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Practice of Prayer-G. Campbell Morgan · Israel: A Prince with God

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the Practice of Prayer. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are the public domain. For
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  Speaker 1: more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Marianne Spiegel. The Practice of Prayer by G.
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  Speaker 1: Campbell Morgan, Chapter one, Preliminary. And it came to pass
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  Speaker 1: as he was praying in a certain place, that when
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  Speaker 1: he ceased, one of his disciples said, unto him, Lord,
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  Speaker 1: teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.
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  Speaker 1: And he said, unto them, when ye pray, say, Father,
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  Speaker 1: hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom, Come give us day
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  Speaker 1: by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins,
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  Speaker 1: for we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted
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  Speaker 1: to us, and bring us not into temptation. And he
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  Speaker 1: said unto them, each of you shall have a friend,
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  Speaker 1: and shall go unto him at midnight and say to him, friend,
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  Speaker 1: lend me three loaves. For friend of mine has come
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  Speaker 1: to me from a journey, and I have nothing to
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  Speaker 1: set before him. And he from within shall answer and say,
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  Speaker 1: trouble me not. The door is now shut, and my
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  Speaker 1: children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and
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  Speaker 1: give to thee. I say to you, though he will
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  Speaker 1: not rise and give him because he is his friend,
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  Speaker 1: yet because of his importunity, he will arise and give
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  Speaker 1: him as many as he needeth. And I say, unto you, ask,
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  Speaker 1: and it shall be given to you. Seek, and ye
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  Speaker 1: shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
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  Speaker 1: For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth,
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  Speaker 1: And to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And
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  Speaker 1: which of you that is a father, shall his son
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  Speaker 1: ask a loaf, and he give him a stone or
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  Speaker 1: a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent.
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  Speaker 1: Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give
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  Speaker 1: him a scorpion. If ye, then, being evil, know how
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  Speaker 1: to give good gifts unto your children, how much more
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  Speaker 1: shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
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  Speaker 1: that ask him Luke Chapter eleven, verses one to thirteen.
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  Speaker 1: Never did the disciples prefer a more important request than
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  Speaker 1: when they said, Lord, teach us to pray, And no
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  Speaker 1: petition was more graciously answered. The Church today needs to
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  Speaker 1: bring that petition first of all, but she needs to
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  Speaker 1: do so remembering that she already has the answer in
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  Speaker 1: all spaciousness and clearness. Whatever may have been the case
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  Speaker 1: with the first Disciples, it is certainly true of us that,
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  Speaker 1: before we call he answers, I have chosen as the
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  Speaker 1: general title of this book the Practice of Prayer, because
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  Speaker 1: the purpose of its publication is pre eminently practical. Any
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  Speaker 1: discussion of the doctrine of prayer which does not issue
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  Speaker 1: in the practice of prayer is not only not helpful,
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  Speaker 1: it is dangerous. At the same time, that practice will
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  Speaker 1: be greatly helped by an apprehension of the relative Christian doctrine,
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  Speaker 1: that there is need for its consideration is granted on
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  Speaker 1: every hand. Side by side with a great enrichment, there
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  Speaker 1: is a widespread impoverishment in the Church of God. The
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  Speaker 1: consciousness of wealth creates the sense of poverty, and it
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  Speaker 1: is because we rejoice in our gain that we mourn
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  Speaker 1: over our lack. As to enrichment, there can be no
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  Speaker 1: question that the Church's appreciation of Jesus Christ is keener
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  Speaker 1: and more spacious today than it has ever been. There
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  Speaker 1: is to day a widespread consciousness of the human Christ,
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  Speaker 1: and this has brought assurance of His interest in all
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  Speaker 1: departments of human life. Coincidentally with this, there has arisen
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  Speaker 1: a conviction of His universality, and while rejoicing as never
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  Speaker 1: in the world warmth and nearness of the flesh, we
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  Speaker 1: have come to a larger apprehension of the infinitude of
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  Speaker 1: the Word. In practical equipment for service too, The Church,
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  Speaker 1: in men, in money, and in methods is far in
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  Speaker 1: advance of any preceding age. Yet in all these things
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  Speaker 1: there is a sense of lack and of poverty. While
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  Speaker 1: the sense of the greatness of Christ is larger, the
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  Speaker 1: ability to bring men into loving saving touch with Him
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  Speaker 1: sometimes seems less. The men at his disposal are many,
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  Speaker 1: but the Church lacks energy to send them forth. Money
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  Speaker 1: is more freely given than ever, and yet the greater
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  Speaker 1: part of the possessions of the saints is still retained
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  Speaker 1: for their own use. The methods are multiplied, and yet
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  Speaker 1: one cannot help the conviction that many of our organizations
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  Speaker 1: are fungus, gross sapping the Church's life and contributing nothing
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  Speaker 1: to her fruitfulness. We are profoundly conscious of lack. Everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: There is a double sense, that of power and of paralysis.
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  Speaker 1: We have heard the sound of the going in the
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  Speaker 1: top of the mulberry trees, but the wind of God
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  Speaker 1: seems to tarry. We saw the flaming of the bush
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  Speaker 1: among the Welsh mountains a little while ago, but we
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  Speaker 1: have seen it in England. All about us are indifferent masses.
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  Speaker 1: We still mourn the dearth of conversions, and are painfully
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  Speaker 1: conscious of the languishing missionary spirit. Where is the lack?
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  Speaker 1: That is a larger question than it is the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of this book to discuss. Nevertheless, I think it may
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  Speaker 1: broadly be stated that the supreme need of the Church
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  Speaker 1: is the realization experimentally of her relationship to God. By
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  Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit, the interaction of life and prayer will
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  Speaker 1: be found, the secret of power, and the realization of
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  Speaker 1: fellowship with God will never be more than a theory,
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  Speaker 1: save as prayer becomes a practice. I am particularly anxious
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  Speaker 1: to write nothing censorious or that fails in recognition, and
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  Speaker 1: of all the best things still to be found against us.
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  Speaker 1: I am profoundly conscious that there is a great deal
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  Speaker 1: of prayer on the highest plain. God has his intercessors everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: They are to be found, often in unexpected places, in
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  Speaker 1: men and women who have learned the secret, and who
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  Speaker 1: by familiar intercourse with God are channels of blessing to men.
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  Speaker 1: But the majority of us are not praying. While I
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  Speaker 1: thank God for the prayers being offered, I feel that
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  Speaker 1: it is of the utmost importance that the whole Church
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  Speaker 1: should know the secret of prevailing prayer, not only as
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  Speaker 1: a theory, but in practice. In the presence of this need,
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  Speaker 1: the importance of our presenting the same petition as the
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  Speaker 1: early disciples is apparent. That petition must be carefully understood.
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  Speaker 1: It was a much larger one than we too often
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  Speaker 1: make it. We minimize its meaning by adding to its words.
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  Speaker 1: They did not say, Lord, teach us how to pray,
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  Speaker 1: but Lord, teach us to pray. A great many people
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  Speaker 1: know how to pray, but they do not pray. This
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  Speaker 1: request teach us how to pray would refer simply to
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  Speaker 1: the theory. The petition teach us to pray is of
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  Speaker 1: much fuller import and includes theory and practice. It is
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  Speaker 1: interesting to notice the circumstances in which the disciples prefer
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  Speaker 1: this request. And it came to pass as he was
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  Speaker 1: praying in a certain place, that when he ceased, one
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  Speaker 1: of his disciples said, unto him, Lord, teach us to pray.
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  Speaker 1: It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing
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  Speaker 1: the connection between their request and their observation of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was pre eminently a man of prayer, and
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  Speaker 1: there is no doubt that they had often seen him
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  Speaker 1: at prayer, and in all probability had heard him. Although
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  Speaker 1: he never prayed with them or used of his own
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  Speaker 1: prayers the same words he used of theirs. Yet it
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  Speaker 1: was clearly manifest to them how much prayer meant to him.
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  Speaker 1: And it was as though they had said, we would
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  Speaker 1: come into this secret of thine. It was a request
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  Speaker 1: arising from their conviction of the value of prayer in
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  Speaker 1: his life. The answer of Jesus was far more comprehensive
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  Speaker 1: than at first sight may appear. Immediately he gave them
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  Speaker 1: a pattern and a parable. The pattern itself was not exhaustive,
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  Speaker 1: for it consisted of the recitation of certain sentences from
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  Speaker 1: the form of prayer included in his manifesto. He then
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  Speaker 1: gave them a parable, which taught by contrast, the readiness
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  Speaker 1: of God to hear and answer. If through importunity is
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  Speaker 1: the answer they could be persuaded to give, how much
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  Speaker 1: more would God give out of the love of his heart.
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  Speaker 1: This pattern and parable, however, constitute nothing more than the local,
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  Speaker 1: immediate and partial answer of Jesus to their request. Later
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  Speaker 1: he gave them much detailed teaching in his paschal discourses,
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  Speaker 1: and yet not even this final teaching exhausted. His great
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  Speaker 1: and gracious answer is himself, in his revelation of the
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  Speaker 1: place and power of prayer in human life, the supreme
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  Speaker 1: answer to their request, by the whole fact of incarnation
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  Speaker 1: and perfect life of atonement, resurrection and perpetual priesthood. Does
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  Speaker 1: Christ answer this preliminary prayer. It is well for us
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  Speaker 1: to remember that we are in direct secession to these disciples,
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  Speaker 1: that their requests are our requests, and His answers to
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  Speaker 1: them are His answers to us. Making all allowance for
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  Speaker 1: a distinguishing between things which differ, between matters which pertain
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  Speaker 1: to the specific message of the early days of Jesus
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  Speaker 1: and matters connected with the commission under which we serve,
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  Speaker 1: it still remains true that his essential teaching was intended
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  Speaker 1: for us as well as for those who first heard it.
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  Speaker 1: When he stood surrounded by that first group of disciples,
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  Speaker 1: he prayed, and in the course of his prayer he said,
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  Speaker 1: neither for these only do I pray, but for them
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  Speaker 1: also that believe on me through their word. I always
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  Speaker 1: feel warmly near to the heart of Christ when I
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  Speaker 1: read these words, for I know that He saw me
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  Speaker 1: also and included me in his priestly intercession, as there
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  Speaker 1: he prayed for us with them, so also in all
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  Speaker 1: his teachings he spoke to us as to them. End
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  Speaker 1: of chapter one, Chapter two of the Practice of Prayer
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  Speaker 1: by G. Campbell Morgan. This LibriVox recording is in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. Read by Marianne, Chapter two. The possibility of prayer.
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  Speaker 1: He that cometh to God must believe that He is,
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  Speaker 1: and that He is a rewarder of them that seek
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  Speaker 1: after Him. Hebrews, chapter eleven, verse seven. If ye abide
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  Speaker 1: in Me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever
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  Speaker 1: ye will, and it shall be done unto you John fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles, teaching and fellowship,
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  Speaker 1: in the Breaking of Bread, and the Prayers Acts Chapter two,
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  Speaker 1: verse forty two. While the purpose of the present series
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  Speaker 1: of studies is that of stating the positive truth of
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  Speaker 1: the Christian faith concerning prayer, it is necessary at least
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  Speaker 1: to recognize the fact that among the things of weakness
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  Speaker 1: characterizing our age is a far spread doubt of the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of prayer. It is affirmed that the advance of
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  Speaker 1: scientific knowledge has made it impossible to believe that the
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  Speaker 1: desires and petitions of individual souls or of companies in agreement,
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  Speaker 1: can have any effect upon the affairs of a universe
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  Speaker 1: conditioned absolutely within law. Some there are, therefore, and those
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  Speaker 1: the more consistent, who abandon prayer in every form, while
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  Speaker 1: others urge the maintenance of the habit of prayer because
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  Speaker 1: of the effect it produces upon those who pray. These
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  Speaker 1: claim that prayer, while devoid of objective value, has yet
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  Speaker 1: a subjective value. It is not my purpose to attempt
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  Speaker 1: any philosophical discussion on this question. I believe that the
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  Speaker 1: majority of persons who read will concede at once the
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  Speaker 1: objective value of prayer, and I do not think anything
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  Speaker 1: said in defense of the theory will bring conviction to
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  Speaker 1: those in doubt. It is only by praying that the
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  Speaker 1: possibility is proven. He has proved the objective value of prayer.
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  Speaker 1: Who has asked and received, who has sought and found,
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  Speaker 1: who has knocked and known the door opened in answer.
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  Speaker 1: Yet there are certain of the simplest things which may
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  Speaker 1: be said in this connection. Let it once be granted
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  Speaker 1: that prayer has a subjective value, and it will be
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  Speaker 1: difficult to escape conviction of its objective value. If it
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  Speaker 1: be true that petition has produced an effect upon character
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  Speaker 1: which is uplifting and ennobling, then that effect is due
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  Speaker 1: to belief in the existence of one who hears and
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  Speaker 1: is able to grant requests. If there be no such possibility,
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  Speaker 1: then belief in that which is untrue issues in character
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  Speaker 1: which is true and beautiful. This is unthinkable. All the
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  Speaker 1: subjective value of prayer has grown out of conviction of
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  Speaker 1: an objective value. If a man asks for something, it
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  Speaker 1: is because he believes he can obtain it by asking.
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  Speaker 1: Once persuade a man that it is impossible for him
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  Speaker 1: to receive an answer to his petition, and he will
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  Speaker 1: not persist in asking. Thus will the subjective value of
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  Speaker 1: prayer be inevitably destroyed. When the objective value is denied,
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  Speaker 1: No man can continue to ask if he be once
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  Speaker 1: convinced that his asking has no greater value than that
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  Speaker 1: it produces an effect upon himself. Everything which man has
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  Speaker 1: observed of this subjective value of prayer, of the influence
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  Speaker 1: it has produced upon character and tone, has been due
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  Speaker 1: to profound conviction of his objective value. Sincere an honest
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  Speaker 1: man who once deny the objective value cease praying. Witness
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  Speaker 1: such men as Darwin, Tyndale, Spencer, and Huxley. Their philosophy
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  Speaker 1: led them to the conclusion that prayer was never answered,
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  Speaker 1: and therefore they properly and honestly, though as we think
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  Speaker 1: mistakenly disastrously ceased to pray, I am not for a
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  Speaker 1: single moment denying the subjective value of prayer. No human
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  Speaker 1: being has ever lived the life of familiarity with the
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  Speaker 1: secret place without bearing the light and glory of it
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  Speaker 1: on the face. Those who know what it is to
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  Speaker 1: talk often with God gain a tone in their talking
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  Speaker 1: with men which cannot be mistaken here in the subjective
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  Speaker 1: value of prayer. But it came out of the profound
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  Speaker 1: conviction that when they spoke, they were heard. When they asked,
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  Speaker 1: they were answered. I believe therefore, that the demonstration of
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  Speaker 1: the subjective value of prayer is presumptive evidence of its
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  Speaker 1: objective value. Our belief, however, in the prevailing power of prayer,
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  Speaker 1: has firmer foundations. It is based first of all, upon
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  Speaker 1: our doctrine of God. We do not believe that he
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  Speaker 1: is the slave of his own laws. At the same time,
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  Speaker 1: we do not believe in a God who is lawless
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  Speaker 1: but law abiding. His knowledge of all law is, however,
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  Speaker 1: such as to enable him in the overruling of one
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  Speaker 1: law by another, so to perform what, to our limited
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  Speaker 1: vision appears to be miraculous. Our doctrine of God makes
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  Speaker 1: us believe that it is possible for him to do
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  Speaker 1: in answer to prayer, that which appears to be contrary
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  Speaker 1: to law, but which is in reality wrought by the
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  Speaker 1: operation of a law of which we know nothing, in
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  Speaker 1: relation to another law of which we know something. It
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  Speaker 1: is reasonable that those who deny the possibility of prayer
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  Speaker 1: always deny the existence of the miraculous. What is a miracle?
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  Speaker 1: The word simply means something which surprises, something for which
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  Speaker 1: we cannot account. Now. The only reason why men deny
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  Speaker 1: the possibility of prayer is that they deny the possibility
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  Speaker 1: of things which they cannot understand. That is the meaning
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  Speaker 1: of the denial of everything which we call supernatural. Our
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  Speaker 1: doctrine of God affirms that from the standpoint of his existence,
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  Speaker 1: of his government, of his love, there is nothing supernatural.
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  Speaker 1: The things which appear to be supernatural to me are
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  Speaker 1: natural to Him. Every miracle of the New Testament and
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  Speaker 1: of the Old Testament was a simple happening which surprised
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  Speaker 1: men who did not know all the facts and forces
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  Speaker 1: of the universe. These things, surprising to finite man, were
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  Speaker 1: actions perfectly natural to God. It is surely time that
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  Speaker 1: we recognize this. A great Many things of which our
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  Speaker 1: fathers would have spoken as being quite as miraculous as
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  Speaker 1: anything recorded in the Bible, are commonplace of every day life.
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  Speaker 1: To us. We are not surprised at the wonders wrought
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  Speaker 1: by electricity, because we have discovered the laws of which
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  Speaker 1: our fathers knew nothing. Yet the increase of our knowledge
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  Speaker 1: makes us the more ready to declare that even today
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  Speaker 1: we are but children of the dat The Christian affirmation
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  Speaker 1: is that God dwells in the light, and there is
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  Speaker 1: no darkness with him. That which appears to contradict nature
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  Speaker 1: is in harmony with the whole economy of God and
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  Speaker 1: the work of God within the realm of laws higher
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  Speaker 1: than those which man has yet discovered. It may be
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  Speaker 1: objected that law cannot overrule law, but experience proves the contrary.
