afraid for myself as a minister that I pray too easily. I have been praying
for these forty or fifty years and it becomes, as far as man is concerned,
an easy thing to pray. We all have been taught to pray, and when we are
called upon we can pray, but it gets far too easy, and I am afraid we think
we are praying often when there is little real prayer. Now if we are to
have the praying of the Holy Ghost in us one thing is needed; we must begin
by feeling, "I can not pray." When a man breaks down and can not pray, and
there is a fire burning in his heart, and a burden resting upon him, there
is something drawing him to God. "I know not what to pray,"--oh, blessed
ignorance! We are not ignorant enough. Abraham went out not knowing whither
he went; in that was an element of ignorance and also an element of faith.
Jesus said to His disciples when they came with their prayer for the throne,
"You know not what you ask." Paul says, "No man knoweth the things of God
but the Spirit of God." You say, "If I am not to pray the old prayers
I learned from my mother or from my professor in college or from my
experience yesterday and the day before, what am I to pray?" I answer, pray
new prayers, rise higher into the riches of God. You must begin to feel
your ignorance. You know what we think of a student who goes to college
fancying he knows everything. He will not learn much. Sir Isaac Newton
said, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself
in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than
ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
When I see a man who can not pray glibly and smoothly and readily, I say
that is a mark of the Holy Spirit. When he begins in his prayers to say,
"Oh, God, I want more, I want to be led deeper in. I have prayed for the
heathen, but I want to feel the burden of the heathen in a new way," it is
an indication of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, beloved, if
you will take time and let God lay the burden of the heathen heavier upon
you until you begin to feel, "I have never prayed," it will be the most
blessed thing in your life. And so with regard to the church: We want to
take up our position as members of the church of Christ in this land; and
as belonging to that great body, to say, "Lord God, is there nothing that
can be done to bless the church of this land and to revive it and bring it
out of its worldliness and out of its feebleness?" We may confer together
and conclude faithlessly, "No, we do not know what is to be done; we have
no influence and power over all these ministers and their churches." But on
the other hand, how blessed to come to God and say, "Lord, we know not what
to ask. Thou knowest what to grant." The Holy Spirit could pray a hundred
fold more in us if we were only conscious of our ignorance, because we
would then feel our dependence upon Him. May God teach us our ignorance in
prayer and our impotence, and may God bring us to say, "Lord, we can not
pray; we do not know what prayer is." Of course some of us do know in a
measure what prayer is, many of us, and we thank God for what he has been
to us in answer to prayer, but oh, it is only a little beginning compared
to what the Holy Spirit of God teaches.
There is the first thought: our ignorance. "We know not what we should pray
for as we ought;" but "the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered." We often hear about the work of God the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in working out and completing the
great redemption, and we know that when God worked in the creation of the
world, He was not weary, and yet we read that wonderful expression in the
book of Exodus about the Sabbath day, "God rested and was refreshed." He
was refreshed, the Sabbath day was a refreshment to Him. God had to work
and Christ had to work, and now the Holy Spirit works, and His secret
working place, the place where all work must begin, is in the heart where
He comes to teach a man how to pray. When a man begins to get an insight
into that which is needed and that which is promised and that which God
waits to perform, he feels it to be beyond his conception; then is the time
he will be ready to say, "I can not limit the holy one of Israel by my
thoughts; I give myself up in the faith that the Holy Spirit can be praying
for me with groanings, with longings, that can not be expressed." Apply
that to your prayers.
There are different phases of prayer. There is worship, when a man just
bows down to adore the great God. We do not take time to worship. We
need to worship in secret, just to get ourselves face to face with the
everlasting God, that He may overshadow us and cover us and fill us with
His love and His glory. It is the Holy Spirit that can work in us such a
yearning that we will give up our pleasures and even part of our business,
that we may the oftener meet our God.
