy Spirit than would have been possible under the
personal, human presence of the Son. So to the loving and obedient ones
who are filled with the Spirit, both the Father and the Son “Will come
unto us and make their abode with us.” In the day of the fullness of the
indwelling Spirit, “Ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me
and I in you.” Amazing oneness and harmony, wrought by the almighty
power of the other Christ!
There is not a note in the archangel’s song to which the Holy Spirit
does not attune man into sympathy, not a pulsation in the heart of God
to which the Holy Spirit-filled heart does not respond with loud amens
and joyful hallelujahs. Even more than this, by the other Christ, the
Holy Ghost, “we know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” More
than this, by the Holy Spirit we are “filled with all the fullness of
God.” More than this, God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we ask or think according to the power of the Holy Spirit which
worketh in us.
The presence and power of the other Christ would more than compensate
the disciples for the loss of the first Christ. His going away had
filled their hearts with a strange sorrow. A loneliness and desolation
like an orphan’s woe had swept over their hearts and stunned and
bewildered them; but He comforted them by telling them that the Holy
Ghost would be like the pains of a travailing mother, all forgotten in
the untold joy that a man-child was born into the world.
XVI
PRAYER AND THE HOLY GHOST DISPENSATION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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