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  Speaker 1: I hold a book in my hand, the law of
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  Speaker 1: gravitation demands its fall, but it remains in my hand
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  Speaker 1: because of the operation of an overruling law in all
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  Speaker 1: the simplest things of life. This interaction of law is
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  Speaker 1: at work now. The Christian doctrine of God declares that
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  Speaker 1: He sitteth at the center of the universe. He rules
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  Speaker 1: eternity with his presence. All laws are but his thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: and he is able to call into operation force against force,
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  Speaker 1: law against law. We therefore believe it is possible for
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  Speaker 1: his children to go to him and ask of him
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  Speaker 1: and receive from him things they cannot obtain in any
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  Speaker 1: other way. Things absolutely impossible to men within the realm
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  Speaker 1: of the laws they know, may become possible to them
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  Speaker 1: if they can gain his ear and touch his heart
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  Speaker 1: and find the answer of his overruling power. Once deny
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  Speaker 1: that God can answer prayer, and he is degraded into
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  Speaker 1: a being less than his universe, a prisoner in the
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  Speaker 1: heart of his own creation. Again, our belief in the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of prayer is based upon the declarations of Jesus,
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  Speaker 1: and behind his declarations there is himself. If when I ask,
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  Speaker 1: I never have, When I seek, I cannot find. When
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  Speaker 1: I knock, no door is opened to me, then either
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  Speaker 1: Christ was deceived or a deceiver. His teaching was most
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  Speaker 1: explicit in this connection. One quotation, perhaps the most remarkable
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  Speaker 1: of all, will suffice. If ye abide in me and
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  Speaker 1: my words abide in you, ask whatever ye will, and
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  Speaker 1: it shall be done unto you. A careful examination of
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  Speaker 1: that passage makes it even more wonderful than appears at
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  Speaker 1: first sight. The word ask may with perfect accuracy be
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  Speaker 1: rendered demand as your do. No violence will be done
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  Speaker 1: to the Lord's words, if instead of whatsoever ye will
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  Speaker 1: re read whatsoever ye are inclined to. Yet again, the
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  Speaker 1: word translated done may be changed into generated. And we
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  Speaker 1: have here, as it seems to me, the most stupendous
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  Speaker 1: statement regarding prayer ever uttered. It makes prayer limitless within limits.
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  Speaker 1: If ye abide in me and my words abide in
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  Speaker 1: you are the limits. Let these be observed. Then prayer
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  Speaker 1: becomes the method of cooperation with deity. The life of
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  Speaker 1: true relation to himself is one in which desire harmonizes
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  Speaker 1: with the purposes of God, and which therefore demands an answer,
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  Speaker 1: which is provided, even though the creative force of Deity
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  Speaker 1: should be employed. If there is no answer to prayer.
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  Speaker 1: Then these are the words of one who was deceived
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  Speaker 1: or was a deceiver, impossible alternatives, despite a thousand newborn philosophies.
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  Speaker 1: Neither was he deceived nor a deceiver. What he said
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  Speaker 1: is true, though the heavens fall, heaven and earth may
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  Speaker 1: pass away, but his word cannot. To deny the possibility
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  Speaker 1: of prayer is to deny the teaching of Jesus. To
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  Speaker 1: deny that teaching is to destroy him. Yet once again
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  Speaker 1: we base our belief in the possibility of prayer upon
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the history and experience of men. When science makes experience
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the universal test of reality, how can men rationally exclude
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the experience of the saints of all ages in this matter?
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: They tell us that they have asked, and had sought
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and found knocked, and the door has been opened. In
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: answer to this, it is affirmed that they were all
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: perfectly sincere in believing so, but they were mistaken. Such
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a statement is a test of paations to which I
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: am not equal. To be told that not one or two,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: but hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of human beings, not
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of one age or temperament or geographical position, but of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: every age, of old temperaments, and from every climb through
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: weeks and months, and years and decades and centuries and
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: millenniums have all been deceived. Is to be asked to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: believe something far more incredible than anything which Christianity affirms
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: is true. If the testimony of seers, prophets, psalmists, saints,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: confessors and martyrs is all to go for nothing, yet
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: may God help me to share their delusion, for it
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: has been a glorious delusion and the dynamic by which
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: all the best work of the centuries has been done.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: We affirm therefore our belief in the objective value of prayer,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: first because of our doctrine of God, secondly because of
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the declarations of Jesus Christ, and finally because of the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: history and the experience of the Saints. Yet, let me
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: go one step further. God has been reached always through
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: his son Jesus Christ. Not that men have always understood this,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: not that we perfectly understand it to day. But the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: fact remains that fallen man has always found his way
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to God in prayer through the mystery of the mediation
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of Christ. Now, that is the theme we are proposing
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to follow the Christian revelation is that of the constant
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: method by which man has been able to pray, by
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: which man has asked and received, has sought and found,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: has knocked and found the door opened. So that the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: final proof of the objective value of prayer lies in
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: all that Christian economy which we claim creates its possibility,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and which is to be considered. End of Chapter two,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Chapter three of the Practice of Prayer by G. Campbell Morgan.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Marianne Chapter three, The Platform of Prayer. No man hath
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: declared him. John Chapter one, verse eighteen. He that cometh
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: from above is above all. He that is of the earth,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: He that cometh from heaven is above all what he
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: hath seen and heard of, that he beareth witness. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: no man receiveth his witness. He that hath received his witness,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: hath set his seal to this, that God is true.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: John chapter three, verses thirty one to thirty three. I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd layeth down his
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: life for the sheep. Therefore, doth the Father love me?
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Because I lay down my life, that I may take
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: it up again. No one taketh it away from me,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: but I lay it down of myself. I have power
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to lay it down, and I have power to take
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: it again. This commandment received I from my Father. John
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: chapter ten, verses eleven, seventeen, and eighteen. Verily, verily, I
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that I do, shall he do also? And greater works
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: than thee shall he do. Because I go unto the Father.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I do? That the Father may be glorified in the sun.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: If ye shall ask me anything in my name, that
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: will I do. John Chapter fourteen, verses twelve to fourteen.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And I will pray the Father, and he shall give
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you another comforter, that he may be with you for ever,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: for it beholdeth him not. Neither knoweth him. Ye know him,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: for he abideth with you and shall be in you.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: But the comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: will send in my name, He shall teach you all things,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you John Chapter fourteen, Verses sixteen, seventeen, and twenty six.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: But when the comforter is come, whom I will send
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: unto you from the Father, even the spirit of truth
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: John Chapter fifteen, verse twenty six. Having considered the subject
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of the possibility of prayer generally, we now proceed to
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: think of it particularly, and as within the Christian fact.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: In the three groups of scriptures with which this study
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is prefaced, we have indicated the threefold fact which creates
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the possibility of prayer according to Christian teaching and experience.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: The selection of verses is not intended to be exhaustive.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: It would be quite possible to take other single verses
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: containing the same truth in some other setting. It is
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: also self evident that in this study there is no
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: intention of dealing exhaustively with the verses selected. I propose
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: only to deduce from them their suggestiveness on this particular
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: subject of prayer. In the first place, let me state
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the general value of each group. In the first our
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Lord is presented to us as the one who has
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: revealed the Father. In the second, he is presented as
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the one who brings us, through his mediatorial work, into
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the presence of the Father, that there we may appear
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: complete in the Son and therefore unafraid. In the third,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: he is presented to us as the one through whose
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: perfect and accomplished work, the Spirit is given to us
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to abide with us, to be in us. This threefold
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: fact creates the Christian platform of prayer. Its first phase
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: is that Christ has made such a revelation of the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Father as creates in our hearts a desire for prayer.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: The second is that He has done such work for
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: us as admits us to the presence of God, in
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: order that we may have the right to pray. While
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the third is that upon the accomplishment of his work,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and as its crowning glory, he poured forth his Spirit, who,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: by indwelling, is the inspiration of our prayer. As we
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: stand in Christ in the presence of that God whom
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Jesus has perfectly revealed. The relation of this threefold fact
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: to our previous study should be noted. Therein we declared
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that we believe prayer to be possible because of our
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: doctrine of God. From whence did we obtain this doctrine?
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: From Christ's revelation of the Father. We declared in the
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: second place that we believe prayer to be possible because
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: of the teaching of Christ. What was the final teaching
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of Christ in answer to that request of his disciples.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: It was not the teaching of his words, but that
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of his work. The media Nation of Jesus is his
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: ultimate teaching, which brings conviction to our hearts of the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: possibility of prayer. Finally, we declare that we believe the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: possibility of prayer because of the experience of the saints.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: How has that experience been created? It has ever been
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the result of the indwelling and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Let us now approach the subject from another standpoint by
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: asking whether prayer is possible. Apart from these truths, I
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: unhesitatingly reply that it is not. If they are denied,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: prayer will cease sooner or later. There may be prayer
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: in some senses apart from a consciousness of these things.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: There is an instinct for prayer in human nature, which
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: expresses itself among all peoples. But prayer as we understand it,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: as our fathers have experienced it, and, as the New
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Testament teaches, is absolutely impossible. Save on that platform. Let
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: us begin with the first fact. Suppose it were possible
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to blot out the revelation of God which the world
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: has received through Jesus Christ. The supposition is, of course
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: an absurdity. The revelation can never be entirely lost. It
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: has become ingrained in the common consciousness of the age.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Those who deny the deity of Jesus and tell us
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: they believe in the fatherhood of God, speaking with exquisite
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: beauty of that fatherhood, are speaking of that which Christ revealed.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: For the sake of argument, however, let us suppose it
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: possible that the world should lose that consciousness of God
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: which Christ has created. What then would be the result.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: The measure of intellectual progress apart from revelation would be
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the measure in which men would cease to pray. It
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: may be objected that this is to declare that prayer
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: is not an intellectual exercise. But that is not so.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: When I refer to the measure of man's intellectual progress
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: apart from revelation, I am proposing to omit the quantity
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: without which the intellect is at once darkened and imprisoned.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: No man is a full grown intellectual who is not
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: ready to receive revelation. To turn in the back upon
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: revelation is necessarily to cease to pray. Why did Huxley, Tyndell,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Darwin and Spencer cease to pray? The answer inevitably is
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: because they ceased to believe in revealed religion. They denied
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: that God had revealed himself to men directly and specifically.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Some declared that he was unknowable, that it was not
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: possible for him to reveal himself to men, or for
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: men to receive any revelation from him. Denying revealed religion,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: they turned to nature and prosecuted their inquiry with absolute
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: honesty and splendid devotion. Some of their number, as we
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: well know, who in their early days, possessed a love
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: of poetry and music, lost it entirely in their devotion
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: to cold scientific investigation. What was their ultimate position? They
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: could not pray, and this because nature never reveals that
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: fact concerning God which creates a desire for prayer. Nature
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: does reveal God, but not in all the of his being.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: What can a man find in nature if he shuts
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the book of revelation, and declines to believe that God
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: has spoken in his word or through his son. The Apostle,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: writing to the Romans, declared that God had evidently revealed
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: himself in nature in two particulars, namely in his power
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and divinity. The men to whom reference has been made
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: declared that they found at the back of all natural
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: phenomena and eternal energy. One of them spoke of this
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: as a double faced somewhat a combination of intelligence and force.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I accept the testimony of the apostle and of the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: modern scientist, that you find God in nature as force
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and as intelligence. But to neither of these, nor to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the too in cooperation, is it possible to pray. I
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: cannot pray to force. All I can do in its
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: presence is to discover its law and obey it, in
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: order that I may constrain it to serve me rather
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: than to blast me. It is a perpetual law of force,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: that it will do the one or the other according
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: to the relation which we bear to it. Take dynamite
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: as expressive of force. To disobey its law is to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: be scattered by it into fragments. By obedience to its
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: law is the rock blasted and the highway created. When
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: men would use dynamite, they do not pray to it,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: they discover its law. If God be only an eternal energy,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: then I cannot pray. But even then I will attempt
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to discover the law of His operation and obey it.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: During the last fifty years, man's conception of the divine
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: intelligence has been greatly enlarged. As man has prosecuted his
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: inquiry and come to understand more perfectly the marvel of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the universe in the midst of which he lives, he
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: has come to a larger comprehension of the marvel of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the all governing intelligence. For instance, there was a time
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: when man turned his telescope to the heavens and counted
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the stars. A little later on, with a more powerful instrument,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: he declared that the number was far in excess of
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: that first affirmed, until at last Rossi turned his great
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: refractor to the heavens and declared that the stars cannot
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: be counted. That is the scientific position today. The Bible
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: affirmed it long ago, Jeremiah saying that the stars were
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: without number, but men declared it was the license of poetry.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it was cold, hard, scientific
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: fact to return. However, this scientific investigation has enlarged man's
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: conception of the intelligence behind nature, and in that proportion
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: it has been less easy for man to pray. That
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: may sound a strange thing to say, and yet I
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: think it must be conceded as true. When I find
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: illimitable intelligence ordering seasons and marshaling stars, I cannot believe
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that by any asking of mine, I can hope to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: affect or persuade such a mind. I cannot pray to intelligence.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: But now I read no man hath seen God at
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: any time. The only begotten which is in the bosom
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: of the Father, hath declared him. Here is a new quantity,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a new fact, the bosom of the Father. Put this
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: into other words, and read the heart of God. Jesus
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: has revealed the fact that God is more than force
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and intelligence working in cooperation. He is a personal being,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and at the back of the force, presiding over it,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: behind the intelligence inspiring it is love. If that be true,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: there is at once born within me a desire to pray.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: If it be true that behind all the rest there
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: is a heart, then I will pray in spite of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: force and notwithstanding intelligence, if God is but another name
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: for intelligence, that intelligence is demonstrated to be so stupendous
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: that it is unthinkable and foolish for me to attempt
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: to pray to such a mind, as that prayer is impossible.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I am bruised and broken upon life's highway. But there
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: is no help for me in the inscrutable might and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: mind of which I am conscious. But out of the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: infinite spaces there comes to me a great love song.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Out of the bosom of the Father comes a message
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: of tenderness and compassion. Immediately bruised and broken as I am,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I want to pray. I desire to speak out of
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: my sense of sin and sorrow to the heart behind
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: force and intelligence concerning my need. Agony can sob itself
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: out upon a heart, Impotence can trust love, a sinner
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: can turn his face back towards a father. Neither force
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: nor intelligence, nor both working in co operation, constitute God.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: If that is all a man knows of God, he
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: will cease to speak of it as God, and presently
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: will write the word with a small g or he
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: will simply use the word in accommodation to the age
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: in which he lives, not because of its personal significance.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Christ has revealed two men the fact that the personality
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: behind the universe is force, intelligence, and heart, a complete personality,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: not only volitional and intellectual, but emotional withal. While I
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: cannot comprehend him nor encompass him within my finite thinking,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I still know that I have found in that infinite
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: conception something which perfectly corresponds to my finite life. There
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: is something in me of force and intelligence, But the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: greatest of me is my heart. When my finite heart
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: finds the infinite heart of God, I am able to
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: trust my finite strength to his infinite strength, and my
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: finite mind to his infinite intelligence. This, then, is the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: first fact in the platform of prayer, that the God
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of the universe has a bosom, a heart, and that
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the Sun has spoken to men out of it. By
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the way of Jesus Christ, there has come to man
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: this new revelation concerning God, the revelation of his heart,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of his essential essence, of his love. Out of that
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: revelation is borne the passion for prayer in the soul
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: of man. Yet that fact alone does not make prayer possible.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Neither does it reveal to you to us the platform
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: upon which we stand to pray. Though I appear to
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: contradict what I have already said, it must be affirmed
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: that in the moment when I stand face to face
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: with God as the God of Love, even though the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: desire to pray was born within me, I am conscious
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that I dare not pray. When Jesus Christ brings me
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: into his presence and I find his love, there is
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: immediately in my nature a going out after him. But
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: simultaneously with the birth of desire comes a new consciousness
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: which seals my lips. It is when I stand in
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the presence of God as Love that I realize for
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the first time the real meaning of sin, and I
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: am silent. This assertion may not carry conviction at first,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: yet think of it. The men who have missed the
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: vision of God's love have invariably lost their sense of
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: their own sin. Those who have lost the God of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: revelation never speak of sin, as to those who live
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: in the light of revelation. Sin to the former is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: an infirmity, a weakness, a process of development. It has
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: recently been affirmed that this is an age in which
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: men of highly developed intelligence do not care to think
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of or speak of sin. But it is surely no
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: proof of high development that men desire to close their
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: eyes to facts. I repeat that to lose the vision
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: of God is to lose the sense of sin. If
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I simply think of an eternal energy working in response
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to supreme intelligence, I become conscious of my own weakness
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and my own foolishness, but never of my sin. It
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: is when I stand in the presence of the heart
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: of God that I really begin to know what sin is.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: To illustrate briefly from personal experience, I was born in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: a Christian home, nurtured by Christian parents, and by that
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: fact graciously and tenderly spared from many of the vulgarities
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: of godlessness. Consequently, Mount Sinai, with its thunder, never made
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: me tremble, never brought deep conviction of sin to my heart.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I have always sympathized with the young ruler, who, confronted
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: by the sixth final words of the Decalogue, could yet
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: look into the face of incarnate purity and say, all
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: these things I have observed from my youth. But when
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I came to stand consciously not at the foot of
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the mount which might not be touched, but on the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: green hill, outside the city wall, and saw in the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: mystery of that passion and pain, the revelation of the