The next phase of prayer is fellowship. In prayer there is not only the
worship of a king, but fellowship as of a child with God. Christians take
far too little time in fellowship. They think prayer is just coming with
their petitions. If Christ is to make me what I am to be, I must tarry in
fellowship with God. If God is to let his love enter in and shine and burn
through my heart, I must take time to be with Him. The smith puts his rod
of iron into the fire. If he leaves it there but a short time it does not
become red hot. He may take it out to do something with it and after a time
put it back again for a few minutes, but this time it does not become red
hot. In the course of the day he may put the rod into the fire a great
many times and leave it there two or three minutes each time, but it never
becomes thoroughly heated. If he takes time and leaves the rod ten or
fifteen minutes in the fire the whole iron will become red hot with the
heat that is in the fire. So if we are to get the fire of God's holiness
and love and power we must take more time with God in fellowship. That was
what gave men like Abraham and Moses their strength. They were men who were
separated to a fellowship with God, and the living God made them strong.
Oh, if we did but realize what prayer can do!
Another, and a most important phase of prayer is intercession. What a work
God has set open for those who are His priests--intercessors! We find a
wonderful expression in the prophecy of Isaiah; God says, "Let him take
hold of me;" and again, "There is none that stirreth up himself to take
hold of thee." In other passages God refers to the intercessors for Israel.
Have you ever taken hold of God? Thank God, some of us have; but oh,
friends, representatives of the church of Christ in the United States,
if God were to show us how much there is of intense prayer for a revival
through the church, how much of sincere confession of the sins of the
church, how much of pleading with God and giving Him no rest till He make
Jerusalem a glory in the earth, I think we should all be ashamed. We need
to give up our hearts to the Holy Spirit, that He may pray for us and in us
with groanings that can not be uttered.
What am I to do if I am to have this Holy Spirit within me? The Spirit
wants time and room in the heart; He wants the whole being. He wants all
my interest and influence going out for the honor and the glory of God; He
wants me to give myself up. Beloved friend, you do not know what you could
do if you would give yourself up to intercession. It is a work that a sick
one lying on a bed year by year may do in power. It is a work that a poor
one who has hardly a penny to give to a missionary society can do day by
day. It is a work that a young girl who is in her father's house and has to
help in the housekeeping can do by the Holy Spirit. People often ask: What
does the Church of our day do to reach the masses? They ask, though they
ask it tremblingly, for they feel so helpless: What can we do against the
materialism and infidelity in places like London and Berlin and New York
and Paris? We have given it up as hopeless. Ah, if men and women could be
called out to band themselves together to take hold upon God! I am not
speaking of any prayer union or any prayer time statedly set apart, but if
the Spirit could find men and women who would give up their lives to cry to
God, the Spirit would most surely come. It is not selfishness and it is not
mere happiness that we seek when we talk about the peace and the rest and
the blessing Christ can give. God wants us, Christ wants us, because He has
to do a work; the work of Calvary is to be done in our hearts, we are
to sacrifice our lives to pleading with God for men. Oh, let us yield
ourselves day by day and ask God that it may please Him to let His Holy
Spirit work in us.
Then comes the last thought, that God Himself comes to look with
complacency upon the attitude of His child. Perhaps that poor man does not
know that he is praying; perhaps he is ashamed of his prayers. So much
the better. Perhaps he feels burdened and restless, but God hears, God
discovers what is the mind of the Spirit, and will answer. Oh, think of
this wonderful mystery, God the Father on the throne ready to grant unto
us His blessings according to the riches of His glory; Christ the almighty
high priest pleading day and night. His whole person is one intercession,
and there goes up from Him without ceasing the pleading to the Father,
"Bless thy church," and the answer comes from the Father to the Son, and
from the Son down to the church, and if it does not reach us, it is because
our hearts are closed. Let us open and enlarge our hearts and say to God,
"Oh that I might be a priest, to enter God's presence continually and to
take hold of God and to bring down a blessing to my perishing fellowmen!"
