I. The Ministry of Prayer
"Prayer should be the breath of our breathing, the thought of
our thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living, the sound of
our hearing, the growth of our growing." Prayer in its magnitude is length
without end, width without bounds, height without top, and depth without
bottom. Illimitable in its breadth, exhaustless in height, fathomless in depths
and infinite in extension. -- HOMER W. HODGE
THE ministry of prayer has been the peculiar distinction of all of God's
saints. This has been the secret of their power. The energy and the soul of
their work has been the closet. The need of help outside of man being so great,
man's natural inability to always judge kindly, justly, and truly, and to act
the Golden Rule, so prayer is enjoined by Christ to enable man to act in all
these things according to the Divine will. By prayer, the ability is secured to
feel the law of love, to speak according to the law of love, and to do
everything in harmony with the law of love.
God can help us. God is a Father. We need
God's good things to help us to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
before God." We need Divine aid to act brotherly, wisely, and nobly, and to
judge truly, and charitably. God's help to do all these things in God's way is
secured by prayer. "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you."
In the marvellous output of Christian graces and
duties, the result of giving ourselves wholly to God, recorded in the twelfth
chapter of Romans, we have the words, "Continuing instant in prayer," preceded
by "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation," followed by, "Distributing to
the necessity of the saints, given to hospitality." Paul thus writes as if
these rich and rare graces and unselfish duties, so sweet, bright, generous,
and unselfish, had for their center and source the ability to pray.
This is the same word which is used of the prayer
of the disciples which ushered in Pentecost with all of its rich and glorious
blessings of the Holy Spirit. In Colossians, Paul presses the word into the
service of prayer again, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with
thanksgiving." The word in its background and root means strong, the ability to
stay, and persevere steadfast, to hold fast and firm, to give constant
attention to.
In Acts, chapter six, it is translated, "Give
ourselves continually to prayer." There is in it constancy, courage, unfainting
perseverance. It means giving such marked attention to, and such deep concern
to a thing, as will make it conspicuous and controlling.
This is an advance in demand on "continue."
Prayer is to be incessant, without intermission, assiduously, no check in
desire, in spirit or in act, the spirit and the life always in the attitude of
prayer. The knees may not always be bended, the lips may not always be vocal
with words of prayer, but the spirit is always in the act and intercourse of
prayer.
There ought to be no adjustment of life or spirit
for closet hours. The closet spirit should sweetly rule and adjust all times
and occasions. Our activities and work should be performed in the same spirit
which makes our devotion and which makes our closet time sacred. "Without
intermission, incessantly, assiduously," describes an opulence, and energy, and
unabated and ceaseless strength and fulness of effort; like the full and
exhaustless and spontaneous flow of an artesian stream. Touch the man of God
who thus understands prayer, at any point, at any time, and a full current of
prayer is seen flowing from him.
But all these untold benefits, of which the Holy
Spirit is made to us the conveyor, go back in their disposition and results to
prayer. Not on a little process and a mere performance of prayer is the coming
of the Holy Spirit and of His great grace conditioned, but on prayer set on
fire, by an unquenchable desire, with such a sense of need as cannot be denied,
with a fixed determination which will not let go, and which will never faint
till it wins the greatest good and gets the best and last blessing God has in
store for us.
The First Christ, Jesus, our Great High Priest,
forever blessed and adored be His Name, was a gracious Comforter, a faithful
Guide, a gifted Teacher, a fearless Advocate, a devoted Friend, and an all
powerful Intercessor. The other, "another Comforter," the Holy Spirit, comes
into all these blessed relations of fellowship, authority and aid, with all the
tenderness, sweetness, fulness and efficiency of the First Christ.
Was the First Christ the Christ of prayer? Did He
offer prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto God? Did He
seek the silence, the solitude and the darkness that He might pray unheard and
unwitnessed save by heaven, in His wrestling agony, for man with God? Does He
ever live, enthroned above at the Father's right hand, there to pray for us?
Then how truly does the other Christ, the other
Comforter, the Holy Spirit, represent Jesus Christ as the Christ of prayer!
This other Christ, the Comforter, plants Himself not in the waste of the
mountain nor far into the night, but in the chill and the night of the human
heart, to rouse it to the struggle, and to teach it the need and form of
prayer. How the Divine Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, puts into the human
heart the burden of earth's almighty need, and makes the human lips give voice
to its mute and unutterable groanings!
What a mighty Christ of prayer is the Holy
Spirit! How He quenches every flame in the heart but the flame of heavenly
desire! How He quiets, like a weaned child, all the self-will, until in will,
in brain, and in heart, and by mouth, we pray only as He prays. "Making
intercession for the saints, according to the will of God."