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Heart of God, the self sacrificing, self denying heart of God.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I knew what a sinner I was when I came
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: into the presence of God as love. I found in
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: love a light which bowed me to the dust in shame.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: And though my sad heart yearned to pray, I dared
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: not take his name upon my lips, for he is
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: love ineffable, who has, let me say it, reverently denied
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: himself in order to help men. In the light of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that love, I discovered that sin does not consist of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: incidental acts of passing days, but in the essential attitude
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: of selfishness. It is when Jesus brings me into the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: presence of the Heart of God that I put my
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: hand upon my lips and cry, unclean, unclean. I want
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to pray, I dare not pray. I have forfeited all
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: right to ask for anything from such love. I need
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: yet more than the revelation of the Father before I
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: can pray. Thank God, there is more. I pass to
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the second group of scriptures, and in them I find
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the provision I seek. I am the good shepherd. The
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. Death
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and resurrection are in that sentence. He layeth down his life.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: That is the mystery of his dying. He layeth down
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: his life for the sheep. That is in such a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: way that it becomes communicate to them. No one taketh
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: it away from me, but I lay it down of myself.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I have power to lay it down, and I have
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: power to take it up again. This commandment received ie
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: from my Father. Thus, in the radiant splendor of these
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: words of Jesus, I see one who comes out from God.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: God lays down his life, and in the mystery of
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that act clears me from sin, who takes his life
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: again in resurrection, and in the might of that act
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: places at my disposal a new life which makes it
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: possible for me to stand unafraid in the presence of God.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: All this is exactly what I need. I cannot pray
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: unless my sin is forgiven and my dead spiritual nature
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: is brought to life. Hear me in solemn reverence, as
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I speak out of my heart's deepest consciousness. I need
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: something done for me, whereby the pollution of sin can
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: be blotted out, if not for God's sake, for my own.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: If you could persuade me that God could forgive me
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: without all that the cross means, you could not persuade
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: me that I could forgive myself. I must have something
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that cleanses from the pollution which spoils and harms and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: clings to my life. Sentimental passion and pity cannot purge
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the stain from my own conscience. In the very deepest
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: of me, there is a cry which answers the very
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: word of revelation. Without the shedding of blood, there is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: no remission. Ere I can enter the presence chamber of
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the revealed Father and pray any some mystery of cleansing
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and healing, some new dynamic which should touch and quicken
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: into life the withered powers within me. I am amazed
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: at the love of God. But I dare not pray
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: until the revealing Sun stands before me as mediator. Also,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: from Basrah, This that is glorious in his appeal, marching
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: in the greatness of his strength. It is one with
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: wounded hands, the mystery of pain written upon his face,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: with all the evidences of the passion of sacrificial dying
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and wrapping him as with a purple robe. Who is he?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: He is the Son of God, the good Shepherd, the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: one who came after lost ones, the one who found
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: them bruised and broken, mangled and torn by wolves, the
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: one who laid down his life to rescue them, and
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: yet in such power as to be able to take
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: it again and communicate it to them, so that it
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: became their life. The one who, by such dying and living,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: has given to men of his life the vision, the virtue,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the victory. It is God himself acting out in the
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: limitation of time and sense and flesh, that infinite mystery
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: of love, saving through sacrifice. Thus it is through the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: rent of veil of his flesh that I enter the
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: place of prayer. It is through the mystery of his
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: accomplished work that I dare to draw near. I who
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: had felt the moving of God's heart as Jesus spake
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: and taught, and yet was made afraid thereby because of sin,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: am now brought near by the mystery of mediation, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: in the presence of God, I dare to pray, standing unafraid,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: in the light of God's love in the merit and
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: might of the death and resurrection of his son. And
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: yet once again I cannot pray. The love of God
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: revealed has made me desire to pray. The work of
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Jesus is mediator has brought me into the place of prayer.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: But I was never more afraid to pray than now.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: That is the meaning of the apostolic declaration. We know
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: not how to pray as we ought. For who are
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: these of whom he thus speaks. They are the people
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: whose experience is described in the chapter, which commences with
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: no condemnation and ends with no separation. There's surely no
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: time in which a man feels less able to pray
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: than when having seen the vision of God through Jesus,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: and having been made nigh by Jesus to God, he
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: stands in the place where he is free to pray.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: The nearer we live to the heart of Jesus, and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the closer we abide in the consciousness of God's love,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the less shall we feel able to pray. We sometimes
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: sing the weakest, feeblest need the most the praying in
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: the Holy Ghost. That is a great truth. And yet
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I think it may be written in another way, the strongest,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: mightiest need the most the praying in the Holy Ghost.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: That is to say, those who have answered the revelation
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: of Love by absolute abandonment to the mediating Son. Those
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: who have entered most perfectly into the experience of the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: divine provision, need most sorely a true inspiration, and are
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: the most acutely conscious of their need. To stand in
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: the presence of such love. By such grace is to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: shrink back, lest by some impurity of motive or faultiness
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: of desire, prayer should become unworthy. Thus we are brought
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: to the third fact in the provision for prayer that
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: was dealt with in the final Discourses of Jesus when
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: he promised the comforter. The indwelling Spirit interprets to us
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the meaning of the life we live, and gives us
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: to see the will of God in Jesus and the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: way in which we must act in order to realize
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that will. The indwelling Spirit, who knows the will of God,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: creates our new aspirations and desires, and out of these
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: comes our prayer. Thus standing in the light of the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: revealed Father, through the mediation of his Son, and answering
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the inspiration of the indwelling Spirit. We pray. In conclusion,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Let these thoughts be summarized. By the coming of Jesus.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: God has been so revealed as to create the desire
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: for prayer. By the work of Jesus, mediation has been
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: made which brings man into the place of prayer. By
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the indwelling of Jesus. By the Spirit, desires are created
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and choices are made which express themselves in prayer. Thus,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: through the mercy of the Father, the merit of the
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: mediating Son, and the might of the inspiring Spirit, prayer
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: is possible. That conception of the platform of prayer must
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: have an effect upon our praying. If we lack that vision,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: we shall pray ignorantly and foolishly. We shall ask and
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: have not because we ask amiss. If once that platform
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: of prayer be recognized, and we understand to whom and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: through whom and by whom we pray, our praying will
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: become prevailing. The whole truth may be constantly remembered by
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the apostolic benediction, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and the love of God and the communion of the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Holy Spirit. The only difference is that in this benediction.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: We commence with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and then pass to that infinite fountain, the love of God,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and finally refer to that abiding fellowship, the communion of
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: that ye, through his poverty, might become rich. That is
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: the story of mediation. The love of God, that is
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: the whole word of Christ's revelation. The communion of the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Holy Spirit, that is the fact of the Spirit's indwelling
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: and inspiration. End of chapter three, Chapter four of the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Practice of Prayer by G. Campbell Morgan. This LibriVox recording
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by Marianne four the
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: preparation for prayer. Fear not, little flock, for it is
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom Luke
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve, verse thirty two. But of him are ye
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: in Christ, Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. First Corinthians, Chapter one,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: verse thirty For we know that the whole creation growneth
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and travaileth in pain together until now, and not only so,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: even as we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for our
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: adoption to wit the redemption of our body. For by
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: not hope, for who hopeth for that which he seeth.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: But if we hope for that which we see not,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: then we do with patience wait for it. And in
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: like manner, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity, for we
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: know not how to pray as we ought. But the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: is in the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: And we know that to them that love God, all
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: things work together for good, even to them that are
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: called according to His purpose. Romes, chapter eight, verses twenty
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: two to twenty eight. Let me at once clear the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: ground by making plain what I do not mean by
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: preparation for prayer. In this title there is no reference
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: to any preparation which is occasional and special, for such preparation,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: there will be no necessity in proportion as the larger
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: preparation of the life is assured. It is a great
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: question whether the attitude of mind which demands some recall
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: and readjustment in order to public or private prayer, is
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: at any time one which is honoring to our Lord
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: and Master. I am perfectly well aware that this is
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: a somewhat startling statement, and I appeal for a careful
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: consideration of the subject now to be dealt with, that
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the truth concerned may be ascertained. In the meantime, I
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: do most confidently affirm that it ought to be a
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: perfectly natural and easy thing to turn from work or
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: play to prayer at any time or in any place.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: And moreover, it seems to me increasingly as days pass on,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: that any work or play which makes that spontaneous prayer
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: impossible should be abandoned at all costs and once for all.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: As to private prayer, believing as I do in its
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: required constancy, I cannot also believe in the necessity for
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: any process of preparation as to public prayer. An illustration
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: will express in the simplest way my entire feeling on
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the subject. Some few years ago in a certain city
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: in England which shall be nameless. In preparation for special services,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: I met the ministers and workers in conference. In the
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: course of an address to them, I said that I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: should be very glad of my brethren in the minute
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: would be on the platform with me and be ready
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: to lead in prayer as they were asked. At the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: close of the meeting, one minister came to me and said,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I should be so glad if you think of asking
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: me to pray, if you will let me know the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: day before, so that I might be prepared. I replied,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: if I want you to pray, I will let you
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: know the day before. I never asked him to pray.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Some may object to this, believing that a man ought
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to have time to prepare to pray on such an occasion.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I can only say for myself that the kind of
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: preparation which has been very largely followed in any such
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: case has, in my judgment, wrought widespread hard At many
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: of our great ecclesiastical gatherings, prayers are heard which are
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: perfect literary productions, but which lack the passion and power
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: which prevail. Consequently, I am not dealing with the subject
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of how to prepare for prayer upon some special occasion.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: If we learn the deep secrets of prayer, we shall
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: be able to pray any when and any where. We
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: shall fulfill the injunctions of the New Testament which startle us. Injunction,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: men ought always to pray, and the apostolic injunction pray
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: without ceasing too often. Our method of dealing with such
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: texts is a revelation of our unpreparedness for prayer. We
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: say that Christ did not really mean that men ought
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: always to pray. He meant that they ought to pray
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: as often as they can. He meant nothing of the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: kind When he said men ought always to pray, he
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: meant it. When the Holy Spirit, speaking through the apostles,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: said pray without ceasing, he meant it. If we can
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: but learn the true secret of preparation, we shall find
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: that our whole life becomes to prayer. That it will
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: be impossible for us to write a letter without a
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: lifting of the heart to God for guidance. I am
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: inclined to think that the more we know of real prayer,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: the less time we may spend on the external and
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: apparent exercise thereof I am speaking then, of the preparation
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: which touches life and so makes us ready for prayer
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: at all times. Having thus attempted to clear the ground,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: let me proceed first to put the whole statement into
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: one brief sentence, and then examine that sentence in detail.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: The whole case then may thus be stated, preparation for
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: prayer is secured by response in the life to the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: great facts which make prayer possible. That I maintain is
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the inclusive philosophy of preparation for prayer. Now let us
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: examine that statement. First of all, it must be remembered
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: that all truth is a light which reveals a pathway
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: in which man must walk. Truth always sets up a claim,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: makes a demand. It is never merely a commodity which
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: can be stored and labeled and shelved. A man cannot
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: hold truth. Truth must hold the man. Immediately truth presents
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: itself to a life, it makes a demand upon that life.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: While that is so in regard to all truth, it
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: is pre eminently the case in regard to spiritual truth.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Every truth of the Christian faith, taken hold of by
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the mind, makes a call upon the will. In proportion
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: as that claim is answered, the life is sanctified I
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: hold the truth which holds me. Take that principle and
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: apply it to the subject of prayer. We have seen
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: that the platform of prayer consists of the threefold fact
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: of the revelation of the Father, the mediation of the Son,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: the inspiration of the Spirit. I am prepared for prayer
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: in proportion as I obey the claims set upon my
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: life by the revelation the Father, in proportion as I
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: yield myself to the claims made upon my life by
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the mediation of the Son, in proportion as my life
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: answers the claims set up within me by the Spirit's
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: indwelling and inspiration. I see the truth about God revealed
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: in Jesus, and that truth makes claims upon me. If
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I answer them, I am, by such answer prepared for prayer.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: I am brought into the place where I see the
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: truth concerning Christ's great mediatorial work. If I answer the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: claim that Truth makes upon me, I am prepared for prayer.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: I see the truth concerned in the Spirit's method of
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: making intercession. If I answer that indwelling illumination, yield myself
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: to it, refuse to quench or resist or grieve the Spirit,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: and allow my life to be borne along by the
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: great currents of the river of God. I shall be
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: prepared to pray, bound to pray, and shall always pray.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: In other words, preparation for prayer is the life lived
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: in harmony with the truth. We profess to believe. It
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: is not spasmodic occasional, but lies rather in the preparation
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of the life itself and in proportion. As we are
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: living as we ought to live. We not only want
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to pray, we are able to pray. We not only
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: want to pray and are able to pray, but we
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: do pray, and that so as to prevail. Let us
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: consider this more particularly by application of the principle. In
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the case of the previous study our platform of prayer,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: we saw it to be of threefold significance, including the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: revelation of the Father, the mediation of the Sun, the
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: inspiration of the Spirit. If it be true that we
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: are prepared for prayer as we respond to the great
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: truths suggested by these words, we now have to ask ourselves,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: what is the revelation of the Father, what the mediation
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: of the Son, What the inspiration of the Spirit. We
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: need to examine these things in order to find out
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: how far we are responsive to them, how far we
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: are obedient, so that thus we may find out how
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: far we are really prepared for prayer. Such questions, of course,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: finally involve the study of the whole Christian doctrine, but
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: for our present practical purpose, a less comprehensive inquiry will suffice.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I have therefore selected the passages with which the study
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: is prefaced, not to consider the specific teaching of each passage,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: but because they contain light which will help us take
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the first of them. Fear not, little flock, for it
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: These are the actual words of Jesus. I'm not dealing
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: with the message of encouragement. They contain great and gracious
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: as it is, and having some bearing on our subject
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: of prayer as it has, I desire rather to look
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: at the verse from a purely literary standpoint, and in
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: so doing we find that Jesus recognizes all the essential
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: truth concerning God which he came to reveal to man. Sometimes,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: in ordinary conversation, a very general statement will reveal the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: speaker's whole philosophy on a certain subject. When Jesus uttered
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: these words, he was not intending to make a revelation
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: of the Father, but his conception of God flashes forth
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: in great clearness and beauty. If such a statement appeared
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: in a press issue from the pen of a modern author,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: a merely literary critic might be tempted to find a
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: great deal of fault with it. I can imagine him saying,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: our author has fallen into a strange mixture of metaphors.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: He begins, fear not, little flock, and the figure in
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: his mind is evidently that of the shepherd in his sheep.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: But forgetting this, he continues, it is your father's good pleasure,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: showing that he has already mixed the figure of the
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: shepherd and the sheep with that of the Father and
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: the family. And again immediately he seems to have forgotten
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the previous figures when he continues to give you the kingdom.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: We know how perfectly, that the metaphors of Jesus never clash.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: In saying this, there is a perfect unfolding of all
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: truth concerning God which Jesus came to teach man. He
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: is revealed as the shepherd, father king. The picture suggested
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: is purely Eastern, and there can be no doubt that
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: in many respects, Eastern conditions explain fundamental positions far more
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: clearly than many of our Western methods do. In the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Arab tribe, the Sheikh is at once shepherd of the flock,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: father of the family, and king of the nation. In
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: those figures, as Jesus used them, he takes us back
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: to the original idea of government. Through the picture of
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: the ancient economy. He reveals the eternal verities, of which
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: the material things are but the shadow upon time's surface.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: We must remember that these words were spoken to his own.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: When he addresses those outside, he calls them first to
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: submission to the kingship of God. No man ever found
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: God as father until he recognized him as king. In
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: speaking to his own, the Master begins with the thought
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: of the shepherd, then passes to that of the Father,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and finally to that of the King. At the heart
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: of the revelation is the thought of the fatherhood. We
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: shall see that more clearly when we come to deal
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: with the pattern of prayer, the whole of which is
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: addressed to the Father, the first half asking for the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: setting up of the kingdom, and the last for the
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: care and provision of the shepherd. None of these things
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: were new. There is nothing in the Gospels which had
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: not been said in the scriptures of the old economy.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Yet everything he said was new. Men had said, the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Lord is my shepherd for ages. But when he said
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: I am the good Shepherd, men understood as they had
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: never done before. In the midst of trouble. Men had
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: constantly sung, like as a father pitieth his children, so
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the Lord pitieth them that fear him. But when Jesus said,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: your father knoweth, he revealed the meaning of fatherhood far
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: more perfectly than the song which spoke of his pity.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Merely men had recognized Jehovah as king, but Jesus came
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: to reveal the meaning of his kingship. Nothing was new.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Everything was new. The old things blossomed into new beauty
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: such as humanity had never dreamed of. It is only
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: in proportion as we answer the claims of this revelation
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: that we are prepared for prayer. As we are loyal
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: to the King like unto the Father. Content with the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: provision of the Shepherd, we are ready to pray. All
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: this is surely self evident. How can we pray thy