God longs to find the intercession of Jesus reflected in the hearts of His
children, and where He finds it, it is a delight. And He that searcheth the
hearts knoweth the mind of the Spirit, because he prayeth for the saints,
according to the will of God. Some one has spoken of that word, "for the
saints," as meaning the spirit of praise in the believer for the saints
throughout the world. God's word continually comes to us to pray for all
not to be content with ourselves. Think upon the hundreds of church members
in this land, multitudes unconverted, multitudes just converted, but
yet worldly and careless. Think of the thousands of nominal
Christians--Christians in name, but robbing God! and can we be happy? If
we bear the burden of souls, can we have this peace and joy? God gives you
peace and joy with no other object than that you should be strong to bear
the burden of souls in the joy of Christ's salvation.
We do not wish to say, "I am trying to be as holy as I can; what have I to
do with those worldly people about me?" If there is a terrible disease in
my hand, my body can not say, "I have nothing to do with it." When the
people had sinned Ezra rent his garments and bowed in the dust and made
confession. He repented on the part of the people. And Nehemiah, when the
nation sinned, made confession, and cast himself before God, deploring
their disobedience to the God of their fathers. Daniel did the very same.
And think you that we as believers have not a great work to do? Suppose we
were each, persons without a single sin; just suppose it; could we then
make confession? Look at Christ, without sin! He went down into the waters
of baptism with sinners; He made Himself one with them. God has spoken to
us to ask us if we realize what we are. He now asks us whether we belong to
the church of this land, whether we have borne the burden of sin around
us. Let us go to God and may He by the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with
unutterable sorrow at the state of the church, and may God give us grace to
mourn before Him. And when we begin to confess the sins of the church, we
will begin to feel our own sins as never before. In five of the epistles
to the seven churches in Asia the keynote was "Repent;" there was to be no
idea of overcoming and getting a blessing unless they repented. Let us on
behalf of the church of Christ repent, and God will give us courage to feel
that He will revive His work.
THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.
XIII.
_1 Corinthians 15: 24-28_.--"_Then cometh the end, when He shall have
delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put
down all rule, and all authority and power. For He must reign till He hath
put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death. For He hath put all things under His feet. But when He saith, All
things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put
all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then
shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him, that God may be all in
all_."
This will be the grand conclusion of the great drama of the world's
history, and of Christ's redemption. There will come a day--the glory is
such we can form no conception of it, the mystery is so deep we can not
realize it, but there is a day coming, when the Son shall deliver up the
Kingdom that the Father gave Him, and that He won with His blood, and that
He hath established and perfected from the throne of His glory. "He shall
deliver up the Kingdom unto the Father." The Son Himself shall be subject
also unto the Father, "that God may be all in all." I cannot understand
it--the ever blessed Son equal with God, from eternity, and through
eternity; the ever blessed Son on the throne shall be subject unto the
Father; and in some way utterly beyond our comprehension, it shall then be
made manifest, as never before, that God is all in all. It is this that
Christ has been working for; it is this that He is working for to-day in
us; it is this that He thought it worth while to give His blood for; it is
this that His heart is longing for in each of us; this is the very essence
and glory of Christianity, "that God may be all in all." And now, if this
is what fills the heart of Christ; if this expresses the one end of the
work of Christ, then, if I want to have the spirit of Christ in me, the
motto of my life must be: Everything made subject, and swallowed up in Him,
"that God may be all in all." What a triumph it would be if the Church were
fighting really with that banner floating over her! What a life ours could
be if that were really our banner! To serve God fully, wholly, only, to
have Him all in all! How it would ennoble, and enlarge, and stimulate our
whole being! I am working, I am fighting, "that God may be all in all;"
that the day of glory may be hastened. I am praying, and the Holy Spirit
makes His wrestling in me with unutterable longing, "that God may be all
in all." Would that we Christians realized in connection with what a grand
cause we are working and praying; that we had some conception of what
a Kingdom we are partakers of, and what a manifestation of God we are
preparing for. To illustrate what a grand thing it is to belong to the
Kingdom of God, and to the glorious Church of Christ on earth, John McNeill
tells how when he was a boy twelve years of age, working on a railway line
and earning the grand wages of six shillings a week, he used to go home to
his mother and sisters, who thought no end of their little Johnnie, and
delight them by telling of the position he had. He would say with great
pride, "Oh, our company--it has so many thousands of pounds passing
through its hands every year; it carries so many hundreds of thousands of
passengers every year; and it has so many miles of railway, and so many
engines and carriages; and so many thousands in its employ!" And the mother
and the sisters had great pride in him, because he was a partner in such an
important business. Christians, if we would only rouse ourselves to believe
that we belong to the Kingdom that Christ is preparing to deliver up to the
Father, that God may be all in all, how the glory would fill our hearts,
and expel everything mean, and low, and earthly! How we should be borne
along in this blessed faith! I am living for this: that Christ may have the
Kingdom to deliver to the Father. I am living for this, and I will one day
see Him made subject to the Father, and then God all in all. I am living
for Him, and I shall be there not only as a witness, but I will have a part
in it all. The Kingdom delivered up, the Son made subject, and God all in
all! I shall have a part in it, and in adoring worship share the glory and
the blessedness.