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Kingdom come if we are rebelling against the king. How
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: is it that our prayer so often fails to prevail
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: because we persist in praying quite honestly Thy Kingdom come,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and yet in our own heart we are not submissive
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to the king. Something in the life is permitted which
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: is contrary to his will, something in the business, the friendships,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: the amusements. It is a solemn yet all full truth
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: that we blasphem when we pray for the kingdom to
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: come and will not permit it to obtain in our
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: own life. It is an infinitely worse thing that I
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: should pray for God's kingdom to come in the world
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: while I refuse it to be set up in my
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: own heart. That it is to take his name in
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: vain because I was born in a slum and had
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: never learned to revere it. If prayer is not prevailing
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: in our experience, it is not because some scientific teacher
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: has denied its possibility, but rather because we are not
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: responding to the revelation of the significance of the Shepherd.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I would speak in all tenderness. It is when I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: am resting in my Shepherd's provision that I am able
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: to pray. If I am rebellious against my lot and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: persist in looking upon my work as drudgery. I cannot pray.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: It is the heart at leisure from itself, because perfectly
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: content with the shepherd's provision, that is able to pray.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: If I can truly say that wherere my shepherd leads,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I am content because he leads. If through the desert,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: I am glad, for that is best. If tis his will.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Or if he leads by water still, I sing not
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: because the waters are still and the pasture's green, but
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: because he leads, then I am able to pray. I
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: pray God to teach me that Jesus revealed God as Father.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: This fact is central and final. How do we respond
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: to it? A child responds to fatherhood when it reproduces
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: the father's likeness. That is something infinitely beyond loyalty to
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: kingship or content with pasture. The child inherits his father's nature.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: If I am a child of God, I inherit my
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: father's nature. The proportion in which I yield myself there too,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: until it manifests itself through me, is the measure of
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: my power to pray. One illustration must suffice. How can
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: we hope to pray so as to prevail while we
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: call ourselves children of God and yet nurse in our
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: hearts bitterness and malice, which are unlike God. It is
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: only when God's nature of love rules and reigns and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: inspires all our life that we shall want to pray,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: and that our praying will prevail. To use the terminology
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: of the praying man is not to pray to have
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the revelation and to answer it in loyalty to the King,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: in contentment with the provision of the shepherd, in the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: reproduction of the Father's likeness, that is, to pray. Take
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: a step further and consider the response of the soul
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to the fact of Christ's mediation. In his letter to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: the Corinthian Christians, Paul had been contrasting the wisdom of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: man's words with the wisdom of the word of the Cross,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: assuring them that our gospel, while a message of foolishness
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: to the Greeks, is not devoid of wisdom. In a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: comprehensive statement, he declares that wisdom is of him are
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: ye in Christ, who was made unto us, wisdom from
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Where the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: and redemption are separate and differing aspects of our Lord's
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: work in the believer, or whether righteousness, sanctification, and redemption
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: are but the Apostles analysis of wisdom, the one all
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: inclusive word appears to me immaterial, though personally I hold
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the latter interpretation. Christ is wisdom, and this wisdom of
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: God is manifest in righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. These three
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: words cover the whole fact of Christ's mediatorial work. They
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: reveal the tenses of the Christian life. These tenses are
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: indicated by three great words, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: past tense of salvation is that experience to which I
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: look back, when I believed Christ was imputed to me
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: as righteousness. That was the salvation of my spirit. The
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: present tense of salvation is that process through which I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: am now passing. Christ is being imparted to me as sanctification.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: That is the salvation of my mind. The future tense
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: of salvation is the life which is nearer than when
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: I believed Christ will be implanted in me as redemption.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: That is the salvation of my The word translated redemption
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: is always used with regard to the coming glory. The
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: same word occurs in the letter to the Romans, even
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for our adoption to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: wit the redemption of our body. Of course, it will
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: be understood that I do not mean that the English
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: word redemption is always used of the coming glory, but
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: that the Greek words so translated, is always used. In
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: this sense. It is most important that we should grasp
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: this threefold idea of our salvation. It consists in Christ
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: imputed as righteousness, imparted as sanctification, implanted as glorification. I
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: was saved in the essential fact of my being, my spirit,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: when in answer to my faith, Christ was imputed to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: me as the righteousness of God. I am being saved
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: in mind or consciousness as Christ through all the discipline
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: of the present life is being imparted to me as sanctification.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: I shall be saved finally when my body shall be
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: fashioned anew in the likeness of His glorious beauty, when
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: Christ shall be implanted within me and manifest through me
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: through the mediatorial work of Jesus. Righteousness is made mine,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: Sanctification is being made mine. Redemption in its perfection will
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: yet be made mine. If we are to pray. We
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: must answer the claims of these truths. How am I
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: to answer the claims of righteousness by yielding myself to
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: God as one alive from the dead in proportion as
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I do that, I am prepared for prayer. The dynamic
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: of prayer is holiness, which is rectitude of character, and righteousness,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: which is rectitude of conduct. Rectitude of conduct can only
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: grow out of rectitude of character. Rectitude of character is
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: given to me potentially when Christ is imputed to me.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: My responsibility is that I yield myself as one alive
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: from the dead, to Jesus Christ for righteousness. How am
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: I to respond to sanctification? Sanctification is the imparting of
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Christ to me grace for grace, That is to say,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: every grace which is in Him is in Him for me.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: And my responsibility is that I appropriate day by day
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: what He communicates in order that He may reproduce himself
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: in me. When in order that I may be more
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: perfectly conformed to His image, the indwelling Christ calls me
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: to some new duty, some new sacrifice, some new enterprise.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: I must answer with ready consent. If I do prayer prevails.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: If I refuse prayer becomes impossible. Finally, what response can
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: I make today to the future tense of my life
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: in Christ? Doctor James Denny, in his book on Thessalonians, says,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: the attitude of expectation is the bloom, as it were,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: of the Christian character. Without it, there's something lacking. The
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Christian who does not look onward and upward wants one
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: mark of perfection. This is, in all probability the point
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: on which we should find ourselves most from home in
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the Christian Church. Not unbelievers only, but
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: disciples as well have practically ceased to think of the
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Second Advent. Yet a truth so clearly a part of
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: scripture teaching cannot be neglected without loss. I believe that
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: to be the most important truth. We have been so
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: afraid of being called other worldly that we have not
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: cared even to sing hymns about Heaven. It is a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: grave mistake. We have been so afraid that some one
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: would name us stargazers, that we have abandoned all speech
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: concerning the Second Advent. Yet the only light that we
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: can ever shed upon the darkness of the world must
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: be light beaming from the face lifted toward God's tomorrow
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: in a matter of prayer, this is of supreme importance.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: To pray with prevailing power, there must be the vision
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: of the morning breaking in the eastern sky. It is
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: the man who sees the coming glory who knows what
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: it is to put blood and sacrifice into the business
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: of establishing that kingdom. Here. In order to pray prevailingly,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I must live in the power of the hope that
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: maketh not ashamed, having my face ever lifted towards the light,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: while I yet look at the sorrow around me and
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: serve diligently the will of my King. Once again, there
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: must be response to the Spirit. I am not now
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: proposing to deal with the whole of the Spirit's work,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: but with that whereby he creates intercession. I would suggest
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: three words as helpful in following the line of thought.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: They are interpretation, consciousness, desire. The Spirit of God in
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Dwelling interprets his interpretation creates a consciousness. That consciousness creates
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: a desire, and that is prayer. Prayer is the soul's
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: sincere desire uttered or unexpressed, the motion of a hidden
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: fire that trembles in the breast the indwelling Spirit knows
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: the will of God and interprets it to the soul
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: in whom he abides. This he does by unveiling Christ,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: who is the revelation of the will of God to me.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: As he was the Word of God incarnate, he was
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the will of God incarnate. I come to him that
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: I may see what is God's will for myself and
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: for all men, that I may understand what is God's
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: purpose concerning the whole world. As we look out upon
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: the movements of the hour and upon all the facts
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: of life, the indwelling Spirit sets them in relation to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: the will of God, and a keen consciousness is born
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: within us of the failure in the midst of which
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: we live. Thus the Spirit makes intercession in us with
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: groaning which cannot be uttered, as he gives us this
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: new consciousness of the limitation and paralysis of all life
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: without God. As the Spirit interprets to us the will
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: of God, he shows the disaster of being out of
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: harmony with that will. As the Spirit interprets the will
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: of God, therefore he makes the soul profoundly discontented with
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: everything that is contrary there too. And this because of
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the soul's supreme content with the good and perfect and
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: acceptable will of God. That is what the Apostle meant
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: when he wrote the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: which have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: ourselves grow within ourselves favor sang this sublime and overwhelming truth.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: In simplest words, Earth's sorrows are most keenly felt in heaven.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: The heavenly people are therefore those who most acutely feel
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: Erth's sorrows and are able to enter into fellowship with
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: God in prayer for the winning of the victories of
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: his love. Following consciousness of discontent is that of desire
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: for the coming of the Kingdom, for the setting up
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: of the will of God, which means the healing of
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: wounds and the breaking of chains. To that work of
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: the indwelling spirit, there must be ready response, quench not
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: the spirit. When the spirit interprets the will of God
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: for life, for home, for city, for nation, we must
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: listen to no other philosophy or be seduced by no
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: other ideal. As the glories of that kingdom flame and
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: flash before us. We must never be turned aside by
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: the glamor of the things of the world. The flesh
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: and the devil. Answer the Spirit, let him teach, let
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: him show the vision. Believe the spirit quench not the spirit,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: but more, infinitely more. When the Spirit, revealing the will
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: of God for the world, creates in the heart a
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: great pain and a great discontent, do not let us
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: check it. That is what Christian men and women alas
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: are too constantly doing when the story of the sin
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: and sorrow of humanity is told. They close their ears
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: and are not willing to share the pain, that is,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: to grieve the spirit. Indeed, we ought to hear, we
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: ought to know, We ought to be ready to bring
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: the new sensitiveness of our Christian life into close touch
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: with the world's agony, until we feel its pain as
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: our very own. The Spirit desires that we should know
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: its sorrow. His work is to interpret to us the
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: meaning of the sob and sigh and the agony of
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: the world. When we feel that, there will spring out
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: of our life a new desire which will drive us
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: to prayer that God's kingdom may come, and to self
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: sacrificing service, without which such prayer is blasphemy. Thus we
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: shall begin to sob with God and to God in
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: our stains of the world's sorrow. Out of such prayer
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: the toil and travail come, which bring the kingdom in.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Thus it will be seen that preparation for prayer is
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: no slight spasmodic process. It is the supreme matter of life. Yet,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: thank God, we can if we will respond to this revelation, mediation,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and inspiration, so as to pray with prevailing power. End
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: of chapter four, Chapter five of the Practice of Prayer
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: by G. Campbell Morgan. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: public domain. Read by Marianne. Chapter five The Plane of Prayer,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Part A. The purposes of God our Father, which art
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom. Come. Thy
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: will be done, as in Heaven, so on earth. Matthew
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Chapter six, Verses nine and ten. We now come to
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: the consideration of the plain upon which prayer is operative,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: the subjects concerning which we have authority to pray. This
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: plain is revealed in the Pattern Prayer as it occurs
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: in the Manifesto of the King. Some few preliminary words
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: are necessary. I find there are some who object to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: the use of this prayer by Christian people. I have
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: for a long time been endeavoring, quite honest to understand
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: the position of such, and I think the objections which
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: they raise may be briefly stated. First, there are those
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: who do not use this prayer because they say its
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: petition for forgiveness is not the Christian petition. They affirm
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: that we have no need now to ask for the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: forgiveness of our debts on the basis of having forgiven
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: our debtors. My answer to such is that they certainly
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: do not understand the real meaning of this prayer, or
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: else they do not understand themselves. Their objection, however, will
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: best be dealt with when we come to the more
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: particular consideration of that petition in the second part of
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: the prayer. Others do not use the prayer because they
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: declare they have no sins to confess or ask forgiveness for. Again,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: I can only say all such either do not understand
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: the meaning of the words debts and debtors, or else
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: they are woefully self deceived. Perhaps the most serious and
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: intelligent objection is that of those who say that this
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: prayer was part of the Messianic manifesto, that it had
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: to do with Christ's teaching regarding the Kingdom, and therefore
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: it is the prayer of the Kingdom and not the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: prayer of the Church. I carefully distinguished between the Kingdom
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Church of
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. But I do not propose to discuss these
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: distinctions now. I recognize that the Church is, according to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: New Testament teaching, a separate entity, having as its final
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: purpose a vocation in the ages to come in the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: heavenly places. While that is perfectly true and should never
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: be forgotten, indeed must not be forgotten, it is also
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: true that for the present hour, all the principles of
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: the Kingdom are committed to the Church, to be realized
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: within the Church and through the Church manifested to the world. Consequently,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: everything that Jesus said in his Manifesto concerning the Kingdom
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: does apply to the Church. As a matter of fact,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: that Manifesto of the king does not apply at all
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: to the outside world for the present day. Its only
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: application is to the Church. That is another point which
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: I do not propose now to elaborate. It is sufficient
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: for the present purpose to say that to attempt to
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: bring about the conditions described in the Great Manifesto of
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: the King, among the vast, unregenerate masses of the people
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: is inevitably to be doomed to disappointment. The things which
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Jesus said to his disciples, I maintain are only applicable
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: to those who are in his kingdom and subject to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: his rule. That manifesto was the enunciation of the ethic
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: of the Kingdom, which no man can accept or obey
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: while he is still in rebellion against the King himself.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: That is a broad and hurried statement. But if it
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: be accepted, it will be seen that in the Church,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: which for this age, according to the purpose of Jesus,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: embodies the principles of the Kingdom and manifest them in
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: the world, this prayer has its rightful place. The supreme
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: answer to objections to its use will be found in
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: an understanding of the prayer itself in proportion. As we
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: really comprehend its intention, its spaciousness, its magnificence, we shall
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: be compelled to use it. There can be no escape
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: from the use of it. For such as are submitted
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: to the reign and lordship of Jesus Christ, and are
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: in sympathy with him in his desires for the world.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Yet another word by way of introduction, It has been affirmed,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: and correctly so, that this is not a new prayer.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: Is every petition is to be found in the Talmudic writings.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: We are not familiar with these writings, and so the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: different petitions of the prayer are known to us only
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: through the Christian news of them. There can be little doubt, however,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: that the men who heard the Master when he first
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: gave them the prayer were familiar with all its petitions.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: In all probability, they had used them constantly in their
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: worship from childhood up now. While that is true, it
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: is also true that the prayer was absolutely new, as
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: it came from the lips of Jesus. He gathered together
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: the things with which they were most familiar, and placed
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: them in such perfect relation to each other as to reveal,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: as never before, the whole plane of prayer. To pray
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that prayer intelligently is to have nothing else to pray for.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: It may be broken up, each petition may be taken
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: separately and expressed in other ways, but in itself it
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: is inclusive and exhaustive. The Jewish rabbis taught the people
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: what were known as index prayers. These consisted of a
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: collection of brief sentences, each one of which suggested a
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: subject of prayer. One of their habits of praying was
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to take such an index prayer, recite one petition at
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: a time, and elaborate it in the presence of God
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: by carrying out its thought and endeavoring to express its
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: full intent. In that sense, the Lord's prayer also is
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: an index prayer. There can be no desire of the
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: huth human heart, which is inspired of the Holy Spirit,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: no petition presented to the throne of the Father, but
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: that it is included in this prayer. The King wove
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: together all the essential petitions which lay scattered over the
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: field of human praying, into one perfect whole, which covers
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: the ground and reveals to men forevermore the plain upon
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: which they may pray. Thus it is a pattern of prayer.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Turning to examination, I shall ask you first of all
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: to notice its structure. I am so increasingly convinced of
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: the value of the eye gate that I want you
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: to look at the prayer in this form, Our Father,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: which art in the heavens. Thy name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom, Come,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: Thy will be done as in Heaven, so on earth.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: our debts, as we also have forgiven our day, and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: You will notice first that the doxology with which the
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: prayer closes is omitted. I suppose most of us felt
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: some kind of pang when taking up the revised version
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: we found it absent. Yet there can be no question
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: as to the accuracy of the omission. Even so conservative
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: and scholarly an expository, as Hengstenberg says concerning the doxology,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: that there is no doubt that it ought to be omitted.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say that so perfect an ending
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: to the prayer had better be retained and made perpetual
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: use of. I have great sympathy with the sentiment of
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: that view, but it cannot be permitted in any strict
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: dealing with the scripture. Personally, I should never think of
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: using the prayer without the doxology. But I should ever
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: remember that the doxology was the answer of a man
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: to the inspired prayer, rather than a part thereof. Now
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: let us notice the structure of the prayer, as I
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: have attempted to set it out. The whole is introduced
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: by an invocation Our Father, which art in the heavens.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: This invocation prepares the way not for the first three
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: petitions only, but for the whole prayer. It is a
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: reverent form of address, and by the use of it
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: we are brought into the presence of the revealed Father.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: Beyond the invocation, the prayer falls into two parts. The
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: first consists of three petitions with a qualifying phrase. The