Let us take this home to our hearts, that it may rule in our lives--this
one thought, this one faith, this one aim, this one joy: Christ lived, and
died, and reigns; I live and die and in His power I reign; only for this
one thing, "that God may be all in all." Let it possess our whole heart,
and life. How can we do this? It is a serious question, to which I wish to
give you a few simple answers. And I say, first of all: Allow God to take
His place in your heart and life. Luther often said to people, when they
came troubling him about difficulties, "Do let God be God." Oh, give God
His place. And what is that place? "That God may be all in all." Let God be
all in all every day, from morning to evening. God to rule and I to obey.
Ah, the blessedness of saying, "God and I!" What a privilege that I have
such a partner! God first, and then I! And yet there might be secret
self-exaltation in associating God with myself. And I find in the Bible a
more precious word still. It is, "God and not I." It is not, "God first,
and I second;" God is all, and I am nothing. Paul said, "I labored more
abundantly than they all; though I be nothing." Let us try to give God His
place--begin in our closet, in our worship, in our prayer. The power of
prayer depends almost entirely upon our apprehension of who it is with whom
I speak. It is of the greatest consequence, if we have but half an hour in
which to pray, that we take time to get a sight of this great God, in His
power, in His love, in His nearness, just waiting to bless us. This is
of far more consequence than spending the whole half hour in pouring out
numberless petitions, and pleading numberless promises. The great thing is
to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent
Love. Before and above everything, let us take time ere we pray to realize
the glory and presence of God. Give God His place in every prayer. I
say, allow God to have His place. I can not give God His place upon the
throne--in a certain sense I can, and I ought to try. The great thing,
however, is for me to feel that I can not realize what that place is, but
God will increasingly reveal Himself and the place He holds. How do I know
anything about the sun? Because the sun shines, and in its light I see what
the sun is. The sun is its own evidence. No philosopher could have told me
about the sun if the sun did not shine. No power of meditation and thought
can grasp the presence of God. Be quiet, and trusting, and resting, and the
everlasting God will shine into your heart, and will reveal Himself. And
then, just as naturally as I enjoy the light of the sun, and as naturally
as I look upon the pages of a book knowing that I can see the letters
because the light shines; just as naturally will God reveal Himself to the
waiting soul, and make His presence a reality. God will take His place as
God in the presence of His child, so that absolutely and actually the
chief thing in the child's heart shall be: "God is here, God makes Himself
known." Beloved, is not this what you long for--that God shall take a place
that He has never had; and that God shall come to you in a nearness that
you have never felt yet; and, above all, that God shall come to you in an
abiding and unbroken fellowship? God is able to take His place before you
all the day. I repeat what I have referred to before, because God has
taught me a lesson by it: As God made the light of the sun so soft, and
sweet, and bright, and universal, and unceasing, that it never costs me a
minute's trouble to enjoy it; even so, and far more real than the light
shining upon me, the nearness of my God can be revealed to me as my abiding
portion. Let us all pray "that God may be all in all," in our everyday
life.