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: second consists of three petitions. Let us look at the
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: first three petitions and the relation to them of the
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: qualifying phrase, Thy name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: will be done as in heaven, so on earth. It
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: is not thy will be done on earth as it
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: is in heaven. The final phrase refers to all the petitions,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and not merely to the last. The first half of
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: the prayer is therefore one in which we ask that
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: God's name may be hallowed, that His Kingdom may come,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: that His will may be done on this earth as
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: in heaven. The three petitions form one whole petition. They
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: mark stages in development. The first stage is the hallowing
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: of the name, that is followed necessarily by the crowning
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: of the King and the coming of the kingdom. When
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the king is crowned and the kingdom is established, it
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: is demonstrated amongst men by the doing of the will
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: of the King, by those who have hallowed his name,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: and in whom the kingdom is established. Thus, the first
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: half of the prayer has to do wholly with the
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: purposes of God for the world. In some senses, all
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: my need is included in this first half. It is
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: not expressed there. The only thing expressed is the passion
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: for the gaining of God's victory. In the second half
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: we have again three petitions. Give us this day our
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: but deliver us from evil. Notice the position of the
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: and in this setting, how it links the second petition
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: with the first, and the third with the second. Notice
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: also carefully that the phrase bring us not into temptation,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: but deliver us from evil, is not two petitions but one.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: We are constantly hearing. Of the seven petitions of the
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: Lord's Prayer, there are only six. And to make two
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: petitions of the sixth is to create difficulties which cannot
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: be explained. Taken as one, it is a perfect petition,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: expressive at once of the soul's caution and the soul's courage.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: These last three petitions have to do wholly with human
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: and temporal needs, as the first three have to do
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: with the divine and eternal interests. We shall not pray
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: these last three petitions when we get to heaven. I
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: think the saints there are still praying the first three.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: I think moreover that they will continue to pray them
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: until the work is perfected, and that is not yet.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: Before turning to fuller consideration of the first half of
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: this wonderful prayer, it is important to notice that in
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: its very structure there is teaching. Jesus said, seek ye
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: shall be added unto you. That was his order for life.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: It is also his order for prayer. Prayer only fulfills
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: the Master's ideal when it begins with the interests of
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: God and follows with the needs of man. I am
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: afraid that order rebukes very much of our praying. Are
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: we not all more or less in danger of praying
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: first for all our own needs, and then in a
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: closing sentence or two, for the coming of the Kingdom
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: of God. Christ in the form of this prayer teaches
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: us that our first business in prayer is to seek
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: with God for his victory in the world. That the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: deepest purpose of prayer is not that we may obtain
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: what we need, but that God should gain that which
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: glorifies His name. Passion for the establishment of the Kingdom
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: of God in the world is the deepest note in prayer.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: Let us now take the first part of the prayer
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: and look at it more closely. We find that the
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: word heaven occurs both in the invocation and in the
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: qualifying phrase. Its recurrence arrests our attention, and at once
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: we are conscious of a light and glory irradiating these
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: first petitions. We pause, therefore, to inquire what this word
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: is and what it suggests. We shall find that it
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: is used in the New Testament with reference to three
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: distinct spheres or places or regions, whichever word may define
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: most accurately, the indefinable spaces beyond our earth. It is
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: used first of the atmosphere behold the birds of the Heaven.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: It is also used of the stellar spaces stretching far
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: beyond the atmosphere. I will show wonders. In the heavens.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: It is used of still another region, of the dwelling
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: place of other beings, of the place where the glory
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: of the infinite God is supremely manifest. I knew a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: man in Christ fourteen years ago. Whether in the body
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: I know not, or whether out of the body I
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: know not, God knoweth such a one caught up even
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: to the third Heaven. We cannot place these ideas in
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: relation to space, because we know so little concerning it.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: There is a sense in which the third heaven in
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: wraps and permeates the second and the first. All I
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: want now to make clear is that the word heaven
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: is used with a threefold significance. And while poets and
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: dreamers speak of a seventh heaven, the Bible speaks only
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: of a third. The word heaven therefore stands for the atmosphere,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: the stellar spaces, and finally the dwelling place of the
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: saints and angels. Yet another note upon this word. It
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: is written sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: and our translations do not show the difference uniformly. When
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: in the singular, it refers to one or other of
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: these heavens, when in the plural it may refer to
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: two or even three. The context or evident sense of
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the passage must decide which of the three. The day
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: of the Lord will come as a thief, in which
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. The
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: reference here is evidently to the atmospheric and the stellar spaces,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: the first two heavens. Stephen, when dying exclaimed, behold, I
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: on the right hand of God. He saw beyond the
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: atmosphere and beyond the stellar spaces, into that place where
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: God's glory is supremely manifest, and the spirits of just
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: men are. In the invocation, the word heaven is plural
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: in the qualifying phrase at the close of the first
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: three petitions, it is singular Our Father, which art in
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: the heavens, Which of them, all of them? Thus there
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: is found at the portal of the prayer the doctrine
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: of the transcendence and imminence of God. Your thought cannot
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: carry you so far away as to escape Him. And
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: yet where you are at this moment, closer is he
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. Let us
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: try to realize this by the simplest of simple diagrams.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Taking a dot as center, I sweep a segment of
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: a circle round it to represent the atmosphere, which extends
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: for forty miles outward from the earth. That is the
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: first heaven of the New Testament. Beyond that, I sweep
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: a larger segment representing the vast stellar spaces, that is
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: the second heaven. Beyond that, again is the third Heaven.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: In the first circle, I write the word sparrows, in
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: the next stars, and in the next Saints and Seraphim.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: We are here on this little earth, and having seen
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: the revelation of the Father, and yielded to the mediation
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: of the Sun, and answered the inspiration of the Spirit,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: we are prepared for prayer. Jesus now says to us.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: After this manner, therefore, pray ye our Father, which art
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: in the heavens. That is to say that the God
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: who hears prayers is in all the heavens. That great
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: and gracious fact is proven by other words of the
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Divine oracles. He is in the first Heaven. The atmosphere
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: one of them shall fall unto the ground without your father.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: Let us most earnestly guard against spoiling the thought in
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: that quotation by adding to it a single word. It
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: is constantly rendered, not one of them shall fall on
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: the ground without your Father's knowledge. A Jesus did not
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: say that. It would have been a beautiful thing to say,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: but what he said was finer far Not one of
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: them shall fall on the ground without your father. He
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: not only watches from afar the sparrows fall, but he
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: holds it dying. The frailest bird dying of summer heat
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: or winter cold, is not alone. It dies in the
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: company of God. And what of the stars of the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: second heaven, By the greatness of His might, and for
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: that he is strong in power, not one is lacking,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: upholding all things by the word of His power. And
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: what of the saints in Seraphim. They veil their faces
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: in the presence of His glory, and do his will
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: in the consciousness of His nearness. Thus, as I begin
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: to pray according to the pattern which the Lord gives me,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: I find it the portal of my prayer. A doctrine
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of God, which assures me that nothing is beyond his reach,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: and nothing is too small for His presence and attention. Oh,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: the infinite comfort of it. Mother, praying for your boy
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: at the other side of the world, think of it.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Your Father is with him there. He is as near
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: to him as he is to you. Jesus did not say,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: our Father, who is away off in some distant heaven,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: far removed from us, But rather, our Father, who art
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: in all the heavens, close at hands, so that the
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: least whisper reaches him, far away, so that nothing can
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: escape him. Coming to the phrase with which these petitions end,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: we find that the word heaven is singular. Now well,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: I do not mean to suggest that God's will is
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: not done in the atmosphere or in the stellar spaces.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I think it is evident that Christ's use of the
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: singular this point indicates the fact that his special reference
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: was to that heaven where God's glorious presence is supremely manifest,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: and where the one abiding law is the law of
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: His will. Thus, when we pray this prayer, we are
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: asking that as his name is hallowed by the saints
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: and Seraphim, as his kingdom is established among them, and
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: as his will is the one and only law of
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: all their activity, so on this earth his name may
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: be hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: It is a prayer that the order of Heaven may
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: be established on earth. When Jesus uttered these words and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: gave them to his disciples as a pattern of prayer,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: he of course knew perfectly that order of the third Heaven. Indeed,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: his vision and perfect knowledge of that heavenly order were
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: the inspiration of his desire as he stood among the
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: sin and sorrow of this world. As we interpret the
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: prayer through the one who gave it to us, it
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: becomes an inspiration making us desire to know the order
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: of the third Heaven? Can we know anything of that
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: order other than speculatively. If there is one thing concerning
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: which no man ever ought to speculate, it is heaven.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: We have suffered terribly in our ideas of heaven from
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: grotesque imagination concerning it. I remember as a boy that
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: heaven was to me a place where saints sat on
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: thrones forever and ever, wearing white robes and having harps
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: in their hands. It was suggestive of deadly monotony and
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: far from attractive. Such is not the meaning of heaven.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Jesus did not want us to pray that an order
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: of that kind should be set up on earth. He
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: was himself a revelation to man of the heavenly order.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: Of the four evangelists, John is the one who interprets
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: to us most perfectly Christ as the Word of God
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: out of Heaven. The word heaven in John's Gospel is
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: never plural, and it always has reference to the Third Heaven.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: The key words of John's writings are love, light, life.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: God is love, God is light, God is life. These
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: are three of the simplest words, and yet in all
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: human speech there are none sublimer. These words perfectly betray
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: the order obtaining in the Heaven of God. Grant me
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: these three words with all they suggest, and I care
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: nothing about robes and harps and thrones. There may be
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: all these things and will be. Only do not let
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: us forget that all that we know of Earth's beauties
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: and splendors are not worthy to be compared with the
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: grace and glory yet to be revealed in the Third Heaven.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: Love is the satisfactory impulse of everything. Light is the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: perfect intelligence in which all the inhabitants act. Life is
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: the sufficient power by which they walk in light answering love.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: Love is impulse, light is intelligence, Life is energy. The
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: contrast between the order of the Third Heaven and that
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: obtaining on earth today is at once manifest. No one
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: is prepared to affirm that love is the final reason
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: of all the activity of the world today. Christ says,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: pray that it may become so. Men do not walk
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: in perfect light, even when it flashes upon their pathway,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: for as in the days of Christ, so still men
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: love darkness rather than light, for their works are evil.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: Christ says, pray that men may come to love light
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: and walk in it. And yet men have not life
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: sufficient to do the highest and the best, even when
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: they know it toiler for God in your specific service.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: You know what it is to be weary? Do you
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: know what weariness is? It is the touch of death.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: Press your toil a little further, a little too far,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: and all the weary wheels stand still, and your eye
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: sees no light, and your heart can no longer love.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: That is the condition of man in the world today.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: In God's Third Heaven, everything is different. Love is the
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: reason of devotion and worship. Love is the inspiration of
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: giving and receiving. Love is the impulse of revelation and explanation.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: Every movement of the wing of the Cherubim and every
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: note of the song of the Seraphim are alike Love impulsed.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: In heaven. When love impulses, light falls upon the pathway,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: and mistakes are never made through ignorance. There As in
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: answer to love, the inhabitants serve in perfect light. They
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: are never weary, for theirs is endless life. Jesus said,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: pray that all this may be so also on this earth.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: Think what it mean, what it would mean for the
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: world when that prayer is answered. When love is the
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: only reason, and light is perfect intelligence, and life is
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: sufficient power for all accomplishment, Can that prayer be answered?
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: Will it be answered? The first reply to such a
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: question is that Jesus never taught men to utter vain prayers.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: The fact that he gave us this prayer is enough
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: to make us offer it in the midst of the
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: world's sin and sorrow and sighing, knowing that because he
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: taught us so to pray, the answer is bound to come.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: And Yet there is another and profounder argument for the
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: reasonableness of this prayer, and that is Christ himself. Once
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: in the history of the world, that for which the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: prayer asks has been perfectly realized. Once the world saw,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: though it did not understand it, the heavenly order it
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: was manifest when he who taught us to pray. Tabernacled
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: amongst men. Studying the life of Jesus as we have
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: it in the Fourfold Gospel, it is perfectly evident that
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: wherever and whenever we find him, the one reason of
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: his being, or doing or saying anything is love. He
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: was perfectly and wholly impulsed by love. This is true
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: not only of his words and acts, most evidently tender,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: but also of the severe things he said and did.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Some of these were terrible, indeed scorching and startling men.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: On one occasion he looked into the faces of the
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: rulers of his people and said, woe unto you, scribes
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: and Pharisees, hypocrites. And it is impossible to read these
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: words without being conscious that there was a note of
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: terror in the voice of Jesus when he cried, woe
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: was that love? Yes, let him finish his sentence, for
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: ye devour widow's houses. Love for the oppressed creates anger
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: with the oppressor. For evermore, is is there any phrase
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: more startling than the wrath of the Lamb? I think
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: that if we had desired to describe wrath figuratively, we
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: should have written the wrath of the Lion, But therein
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: we should have failed. It is the wrath of the
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: lamb which is terrible, the wrath of one whose very
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: heart and nature are love and gentleness. Wrath kindled by
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: love is the fiercest flame that burns. It is also
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: true that in all the life of Jesus there was
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: manifest the light of a perfectly informed intelligence. He never hesitated,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: he was never perplexed. He never took counsel, even with
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: his own disciples. He consulted neither conventions, conferences, nor committees. Ah.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Some one acquainted with the New Testament challenges that statement
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: and suggests that at least upon one occasion he called
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: his disciples into consultation. There was a day on which
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: he asked one of them what was to be done
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: to feed the multitude? But continued the story, And you
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: will read this, he said, to prove him, for he
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: himself knew what he would do thus. On the only
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: occasion when it is ever suggested that he took counsel
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: with his disciples, the evangelist is careful to tell us
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: that it was not that he might get advice, but
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: in order that he might teach them something. He ever
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: passed straight onward, and that perpetually on an illuminated pathway
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: answering love, he saw his way before him, and without hesitation,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: walked in it. But it will be said it was
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: not true of him that he had endless life he died.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: Let me say first, in answer to such an objection,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: that the life of Jesus was always sufficient for the
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: doing of the will of God. And even though he
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: knew in sympathy with us the heavy weariness which follows toil,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: he was never weary while god appointed service waited for him.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: And yet again he had the power of endless life.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: As witness his own strange words, I lay down my
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: life that I may take it up again. No one
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: taketh it away from me, but I lay it down
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: of myself. I have the power to lay it down,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: and I have the power to take it again. This
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: commandment received I from my father death. In the case
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: of every other man is a fact from which he
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: cannot escape. Death, in the case of Jesus, was an
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: act in the mystery of which he was yet the
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: supreme Lord and Master. He died and rose again in
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: fulfillment of these wonderful words. Once in human history the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: heavenly order has been seen in a man who answered
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: love and walked in light, and had such life as
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: enabled him to die and to live again, and so
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: doing to fling up a highway out of death for
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: all such as trust and follow him. But what did
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: the world do with this revealer? The story is that
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: of the world's final tragedy. Hatred murdered love, Darkness put
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: out light, death conquered life. The cross was man's answer
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: to this prayer, But again the cross was God's answer
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: to this prayer. Put both things together, or let us
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: hear them put together by Peter in the first message
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: delivered after Pentecost, him being delivered up by the determinate counsel,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: and foreknoledge of God. Ye, by the hand of lawless
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: men did crucify and slay man's attitude toward the revelation
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: of the heavenly order. Ye, by the hand of a
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: lawless man. Did crucify and slay God's activity in the
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: midst of the mystery of death, delivered up by the
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: determinate counsel, and foreknowledge of God over against the lawlessness
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: of man's murder, the deliberate counsel of God is operative,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: and thus the very cross which marks man's refusal of
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: the kingdom becomes the means by which that kingdom is
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: yet to be set up. When we thus observe the
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: man who taught us this prayer and come to understand
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: that he embodied in his own life the principles he
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: bids us seek, and when we know that by his
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: cross he made it possible for every man to come
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: after him, to answer love and to walk in light
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: in the power of life, then we pray the first
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: part of this prayer as never before, realizing that in
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: the name and merit and might of him who taught
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: us so to pray, its final answer must come. Thus,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: the pattern of prayer teaches us first that we must
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: take the whole world into our praying, and that we
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: must see clearly that the line of its redemption is
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: that of return to conformity to the will of God,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: made possible by the life and death and resurrection of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: one who taught us to pray Our Father, which art
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: in the heavens. Thy name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: Thy will be done as in heaven, and so on earth.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: and Chapter five, Chapter six of the Practice of Prayer
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: by G. Campbell Morgan. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: public domain. Read by Marie Anne. Chapter six The Plain
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: of Prayer, Part B the pilgrimage of Man. Give us
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: as we also have forgiven our debtors, and bring us
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: Matthew Chapter six Versus eleven thirteen. We now come to
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: the second part of the pattern prayer. As the first
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: part has to do with the interests of God, the
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: second half deals with the pilgrimage of man. That is
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: to say, it has to do with the needs of
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: man in the days of his sojourn in this world.
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: Its three petitions express the needs of those days of
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: pilgrimage towards the Father's home, it will be impossible to
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: use these petitions when we reach that home. They express
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: our present need in the listening ear of God. If
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: these petitions be intelligently apprehended, it will be found that
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: they cover the whole of our possible requirements. We may
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: break up the petitions. We may give expression in the
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: hours of communion with God to the detailed and specific
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: need of which we are conscious, But we cannot pray
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: for anything which is not included in these requests. In
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: previous chapters we have dealt with the threefold fact concerning God,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: which Jesus has revealed. He is King, Father, shepherd. In
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: that order, men come into relationship with him. Having submitted
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: to his kingship, they find him to be their father. Then,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: as they begin to walk along the pathway which his
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: will appoints, they experience his care as a shepherd. The
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: part of the prayer at which we are now to
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: look is the cry of children subjects asking for the
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: privileges of the flock for the care of the Great Shepherd.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: In it there are three petitions. Give us this day
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: also have forgiven our debtors, and bring us not into temptation,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: but deliver us from evil or from the evil one.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: As we study these three petitions, we shall find that
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: in each of them three sets of forces with which
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: we daily come into contact are recognized. Every man on
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: the pathway of his pilgrimage has to do every day
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: with God, with man, and with the devil. That fact
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: may be a expressed in other words, we may say
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: that we have to do with the upper world, with
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: the world about us, and with the underworld of evil.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: Every day, we who are children of God, have necessarily
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: some dealings with God. Every day we are in contact
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: with our fellow man. And I do not think any
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: one will dispute with me when I declare that for
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: the Saint of God, there is no day in which
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: he or she has not something to do with the
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: spirits of evil. The three worlds are present in every
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: one of these petitions, but in each petition one realm
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: is referred to with special emphasis, to take the first
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: give us this day our daily bread. That petition has
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: to do pre eminently with our relationship to God, our
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: dependence upon Him. But we shall find recognized in it
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: our relationship to our fellow man, and also our relationship
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: to the spirits of evil. The pre eminent note is
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: our relationship to God. In the second petition, forgive us
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: our debts, as we all have forgiven our debtors, the
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: principal emphasis is upon our relationship to our fellow men.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: The relationship to God is acknowledged, and the relationship to
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: the underworld is evident. In the final petition, lead us
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, the principal
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: emphasis is upon our relationship to the underworld. Our relationship
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: to God is also recognized, and that to our fellow
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: man is present. When referring to the threefold fact of
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: the heavenly order proceeding from the government of God, we
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: mentioned three words which are constantly repeated in the writings
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: of John Life, Light, and Love. The first of these
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: three petitions is a cry for sustenance to God as life.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: The second is a cry for rectitude to God as light.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: The last is a cry for victory to God as Love.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: So that the threefold order which first we are taught
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: to pray may be established in the world, is recognized.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: When we continue to pray about our own personal and
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: individual needs. In the economy of Jesus Christ, prayer never
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: loses sight of the infinite relationships and the infinite values.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: Herein is the test for our praying. The moment prayer
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: becomes request for something purely for self, which may be
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: spent upon personal lusts, or if you will have a
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: milder word upon personal desires, then prayer is outside the
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: will of God. If I ask for sustenance, it must
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: be in a petition which recognizes that real life is
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: related to the life of God. If I ask for rectitude,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: it must be in a petition which recognizes rectitude as
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: being in right relationship with the light of God. If
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: I ask for succor deliverance from the evil of the underworld,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: it must be in a petition which recognizes the tender
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: love of God manifesting itself supremely in its persistent determination
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: that I shall be delivered from evil. So that all
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: prayer is to be tested by its relationship to the
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: infinite and eternal verities and values. Let us now take
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: the petitions one by one. In the first, give us
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: this day our daily bread. We have the threefold relationship. First,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: it is a cry to God as life for sustenance.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: There is also recognized the relationship to man. We cannot
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: begin to pray this prayer alone. We immediately bring others
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: with us into the place of prayer, not as to
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: bodily presence, but as to social interest. That fact is
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: true of the whole prayer, but specially true of the
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: first petition. We also have the reference to the underworld,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: because life fed with daily bread is made strong against
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: the solicitation of the spirits of evil. The principal emphasis is, however,
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: upon our relation to God, What then does this prayer mean?
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: Give us this day our daily bread? What is daily bread?
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: What did our Lord mean we were to pray for
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: at this point? Let us omit the word daily for
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: the moment, and read, give us this day our bread?
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: Of what bread was he speaking? There are those who
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: hold that this prayer simply has reference to the bread
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: of the physical life, and there are thousands of people
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: who use it only in that sense. There are other people,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: some of them gifted expositors of the Word of God,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: who hold that our Lord was not referring in any
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: way to the physical bread, but that this is wholly
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: a spiritual prayer, and that therefore he is here referring
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: to the sustenance of the spiritual life. I do not
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: agree with either of these interpretations. I believe that when
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: our Lord enjoins us to pray, give us this day
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: our bread, he means, by the use of that word,
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: all that is necessary for the sustenness of the whole life,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: physical and spiritual. I believe that because I never find
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: Jesus dealing with men in compartments, he always deals with
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: the whole man. And when He taught us to pray
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: this prayer, he intended to teach us that we were
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: perpetually to remember that we are absolutely dependent upon God
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: for all that is necessary for the sustenance of our
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: perfect and complete life. In Deuteronomy we read man doth
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: out of the mouth of the Lord. There In these
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: words he quoted in the midst of his own temptation,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: is his own recognition of the need of physical bread,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: And therein is his affirmation of the necessity for another bread.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: The word proceeding out of the mouth of God, He himself,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: being the word of God, said I am the bread
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: of life. When this petition is presented we are asking
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: God to give us the sustenance necessary for our whole life,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: that necessary for our spiritual and that necessary for our
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: physical life. The latter is secondary, but it is necessary
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: and is as much supplied by God as is the
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: sustenance for the spiritual life. The first petition of our
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: need is one in which we ask Our Father to
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: supply all that is necessary for our complete sustenance. Give
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: us this day our bread. I think that an understanding
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: of the word daily will emphasize the accuracy of the
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: interpretation I have given. There is difficulty here. As a
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, it is a word quite unknown in
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: classical Greek, and it is a word which never occurs
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: in the New Testament, except at this point in Matthew
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: six and in Luke eleven, where our Lord took one
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: or two petitions of the prayer and gave them to
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: his disciples in answer to their request. It would be
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: a fascinating theme for discussion and speculation as to where
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: this word came from and what it really means. There
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: are difficulties in tracing its root. You notice in the
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: margin of the revised version this suggestion give us this
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: day our bread for the coming day if you have
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: noticed it, you have felt how curious a suggestion it is.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: I want to speak with all due carefulness, and I
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: do not speak without remembering that the marginal reading the
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: revised version expressed the opinion of a majority of the translators. Nevertheless,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: I do not think that the meaning of this word
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: translated daily is the coming day. It is possible that
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: it came from a root which means tomorrow. But it
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: is equally possible that it came from a root implying existence.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: It is not for me to go into that particularity,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: but I do not hesitate to say. My own belief
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: is that the latter is the root from which this
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: word daily came. Give us this day our bread of existence.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: Here is a piece of speculation, which you may accept
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: or forget as you like. I believe that Jesus coined
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: that word. You cannot find it anywhere else. Then, of
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: course there comes the question as to whether Jesus spoken
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: Aramaic or Greek. And again we are face to face
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: with a question full of interest, in one which I
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: do not pretend to be able dogmatically or finally to
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: decide personally. I am of the opinion that the God
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and moreover, that
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: Jesus spoke a dialect of Greek, which was common at
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the time. It is interesting to remember that Alford, in
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: his later editions adopted that view, although in the earlier
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: issues of his work he had maintained the contrary. I believe, therefore,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: that Jesus coined this word daily. What he told us
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: to pray was give us to day the bread we
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: need for our existence, that is, for our whole life,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: for the life which is physical, for the life which
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: is spiritual. Passing from that discussion of the mere words
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: of the petition, let us think of its spiritual intention
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: and meaning. We are to ask God every day for
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: what we need for the sustenance of our life. There
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: are two ways in which we neglect this petition. One
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: way is that we pray it as though it simply
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: refer to the bread which feeds the body, and forget
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: that we need day by day to be fed by
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: God with the bread which supplies our spiritual life. As
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: God answers prayer for the bread of the body, so
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: he answers prayer for the bread of the spirit. How
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: does God answer our prayer for the bread of the body,
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: not by its miraculous supply, but by the gift of
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: all such forces as are necessary to enable us, in
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: co operation with Himself, to obtain for ourselves by labor
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: the bread we need. So with the spiritual bread, God
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: does not succor the spiritual life of any man. On
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: his simple asking. Our spiritual life can only be maintained
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: and sustained as we impersonal labor for the meat that Endureth,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: meditate in his word day and night, feeding upon that
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: bread of life which came down out of Heaven from God.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: The other side of the lesson is that we are
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: not to forget, in these days of incipient infidelity in
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: the Christian Church, that the table to which we sit
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: down every day is one he spreads. You have heard
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: the old story of the man who met a boy
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: in a village street carrying a loaf of bread. He
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: stopped the boy and asked him where he got the
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: loaf from? The baker was the reply, yes, that is right,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: But where did he get it? He made it? Said
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: the boy? How did he make it with flour? Where
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: did he get his flour? He ground the corn? Where
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: did he get his corn from? He got it from
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: the farmer. Yes, But where did the farmer get his corn? Oh?
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: From God, said the boy. Then you got your loaf
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: from God. We have been very much like that boy.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: We have put God away back behind the miller and
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: the farmer, and have forgotten him in the process. While
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: we recognize the need of the intermediation of all these instruments,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: we are not to forget that it is God who
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: feeds us with food sufficient for body and soul. Back
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: of the loaf is the snowy flower, and back of
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: the flour the mill, and back of the mill is
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: the wheat, and the shower, and the sun and the
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: Father's will. This prayer brings me back every day as
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: a dependent being to God, so that I never have
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: any right to pray this prayer. If I am saying
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: in my life or by my actions, my own hand
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: gets me this bread. My own cunning, wit and wisdom
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: provide for me all I need of spiritual culture. Notice
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: the social character of this prayer. Have you ever taken
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: the trouble to write out the personal pronouns in the
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: first person? If you have, you will have discovered that
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: there is not one in the singular form From beginning
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: to end our us, our us, our we, our us us.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: They are all plural. You cannot pray that prayer by yourself.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: You cannot pray that short petition by yourself. I remember,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: friend of mine, a deacon in one of my former churches,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: on a certain harvest festival, came to me in my
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: vestry and said, there was a deal of humor in him.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: There always is in a saintly man. Well, I suppose
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: you won't use the Lord's prayer tonight. We are going
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: to thank him for having supplied our daily bread. You
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: won't ask him for it. I replied that we should
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: certainly use the Lord's prayer that night, and that by
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: so doing we should put ourselves into fellowship with all
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: hungry souls. It is us and our, not me and mine,
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: when we come into God's presence to ask for the
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: supply of our own need, we are to remember, in
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: loving sympathy the need of all those who have not
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: yet received. There is another suggestive fact about this prayer.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: There is only one nominative case in it. There are
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: four objective and four possessive, but only one nominative. Do
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: you not know that the nominative is the most popular case.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: Men like to talk in the first person singular nominative,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: but the nominative is only here once forgive us our debts,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: as we also have forgiven our debtors. The only right
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: in this prayer to be the subject of a sentence
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: is that of the loving heart to forgive some other man.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: The prayer is a social prayer, from beginning to end.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: The social quality is manifest in this first petition, as
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: it asks for sustenance not for me and mine, but
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: for us and ours. The relation to the underworld is
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: also recognized here. The man fed physically and spiritually is
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: the man most likely to be strong against the solicitations
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: of evil. That is why men are perfectly right when
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: they tell us that we insult a hungry man when
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: we offer him a tract about heaven. The first thing
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: is to feed him, not simply because he clamors for bread,
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: but because a fed man is one the devil does
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: not like. It is the hungry man the devil attacks.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: If that be true physically, it is pre eminently true spiritually.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: My brothers, see to it that when morning breaks you
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: go to God for sustenance for your spiritual life. That
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: will make you strong against the allurements of the devil.
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: So many people turn out to face the temptations of
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: the day's spiritually unfed, spiritually hungry therefore, and they are
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: attacked by all kinds of enticements of the enemy. It
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: is the man fed by God spiritually and physically who
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: is likely to overcome in the hour of temptation. In
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: the second petition, you will notice that the relation to
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: God comes first. It always does, even if the emphasis
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: is not there. We are to ask forgiveness. This is
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: the one petition to which most people object, and some
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: attempt to escape from the prayer because of it. I
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: am not particularly surprised that people criticize this petition more
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: than any other. It is a very difficult one to pray.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: But let us remember that when Christ gave this prayer
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: in his Manifesto, he commented only upon this petition. For
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: Father forgive your trespasses. So we must neither get away
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: from this petition nor indulge in that criticism which attempts
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: to accommodate it to our own failure. I had been
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: speaking on this subject in an American city, and afterwards
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: received a letter from a lady who is greatly perturbed
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: because I have put special emphasis upon the fact that
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: Jesus distinctly tells us we are to ask for forgiveness
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: when we have forgiven. She said that for years she
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: had changed the form of that petition, for she had
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: been afraid of it, and had said, forgive us our debts,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: and we will forgive our debtors. She asked if I
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: did not consider this to be sufficient. I replied that
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: God never does business on the basis of a promisory note.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: We must get our forgiving done before we can ask
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: for forgiveness. That prayer is the prayer of the children
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: of God, not of the men outside. I do not
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: go to the man outside who has never given himself
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: to God and tell him that if he will forgive everybody,
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: God will forgive him. God begins by forgiving us of
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: his own free grace without any condition. The unforgiven man
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: can be forgiven now without any condition, except that he
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will blot out
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: the sins of such like a thick cloud. When that
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: is done, the soul enters the kingdom, And now Jesus
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: superimposes upon his own subject as the condition for forgiveness,
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: that he should be forgiving. If we are unforgiving in
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: the necessity of the case, God will not forgive us.
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: There is no escape from it. Is not hatred, the
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: most dastardly and heenous of all sins, hatred, the thing
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: that contradicts the essence of God, which is love. If
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: in my heart there is bitterness and malice and revengefulness,
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: what is the use of confessing other sins and expecting
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: to be forgiven nursing the while the most damnable sin,
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: We who are children of God, subjects of the King,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: flock of the Shepherd, cannot be forgiven unless we forgive.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: For our refusal to forgive is the deepest and worst
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: sin of all. I speak with such emphasis because I
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: think the Church of Jesus Christ is cursed by an
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: unforgiving spirit. Men and women are sitting down at the
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: table of the Lord who do not speak to each other.
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: We are unforgiving. In our theological controversies, the sin for
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: which Moses was excluded from the earthly Promised land was
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. He manifested a
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: provoked spirit in a righteous cause, a righteous cause, but
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: an angry, unforgiving man, and God shut him out of
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: the land of earthly promise for evermore. Jesus Christ is
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: saying to us every day, come and have your Father's
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: forgiveness for trespasses, But do not ask for that until
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: you have forgiven the man who has trespassed against you.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: What is trespass? For notice, in the actual text, our
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: Lord uses the word debt and debtors, and in the
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: exposition which follows he uses the word trespasses. What then
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: is debt trespass? There is a common quality in our
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: Master's use of the two words which helps us to
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: understand it trespass is intentional error or wilful transgression. Trench
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: has said the word means falling where one should have
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: stood upright, whether one could help it or not. There,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: of course, arises the whole question of sin and what
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: sin is. We still believe that the whole meaning of
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: the New Testament evangel is that a man need not
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: sin wilfully. But we still maintain that so long as
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: we walk the pathway of this earthly pilgrimage. In comparison
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: with God's high ideal. We are as trespassers coming short,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: so that of our best service we have to say
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: we are unprofitable servants. I pity the man who tells
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: me he cannot pray this prayer because he never trespasses.
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: I pity him because of his dim comprehension of the
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: real meaning of holiness and of sin. To the man
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: who walks in light, there is no day when he
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: does not find it necessary to confess his trespasses. Let
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: us not forget this flaming, a scorching word of the Master,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: that we are not to ask for forgiveness until we
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: have forgiven. If therefore thou art offering thy gift at
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: the altar, and there remember us that thy brother hath
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: aught against thee. Leave there thy gift before the altar,
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother,
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: and then come and offer thy gift. I wonder how
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: many people would have to stay away from church next
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: Sunday if they were true to this word. We had
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: better stay away and get right with our brother before
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: we come to the altar. If ye forgive not men
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Loving
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: forgiveness of my brother is the condition upon which I,
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: a child of God, may ask his forgiveness. What relation
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: has all this to the underworld of evil? When we
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: forgive those who have wronged us, we have gained the
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: mightiest victory possible over the devil. In that day when
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: we trampled on our pride and sacrificed what we speak
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: of as our rights, When we triumphed over pride and
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: lovingly forgave the man who had sinned against us, we
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: know we were conscious of God as we had never
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: been before, and we were conscious of victory over the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: enemy as we had never been. There's nothing God loves
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: and the devil hates more than a man who can forgive.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: We come to the last of these petitions and bring
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: Bring us not into temptation. That is the language of
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: the cautious heart, of the man who recognizes how terrible
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: an experienced temptation is. But there is something more important
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: than that I should be delivered from temptation, and that
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: is that I should be delivered from evil. If I
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: can only be delivered from evil by passing through temptation.