"That God may be all in all," I must not only allow Him to take His place,
but secondly, I must accept His will in everything. I must accept His will
in every providence. Whether it be a Judas that betrays, or whether it be
a Pilate in his indifference, who gives me up to the enemy; whatever the
trouble, or temptation, or vexation, or worry, that comes, I must see God
in it, and accept it as God's will to me. Trouble of any sort that comes to
me is God's will for me. It is not God's will that men should do the wrong,
but it is God's will that they should be in circumstances of trial. There
is never a trial that comes to us but it is God's will for us, and if we
learn to see God in it, then we bid it welcome.
Suppose away in South Africa there is a woman whose husband has gone on a
long journey into the interior. He is to be away for months from all posts.
The wife is anxious to receive news. In weeks she has had no letter or
tidings from him. One day, as she stands in her door, there comes a great,
savage Kafir. He is frightful in appearance, and carries his spears and
shield. The woman is alarmed and rushes into the house and closes the
door. He comes and knocks at the door, and she is in terror. She sends her
servant, who comes back and says, "The man says he must see you." She
goes, all affrighted. He takes out an old newspaper. He has come a month's
journey on foot from her husband, and inside the dirty newspaper is a
letter from her husband, telling her of his welfare. How that wife delights
in that letter! She forgets the face that has terrified her. And now as
weeks are passing away again, how she begins to long for that ugly Kafir
messenger! After long waiting he comes again, and this time she rushes
out to meet him because he is the messenger that comes from her beloved
husband, and she knows that with all his repelling exterior, he is
the bearer of a message of love. Beloved, have you learned to look at
tribulation, and vexation, and disappointment, as the dark, savage-looking
messenger with a spear in his hand, that comes straight from Jesus? Have
you learned to say, "There is never a trouble, and never a hurt by which
my heart is touched or even pierced, but it comes from Jesus, and brings
a message of love?" Will you not learn to say from to-day, "Welcome every
trial, for it comes from God?" If you want God to be all in all, you must
see and meet God in every providence. Oh, learn to accept God's will in
everything! Come learn to say of every trial, without exception, "It is my
Father who sent it. I accept it as His messenger," and nothing in earth or
hell can separate you from God.
If God is to be all in all in your heart and life, I say not only, Allow
Him to take His place, and accept all His will, but, thirdly, Trust in His
power. Dear friends, it is "God who _worketh to will and to do_ according
to His good pleasure." It is "the God of peace," according to another
passage, "who perfects you in every good thing to do His will, _working
in you_ what is well-pleasing in His sight." You complain of weakness, of
feebleness, of emptiness. Never mind; that is what you are made for--to be
an emptied vessel, in which God can put His fullness and His strength.
Do learn the lesson. I know it is not easy. Long after Paul had been an
apostle, the Lord Jesus had to come in a very special way to teach him to
say, "I do gladly glory in my infirmities." Paul was in danger of being
exalted, owing to the revelations from Heaven, and Jesus sent him a thorn
in the flesh--yes, Jesus sent it--a messenger of Satan--to buffet him. Paul
prayed, and struggled, and wanted to get rid of it. And Jesus came to him,
and said, "It is my doing that you may not be free from that. You need it.
I will bless you wonderfully in it." Paul's life was changed from that
moment in this one respect, and he said, "I never knew it so before,
from henceforth I glory in my infirmities; for when I am weak, then am I
strong." Do you indeed desire God to be all in all? Learn to glory in your
weakness. Take time to say every day as you bow before God, "The almighty
power of God that works in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the
flowers, is working in me. It is as sure as that I live. The almighty power
of God is working in me. I only need to get down, and be quiet; I need
to be more submissive, and surrendered to His will; I need to be more
trustful, and to allow God to do with me what He will." Give God His
way with you, and let God work, and He will work mightily. The deepest
quietness has often been proved to be the inspiration for the highest
action. It has been seen in the experience of many of God's saints, and it
is just the experience we need,--that in the quietness of surrender and
faith, God's working has been made manifest.