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: Then that I be delivered from evil is the supreme matter.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: In that remarkable passage in Luke, just before the Gusemone experience,
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: and again just after it, the Lord said to his
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: disciples that ye enter not into temptation. He was passing
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: down to temptation. Then as I watch him in Gossemine,
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: I hear the echo of temptation. Father, If thou be
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: willing remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: but thine be done. That is the echo of temptation.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: I have heard that before. I have heard the enemy
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: say to him long ago in the wilderness. There are
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: the kingdoms of the world which you have come to possess.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: Your pathway to them is one of suffering and shame.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: Fall down and worship me, and I will give them
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: to you. Get to your goal by a short cut.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: Here is the old method. Be very afraid of an
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: easy method to anything. I hear it again later on,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: not as before in the open attack of the foe,
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: but through the subtle word of friendship. When Jesus at Cesarea,
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: Philippi mentioned the cross. Peter said, not that Lord that
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: be far from thee keys, Yes, crowning, Yes, building, yes,
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: but not the cross. Christ said to him, get thee
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: behind me, Satan, thou art a stumbling block unto me,
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: For thou mindest not the things of God, but the
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: things of men. In the garden of Gsemone, the devil
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: comes no longer in open attack, no longer in the
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: guise of a friend, but in the shrinking of his
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: own soul. If thou be willing remove this cup from me.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: Therein is the philosophy of this petition. Bring us not
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: into temptation. We are to be afraid of temptation. We
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: are not to be foolhardy, treating it as of no account.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: We are to shrink in its presence, with that cautiousness
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: which makes for courage. But the more important thing is
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: that we should be delivered perfectly from evil. Bring us
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. That is
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: to be my prayer every day to God, who governs
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: in hell as well as in heaven. Recognition of the
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: force temptation and its subtlety will make me pray. Bring
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: me not into temptation, but the deepest passion of my
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: whole life will be deliver me from evil. What relation
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: to other men is suggested in this last petition. Peter,
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: writing to Christian people, said, be sober, be watchful your adversary,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: he may devour. Why were they to be sober and
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: watchful knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: brethren who are in the world. Let the light of
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: that fall upon this petition. When we are face to
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: face with the evil one and with temptation, we are
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: not fighting a lonely battle. We are part of a
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: great host. Our brethren are being tried. Also. If we win,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: they win in a greater measure. If we lose, we
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: shall halt the whole battle and retard the final victory.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: I sometimes think if we could say this to young people,
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: as it ought to be said, we might help them.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: Are you fighting against temptation? Remember it is not a
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: lonely battle your fighting. You are part of a great host.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: If you lose, if you are beaten, if the enemy
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: overcomes you, the whole army of God is halted in
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: its onward march. If you win, you hasten the coming
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: of the kingdom. The same sufferings are being accomplished in
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: your brethren. Upon this stress and strife of the saints
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: depends the hastening or retarding of the day of God.
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: So we are to pray together bring us not into temptation,
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: but deliver us from evil. We fear the process, But
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: there is a deeper passion than the passion for escape
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: from testing. It is the passion for deliverance from evil
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: that is the great and final thing. In conclusion, let
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: it be noted that he who taught the prayer has
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: in its second half, as in the first, guaranteed the answer.
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: Am I to pray for the bread of life? He
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: bends over me and says, I am the bread of life.
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: Am I to pray for sustenance of the physical life?
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: He whispers to me. Hear the tender promise. All these
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: things shall be added unto you. Am I to pray
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: for forgiveness? Through His name? Is forgiveness preached? But how
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: am I going to forgive the man who has injured me?
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of forgiveness. If
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: I am yielded to him, he is yielded to me.
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: If I give my whole life to him, he will
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: give his whole life to me, if I have Jesus
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: for my own, I shall be able to forgive, so
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: that He will answer this prayer and make possible its
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: answer in the high court of God's own judgment. Hall
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: As to temptation, he was tempted in all points, like
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: as we are sin Aparte, and in that he himself
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: hath suffered being tempted. He is able to succor them
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: that are attempted. So in this pattern prayer, he shows
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: me what to pray for, as he opens before my
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: astonished vision the whole realm of prayer. I end as
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: I begin by saying that if we can pray this
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: prayer with spiritual intelligence and earnestness, we pray all prayer.
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: End of chapter six Chapter seven of the Practice of
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: Prayer by G. Cambell Morgan. This LibriVox recording is in
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by Marianne, Chapter seven The Practice
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: of Prayer. And when ye pray, ye shall not be
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: as the hypocrites, For they love to stand and pray
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: unto you, they have their reward. But thou when thou prayest,
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door,
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: pray to thy Father, which is in secret. And thy Father,
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee. And in praying,
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: use not vain repetitions, as the gentiles do, for they
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: Be not therefore like unto them. For your Father knoweth
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: what things ye have need of before ye ask him Matthew,
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: chapter six, verses five eight. Again, I say unto you
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: that if two of you shall agree on earth as
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: for them of my Father, who is in heaven. For
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: where two or three are gathered together in my name,
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: there am I in the midst of them. Matthew, Chapter eighteen,
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: verses nineteen twenty. The subjects already considered are all preliminary
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: too and necessary for the present one. God has made
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: prayer possible to us through Jesus. We can pray prevailing
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: only as we respond to the truths which create the possibility.
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: The sphere of prayer includes the coming of the Kingdom
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: of God and the provision of all the need of
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: the saints. Thus all these constitute an integral part of
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: the subject of the practice of prayer. Prayer is only
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: possible to the revealed Father through the mediating Son, by
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: the inspiring spirit. Prayer is only a prevailing power, as
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: in the life the child of God is loyal to
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: his kingship, satisfied with his provision, conformed to his likeness. Moreover,
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: it can only be operative within the sphere revealed in
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: the pattern of prayer. All this being granted, we now
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: come to the more technical consideration of this subject. It
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: is necessary, both in order to brevity and clearness, that
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: we should follow a process of illumination. The teaching of
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: Jesus is so full of instruction concerning prayer that we
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: do not propose to attempt even a survey of the
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: life whole field, but to confine ourselves to the words
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: dealing with the two main lines of responsibility in this matter,
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: those namely, of the practice of prayer personally and the
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: practice of prayer collectively. First, as to the former, but thou,
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: when thou prayest enter into Thine inner chamber, and having
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret,
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: we are at once arrested by thee bot with which
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: the passage opens. It makes us conscious of a background,
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: of a contrast which flung the actual words into clearer relief.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: Immediately proceeding, Jesus had said, ye shall not be as
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: the hypocrites, For they love to stand in pray in
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: they may be seen of men. Now it is perfectly
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: evident that our Lord did not mean to say that
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: it was wrong to stand in pray in the synagogues
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: or at the corner of the street. That against which
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: he warned his disciples. With the praying which had as
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: its deepest desire a wish to be seen of men,
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: He charged them to beware of the prayer which obtrudes
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: itself upon human notice. Mark his gentle satire in this respect. Verily,
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: I say unto you, they have their reward, that is
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: to say, they pray to be seen of men. They
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: are seen of men. What they desire they obtain. This
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: is the background. We are interested in the instructions to
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: which these warnings give rise. When thou prayest enter into
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: Thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: thy Father, which is in secret. Thus Christ instructed his
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: disciples that in the life of each one of them
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: there must be a special place, a special time, and
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: a special method, whereby in quietness and loneliness, every third
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: person being excluded, each one should pray. Then, as to
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: the latter, if two of you shall agree on earth
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: as touching anything they shall act, it shall be done
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: for them of My Father, which is in heaven. For
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: where two or three are gathered together in my name,
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: there am I in the midst of them. As the
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: first passage insisted upon loneliness, this provides for fellowship in prayer.
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: It declares the conditions of the true prayer meeting. The
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: promise is indeed a spacious one. If two of you
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask,
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: it shall be done for them. It is a somewhat
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: curious thing that this promise is so perpetually misquoted by
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: the addition of the words concerning my kingdom. It may
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: be said that this, of course, was what our Lord
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: meant us to understand, I unhesitatingly repeat that we have
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: no right to imagine that he meant anything other than
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: he said to introduce these words is to put a
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: limit upon prayer which he did not put. If it
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: be objected that this is a dangerous doctrine, I reply
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: that Christ clearly marked the limits of such agreement and
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: such asking in the words for Where two or three
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: are gather together in My name, there am I in
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: the midst of them. The promise is not made to
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: two or three persons who meet together and ask simply
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: upon the basis of their own desire. Jesus in the
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: midst means Jesus enthroned, obeyed, consulted. Where he is enthroned,
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: obeyed consulted, the spirit creates desire and prayer, being in
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: harmony with the will of God, the answer is assured.
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: We must neither put false limitations upon this word of
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: the Master, nor must we imagine that there are no limitations.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: According to him. The limit is not upon the things
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: for which we may ask, but upon our condition and
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: the spirit in which we ask. Two or three of
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: us may agree as to our desire for certain things,
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: and may ask for them and never receive them. The
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: prayer meeting must not be based upon desire, but upon
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: relationship to Christ. If two or three of us are
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: gathered together in his name, under the dominion of his life,
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: inspired by his spirit. And if in the hearts of
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: those thus gathered there is created a common desire, then
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: they may ask and be assured of the answer. These, then,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: are the two words of Jesus about prayer, which reveal
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: the broad line of its practice. Firstly, that we enter
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: into an inner chamber, shut the door, and pray alone.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: And secondly that we gather together two or three in
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: His name and pray. One man may pray alone, indeed
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: he must do so, shutting out every other person. But
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: that does not exhaust the practice of prayer. There must
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: be the prayer meeting. It is not necessarily a large gathering.
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: The Master names the smallest number that can constitute a
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: meeting two. There cannot be a meeting of one. Yet
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: the larger number is not necessarily wrong. The indefiniteness of
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: his phrase two or three includes the possibility of the
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: larger gathering. That which creates the true prayer meeting is
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: the inspiration of saints in communion with each other, because
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: baptized by the Spirit into living community with Christ. Now,
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: for the most practical of words concerning each of these methods,
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: as to the first, I desire to insist upon the
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: necessity for the formation of very definite habits. The words
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: of the Master could not be more emphatic than they
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: are as to the necessity for separation, seclusion, and secrecy.
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: An inner chamber and a shut door certainly mean that
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: there must be in the life of every man, or
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: woman or child a place for retirement, a time for
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: seclusion and exercise of this high and holy privilege and
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: absolute loneliness. When husband or wife, father or mother, brother
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: or sister, son or daughter is excluded in all our
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: busy life, nothing is of more importance than that we
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: should have some place peculiarly consecrated to prayer. The soul
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: needs a bethel. It may not be a place retained
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: exclusively for prayer, but it should be a place to which,
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: at set times we may go and know that we
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: shall be free from intrusion. For every minister of the Gospel,
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: this bethel ought to be his study. I know how
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: constantly we think of the study as the work room,
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: and rightly so will be to the preacher of the Word,
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: who is not a workman. But the study ought to
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: be at times the place where we may look into
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: the face of God alone and hold personal communion with him.
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: This may sound like a plea for the private oratory
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: of the Roman Catholic, and so it is in all
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: its deepest spiritual intention. For the material trappings of crucifix,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: picture or candle, I care nothing but for the spiritual
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: intention of lonely communion with God in some set place.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: I care increasingly. There is far more than seems in
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: the place that apart. Those of us who preach the
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: Word surely know what it is to feel the ease
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: of preaching in the place with which one is perfectly familiar.
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: Familiarity enables forgetfulness of surroundings. The where matters little. The
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: fact that there is a place is of great importance.
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: To object to the idea of locality is to imagine
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: that there was no meaning in the words of Jesus
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: when he spoke of an inner chamber and a shut door.
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: To the merchant, it may be his private office locked
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: at a certain time for loneliness with God. To the Mother,
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: it may be the quiet of her own room, from
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: which for a little she is able to exclude all
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: those who serve under her. In the maintenance of home,
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: it seems to me that if the watchers in the
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: heavenly places observe the places of the sons of men
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: amid earth's conflict, those in which they are most interested
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: are the secret places where the saints hold converse with God.
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: Until we find some place of habitual loneliness made sacred
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: not by material accessories, but by spiritual access we are
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: not as strong as we might be, and we have
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: not formed the mightiest habit in the life of prayer.
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: Then it is of equal importance that there should be
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: a special time for prayer. I am perfectly well aware
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: of the answer that comes from thousands of toilers to day.
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: This is a busy age. Of that there can be
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: no denial. But if the age is too busy to
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: pray so much, the worse for the age. Or rather,
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: if in the age we are too busy to pray
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: so much, the worse for our business. As to the
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: time of prayer, there can be no doubt that for
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: those who are able, the morning watch is the finest.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: Yet I would urge none to be a slave of
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: the habit of another. If a proper regard for physical
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: conditions makes it necessary for some overwrought daughter of the
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: king to rest in the morning hour. Let her remember
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: that she is not under law, but under grace. Then
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: let there be no escape from the importance of time.
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: By declaring the brevity of the day and the multiplication
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: of positive duties in fellowship with God, the terms long
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: or short ought to be canceled. Five minutes with Him,
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: in which the soul is touched by the forces of eternity,
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: will mean a full day of spiritual vigor. God can
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: do much in five minutes of man's time, if no
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: more can honestly be spared. He can do nothing in
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: five minutes for the man who should give him sixty
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: who but is slothful. Those who know the value of
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: lonely fellowship with God at the beginning of the day
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: know also how hot and restless is the day from
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: which that time of communion has been absent. Again, I
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: say cultivate that method of prayer which is most helpful,
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: whether it be that of speaking aloud in loneliness, or
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: of communing in stillness of heart and silence, whether standing
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: or kneeling or sitting, no special attitude is insisted upon
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: as necessary in the word of God. The matter of
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: supreme importance is that we discover the method of prayer
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: which helps us most actually to realize the presence of
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: God and hold communion with Him. The place, the time,
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: the method are matters concerning which there must be individual
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: choice and decision. The matter of supreme importance is the
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: cultivation of the habit of prayer. I do not use
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: the word habit carelessly. Habits need to be formed, whether
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: they are are good or evil. With regard to prayer,
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: that which is at first perhaps somewhat trying and difficult,
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: becomes so much a part of life as to be
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: not second nature, but first nature. In all these matters,
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: it is important to distinguish between the essentials and the accidentals.
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 1: It would be disastrous if any should imagine that these
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: set times exhausted the practice of personal prayer. Our Lord
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: declared that men ought always to pray and not to faint,
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: and that is a very profound word. It is evident
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: that his conception of life is that if men pray,
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: they will not faint, and conversely, if men do not pray,
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: then will they faint. This word indicates the fact that
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: Jesus had a profound consciousness of the pressure and strain
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: of life. He did not think it was a soothing
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: softness through which men glide to him. Life was indeed simple,
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: but also strenuous. He knew that men would be in
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: danger of fainting underneath the burden, and in the midst
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: of the battle, he knew also a power which would
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: prevent their fainting. Men ought always to pray and not
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: to faint. No man will pray always who neglects the
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: formation of the habit of regular prayer. The disciple who
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: regularly observes a place and time and method will gradually
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: find the habit learned in the secret Place is binding
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: also through all the public life. A confirmed habit of
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: regular prayer will create regularity and constancy amidst all irregularities
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: of time and place and method. Prayer in the secret
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: Place will create a spirit which will obtain in all
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: public places. Gradually, thoughts will become prayers. Thoughts of absent
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: friends will take wings and move upwards. Fellowship with God
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: as an activity will issue in fellowship with God as
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: an attitude. When this is so, anywhere and at any moment,
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: and in any method, the spirit will speak its need
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: in the listening ear of God. Our fathers used to
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: speak of and practice ejaculatory prayer. It would be a
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 1: great gain to all of us if we could learn
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: again the method and practice it. It is a great
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: mistake to imagine that in the midst of London's busy traffic,
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: one has to wait for the appointed place and hour
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: and method. It is a great word in the Letter
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: to the Hebrews, which declares that we may find grace
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: to help us in time of need. I have always
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: felt that I should like to discover some idiom of
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: my own language which would gather the thought of the
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: Greek phrase. And I am not sure but that it
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: is perfectly done by saying that the message declares we
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: may find grace to help us in the nick of time.
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: The consciousness of this, however, can only be created as
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: we are familiar with the secret place as a result
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: of the set time and place and method. So far
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: we have dealt with only the practice of prayer in
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: the individual life, with the inner chamber and the shut door,
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: the special place, the special time, and the special method,
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: and with prayer flung out in size and sentences, in
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: the rush of every day activity, in the abiding consciousness
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: of God's attention and God's answer. Turning to the habit
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: of collective prayer. There is very much that might be
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: said about the prayer meeting. The prayer meeting is a
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: meeting for prayer. That is so obvious a statement as
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: to appear unnecessary. Yet I do not hesitate to affirm
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: that there is nothing the Church needs more at the
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: present hour than to understand what a real prayer meeting is.
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: As we have already briefly said, the perfect ideal is
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: set forth in the Master's words. Where two or three
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: are gathered together in my name, there am I in
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: the midst of them. He was primarily declaring the ground
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: upon which he had made his promise. If two of
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: shall ask, it shall be done for them. I am
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: perfectly aware that these sacred words of our Lord open
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: before our vision vaster reaches, and have more spacious meanings.
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: But at the present time we consider them only in
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: the first application which our Lord made of them. The
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: first necessity, then, for the prayer meeting, is that those
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: constituting it should be gathered in his name. Two souls
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: so gathered each under his dominion, and the place is
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: of no moment. The great word where is magnificent in
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: its breath. No longer in Jerusalem, no longer at the temple,
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: no longer in a mountain set apart, no longer in
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: a church or meeting house, or any other special place. Only,
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: but where in the home, in the field, upon the sea,
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: on the mountain, in the great cathedral, in the mission hall,
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: they are gathered in the name. We do not catch
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: the thought if we say two or three meet together
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: assembled together. No, they must be gathered, And the great
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: and only gatherer is the Lord himself, acting today through
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit. Then they must be gathered in His name,
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: which does not merely mean that they must be called Christians,
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: but they must be sharers of His nature, those who
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: are living His life under the impulse of His love,
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: in the illumination of His light. When such souls are
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: so gathered, you have the prayer meeting. A meeting for
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: prayer is a meeting of two or three units, hundreds thousands, gathered,
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: as we have said, and who give themselves to prayer.
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: I may be asked if I would discountenance singing and
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 1: the exposition of scripture in prayer meetings. Well, I should
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: certainly have no singing in a prayer meeting, save the
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: singing of some of the great prayer hymns of the
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: church in which she is rich, I would have no
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: other reading of the Word of God, save perhaps some
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: passage indicating our responsibility in or restating the charter of prayer.
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: In the true prayer meeting, there should be no waiting.
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: By that I do not mean that it is no
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: necessary always for someone to be engaged in audible prayer,
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: but rather that the cessation of the soundings of a
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: human voice ought not to mean the cessation of prayer.
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: During all the silent pauses, every individual should be in
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: silent communion with God, bearing up quietly some petitions which
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: perhaps have already been decided upon or named in the assembly. Yet,
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, there should be no waiting in
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: the sense of refusing to lead an audible prayer. When
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: the spirit guides elder, waits for younger, younger waits for elder,
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: the spirit waits for all and is grieved and hindered.
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: In the true prayer meeting, there should be pre eminently
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: the consciousness that the saints are gathered not only in
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: His name, but because in His name, in His real presence,
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: where that is so there will be waiting only for
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: the direction of the spirit. It may be objected that
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: this kind of prayer meeting would not be popular. Yet
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: surely it has not come to this that any Christian
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: soul should imagine popularity to be the standard of success
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: in the Church of God. This habit of collective prayer
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: should not be confined to meetings merely in connection with
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: the church, that is on the church premises. It may
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: be cultivated in the home life and indeed everywhere. As
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: an illustration, let me suggest that Christian women should turn
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: their faculty for social entertainment in this direction. Why not
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: have at homes for prayer. At least they would have
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: the advantage of definiteness, and in that very minor sense,
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: would be infinitely superior to many of the unhallowed crushes
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: which characterize so called social life to day. Why not
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 1: issue invitations upon this basis that your friends should meet
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: in your home to spend an afternoon in prayer. If
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: these so called friends would not accept the invitation, then
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: surely you, as a Christian, are better without such friends.
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: It is the church's friendship with people who do not
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 1: want to pray which blights the church and blights the world.
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: The people in the ungodly suburb where your home is
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: may be, according to the canons of a worldly hour,
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: pre eminently respectable. But if they are not prepared to
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: come to your home to talk with Christ, they are
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: injuring you, and you are injuring them. By your continual friendship,
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: not only in the home life, but in all social intercourse.
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: The Saints should come together more for prayer. I go
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: back in memory to the days when, as a lad
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: at school in Cheltenham, I formed a friendship with one
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: David Smith, a coal porter. His memory is fragrant still.
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: On half holidays I would accompany him to some of
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: the villages lying about the Cotswood Hills. It was our custom,
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: at his suggestion, to start half an hour earlier than
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: was necessary to bring us in time for the meetings,
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: in order that on the way we might take a
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: pause for prayer together. Some of the most hallowed memories
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: of my heart to day are of those prayer meetings
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: of two one a young man loving his Lord, and
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: the other a boy opening his eyes towards the possibility
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: of a life work, pausing among some style amid the fields,
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: and agreeing together to ask, asking, and obtaining answers. The
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: glory of such meetings lies in the utter absence from
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: them of constraint or compulsion of any kind other than
• 2:35:19
  Speaker 1: that of the presiding Lord. In such a meeting, one
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: may pray as many times as the heart prompts. One
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 1: may stop without elaborate, finish, and commence again, because in
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: another's prayer a new desire has been born in one's
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: own heart. I think we cannot tell how much it
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: would mean to the strength of the church if the
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: Saints of God cultivated the habit of fellowship in prayer
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: in small groups. There are three notes of prevailing prayer
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: of which I want to speak briefly. First definiteness, second importunity,
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 1: and third late submission. There is nothing we need more
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: in personal prayer than to know what we want and
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: ask for it. It is possible to waste the great
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: oportunity of prayer by indefiniteness. We may generalize prayer until
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: we vaporize it, and there is no virtue left in it.
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: It is a question whether ministers can serve their churches
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: in any better way than by the simple habit of
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: praying individually for the flock of God committed to their care.
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: During the two years of my minister at Westminster, I
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 1: have passed from north to south and east to west
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: of my own country, and have twice visited the States.
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: I have gone nowhere during that period without discovering the
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: influence resulting from the ministry of the man of God
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: who built that place, and more than thirty years ago,
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: passed on into the light of the Father's home. The
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: question arises as to what in the life and work
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: of Samuel Martin created the influence which so long abides.
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: He was an eloquent preacher, truly, and a man of
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: saintly character. But perhaps the greatest thing about him was
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: the fact of his definite praying. It was his habit
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: to go into that great building when the doors were shut,
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: and to pass from pew to pew, praying for the
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: peaceeople who occupied them at the regular services of the church.
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: The same truth applies to our work in the Sunday School.
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: There is no more sacred, holy, or beautiful work than
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: that of the teacher, no work that needs clearer vision
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: or more tender heart. Our teachers will find great help
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: from the practice of definite prayer for their children. Let
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: them make the Register of the Scholars names a prayer
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: book in the highest sense of that word. As every
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 1: child in turn is born upon the heart, there will
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: be created a new power for influencing those thus prayed
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: for towards Christ himself. All this is equally true of
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: the collective praying of the saints. Prayer meetings have too
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 1: often been killed by aimless, rudderless, angerless wanderings of such
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: as seem to have no haven. It would be a
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: habit of great helpfulness if before prayer the church decided
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: what it was about to pray for. It is impossible
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: to pray about everything in one prayer meeting. One day,
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: in a York Sure prayer meeting, there came a stranger
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: who did what many men are in the habit of doing.
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 1: God forgive them. He made a prayer when he had
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: been talking twenty minutes, and no living man ought to
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: pray in a prayer meeting above five, and had been
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: giving the almighty information of which he had been in
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: possession long before the man was born. At last he said,
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: and now, O, Lord God, what more shall we say
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: unto thee An old man who knew how to pray
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: audibly replied, call him faither man and asks for summat
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: This principle of definiteness is what we supremely need in
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: individual and collective praying. As Jesus did not say, if
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: you will give God information for twenty minutes an eloquent language,
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: you may derive some benefit therefrom he said, ask and receive,
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: seek and find, knock and it shall be opened. The
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: next note of prevailing prayer is that of importunity. In
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: the eleventh and eighteenth chapters of Luke are two parables
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: which show this necessity. The one is a picture of
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: a man who obtained bread by knocking and by continuing
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: to knock. The other is a picture of a woman
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: who got redressed for her wrongs by worrying a judge. Now,
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus was not teaching that God has to be begged
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: in order to obtain his favor, not that he needs
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: to be worried in order to persuade him to do right,
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: but rather that it is necessary for our sakes that
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: there should be importunity. The man who asks and forgets
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: does not really feel his need, and therefore he will
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 1: not receive. The man who knocks and runs away will
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: never receive the beneficence of the one who alone can
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: open the door. The men who know the real secret
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: of prayer know the meaning also of importunity. A Papherus agonized.
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: In prayer, there must be definiteness and then importunity. But
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: importunity must never degenerate into self will. There must also
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: be submission, submission as to the form in which the
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: answer shall come, submission as to the me method of
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: the answer, submission as to the time of the answer.
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: It must not be forgotten that we cannot see the
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: end from the beginning, cannot understand the ultimate meaning of
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: our own petitions. But we are praying to one who
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: does see the end from the beginning, and who is
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 1: perfectly conscious of the issue of our petitions. It may
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: be that the things which to us seem most necessary
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: would only prove a hindrance if they were granted. The
• 2:40:24
  Speaker 1: best answer to such prayer is the ever kindly love
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: which refuses. Therefore, there must be submission in all prevailing prayer. Then,
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: as to the subjects of prayer, we are warranted in
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: praying for anything which is within the sphere of the
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 1: will of God. That statement is inclusive and exclusive. It
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 1: includes everything which in itself is right and which forms
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: part of my life and service according to the divine plan.
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: It excludes everything which is wholly self centered. There is
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: no doubt that prayer in the spirit will mean the
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: cessation of a great many petitions, many things after which
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: we have most strenuously striven. Even in prayer. We shall
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: be able to strive after no more. If our life
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: is responsive to all the facts which make prayer possible.
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 1: Petitions will be fewer, but they will be more powerful.
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: One illustration of exclusion may be valuable. And yet in
• 2:41:19
  Speaker 1: giving it, let me first say that I am speaking
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: from my own experience only. There may be no application
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: of this illustration to any other. We must all be
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: perfectly persuaded in our own minds on such things. If
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: we have faith, we must have it to ourselves before God.
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 1: But to return I cannot pray as I once did
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: about the weather. Who am I to think I should
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: ask that any given day in the calendar should be fine.
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: I am always profoundly thankful that although our friends across
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: the ocean are able to send us weather forecasts, they
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 1: do not send us weather. God still holds the government
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: in his own hand. The mother of a friend of mine,
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: a Baptist minister told me why she had ceased praying
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: concerning this matter. For many years of family worship, she
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: had been in the habit of asking for a fine
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 1: day for the Sunday school outing. When her boy was
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: about ten years of age, he came to her on
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 1: one such morning and said, Mother, I don't think you
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: ought to ask God for a fine day. Perhaps it
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 1: would be a great deal better for the farmers to
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 1: have it wet, and why should it be fine just
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 1: for our outing. She replied that, of course, her petition
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: was that if it should be God's will, it might
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: be fine. The boy then said, why don't you ask
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 1: God to help you to choose one of his fine days.
• 2:42:36
  Speaker 1: To me, that is the whole philosophy of praying. It
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: is not an arrangement by which we obtain things which
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: we personally desire. It is rather the provision through which
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: we seek to be brought into conformity with the will
• 2:42:47
  Speaker 1: of God, and to obtain only the light which enables
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: us to walk therein. Not that it is wrong to ask, definitely,
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: but it is always wise to carefully weigh our petitions
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 1: as to whether or not they really reckoni His sovereignty
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: and wisdom. Charles Kingsley refused on one occasion to use
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: the archbishop's prayer for the cessation of rain. He recognized
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: that the long downpour was sorely needed for sanitary conditions.
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: There are particular things about which we ought to pray
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: for which we are commanded to pray for all the saints,
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: for the Word of God, for the Christian ministry, for
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: all souls. Jesus prayed for all the saints in that
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: great intercessory prayer. Paul prayed for these as the letters
• 2:43:31
  Speaker 1: of the Imprisonment testify. What a healing of our denominational
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: differences would result if, instead of perpetually discussing those differences,
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: we gave ourselves to prayer for each other. Then we
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 1: should pray for the Word of God, that it may
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 1: run and be glorified again. How much more powerful such
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 1: action would be than that of debating our differing interpretations
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 1: of its meaning, than for the ministry. If the Church
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 1: would pray for the ministry instead of criticizing it, there
• 2:43:59
  Speaker 1: would be wonderful result in this connection. I should like
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 1: to urge upon the Church that its special duty, according
• 2:44:05
  Speaker 1: to the teaching of the Lord, is to pray that
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: God will thrust out into his harvest his own laborers.
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: I am sometimes asked to appeal to young men to
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: enter the ministry, because there is a need of them.
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 1: My answer is that no man can choose to become
• 2:44:19
  Speaker 1: a minister. He must be sent. Therefore, we should pray,
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 1: as our master taught us, that the Lord himself will send.
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: In this connection, also, it may be well to urge
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: the importance of praying for those who have the sacred
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: and awful charge of training men for the exercise of
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: their ministry. Then moreover we are to pray for the
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: men who are exercising the holy calling. I once heard
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: doctor Barry give a charge to a young minister. In
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: the course of that charge, he said to the people,
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: you will get out of my young brother what you expect,
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: and you will expect what you pray for. Then he
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: used this homely but forceful illustration, said he We were
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: giving soup away lately to our poor peace people, and
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: had issued general instructions that the lads who came to
• 2:45:03
  Speaker 1: fetch the soup should bring with them a vessel that
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: should hold about two quarts. I was at the soup
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: kitchen one day and saw a boy about ten years
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 1: of age, ragged and dirty, but with eyes that flashed fire,
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: going into the soup kitchen carrying a vessel that would
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: hold at least three gallons. We could not, for shame
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: put two courts into that. Now, said doctor Barry, when
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 1: you come to hear your minister, do not bring a
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: two court measure. Oh what it is to preach to
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: men and women who have been praying for you. Then
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: we are charged to pray for all souls, the sorrowing,
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: the sighing, the sad, the sinning. Moreover, there is no
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: small matter about which we have not the right to pray.
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: And a Shipton wrote a little book called Tell Jesus,
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 1: being the memorials of Emily Goss. It is the story
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: of a girl who told Jesus everything, from the trouble
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 1: of a tangle in a skein of word to the
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 1: joys of the passing hours. From this sacred service of prayer,
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: no saint of God is excluded. The youngest and the
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: weakest can pray. There are some of us who are
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 1: excluded from certain lines of service because of the pressure
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: of life upon us, But no one of us is
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: excluded from prayer. There are saints of God, who for long,
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: long years have been shut off from all the activities
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: of the church, and even from the worship of the Sanctuary,
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: but who nevertheless have continued to labor together in prayer
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 1: with the whole fellowship of the saints. There comes to
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: me the thought of one woman, who, to my knowledge,
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: since eighteen seventy two, in this great babble of London,
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: has been in perpetual pain, and yet in constant prayer.
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: She is today a woman twisted and distorted by suffering,
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 1: and yet exhaling the calm and strength of the secret
• 2:46:51
  Speaker 1: of the Most High. In eighteen seventy two, she was
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: a bed ridden girl in the north of London, praying
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: that God would send revival to the church of which
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 1: she was a member, and yet into which even then
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: she never came. She had read the little paper called Revival,
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: which subsequently became the Christian the story of a work
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  Speaker 1: in Chicago being done among ragged children by a man
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  Speaker 1: called Moody. She had never seen Moody, but putting that
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 1: little paper under her pillow, she began to pray, O, Lord,
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  Speaker 1: send this man to our church. She had no means
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  Speaker 1: of reaching him or communicating with him. He had already
• 2:47:27
  Speaker 1: visited the country in eighteen sixty seven, and in eighteen
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: seventy two he started again for a short trip with
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: no intention of doing any work. Mister Lessie, however, the
• 2:47:36
  Speaker 1: pastor of the church of which this girl was a member,
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: met him and asked him to preach for him. He consented,
• 2:47:42
  Speaker 1: and after the evening service he asked those who would
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: decide for Christ to rise, and hundreds did so. He
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: was surprised and imagined that his request had been misunderstood.
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: He repeated it more clearly, and again the response was
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: the same. Meetings were continued throughout the following ten days,
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 1: and four hundred members were taken into the church. In
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 1: telling me this story, Moody said, I wanted to know
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: what this meant. I began making inquiries and never rested
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 1: until I found a bed ridden girl praying that God
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 1: would bring me to that church. He had heard her
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  Speaker 1: and brought me over four thousand miles of land and
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: sea in answer to her request. This story is told
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 1: in the Life of D. L. Moody by his son,
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: But now let me continue it. That girl was a
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 1: member of my church when I was pastor at New Court.
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: She is still a member, still suffering, still confined to
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 1: her own room. When in nineteen o one I was
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 1: leaving England for America, I went to see her. She
• 2:48:40
  Speaker 1: said to me, I want you to reach that birthday book.
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 1: I did so, and turning to February fifth, I saw
• 2:48:47
  Speaker 1: in the handwriting I knew so well. D. L. Moody,
• 2:48:50
  Speaker 1: Psalm ninety one. Then Marianne Adlard said to me, he
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: wrote that for me when he came to see me
• 2:48:56
  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two, and I prayed for him every
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: day till he went home to God. God. Continuing, she said, now,
• 2:49:02
  Speaker 1: will you write your name on your birthday page and
• 2:49:05
  Speaker 1: let me pray for you until either you or I
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 1: go home. I shall never forget writing my name in
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 1: that book. To me, the room was full of the presence.
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 1: I have often thought of that hour in the rush
• 2:49:17
  Speaker 1: of busy life, in the place of toil and strain,
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: And even yet, by God's good grace, I know that
• 2:49:23
  Speaker 1: mary Anne Atlart is praying for me. And it is
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: for this reason that to her insincere love and admiration
• 2:49:29
  Speaker 1: I have dedicated this book. These are the laborers of
• 2:49:32
  Speaker 1: force in the fields of God. It is the heroes
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 1: and heroines who are out of sight and who labor
• 2:49:39
  Speaker 1: in prayer, who make it possible for those who are
• 2:49:41
  Speaker 1: in sight to do their work and win the force
• 2:49:45
  Speaker 1: of it. To such as are called upon to exercise,
• 2:49:48
  Speaker 1: the ministry can never be measured. The personal word must
• 2:49:52
  Speaker 1: again be forgiven. I never stand up in any assembly,
• 2:49:56
  Speaker 1: at home or abroad without knowing that three people nearer
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 1: to me than the others will pray for me, my wife,
• 2:50:02
  Speaker 1: my mother, and my father. Oh the power of it
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 1: and the humbling of it. It makes a man feel
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: that he must be in line with such praying, and
• 2:50:12
  Speaker 1: he is afraid. Yet it makes him strong, for he
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 1: knows that more things are wrought by prayer than this
• 2:50:19
  Speaker 1: world dreams of. Oh, for the multiplication of those who
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 1: will devote themselves to this special labor of intercession. With
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 1: all that we have attempted to consider in our minds,
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 1: we lift our faces to the face of our Lord,
• 2:50:32
  Speaker 1: as did the men who watched him pray in the
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 1: olden days, and say to him, Lord, teach us to pray.
• 2:50:42
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter seven and End of the Practice of
• 2:50:46
  Speaker 1: Prayer by G. Campbell Morgan