| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Carl" |
| Date: |
13 Jul 2007 06:00:06 AM |
| Object: |
Lessons On Prayer |
This is a portion of A.B. Bruce's work entitled "The Training Of The Twelve"
which touches upon the topic of prayer and how & what Jesus taught His
disciples concerning prayer. In presenting this, A.B. Bruce also shows we
Christians ways we should pray and why. I hope you learn something from
this.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
Lessons On Prayer
by A. B. Bruce
Matt 6:5-13; 7:7-11; Luke 11:1-13; 18:1-5.
It would have been matter for surprise if, among the manifold subjects on
which Jesus gave instruction to His disciples, prayer had not occupied a
prominent place. Prayer is a necessity of spiritual life, and all who
earnestly try to pray soon feel the need of teaching how to do it. And what
theme more likely to engage the thoughts of a Master who was Himself
emphatically a man of prayer, spending occasionally whole nights in
prayerful communion with His heavenly Father?
We find, accordingly, that prayer was a subject on which Jesus often spoke
in the hearing of His disciples. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, He
devoted a paragraph to that topic, in which He cautioned His hearers against
pharisaic ostentation and heathenish repetition, and recited a form of
devotion as a model of simplicity, comprehensiveness, and brevity. At other
times He directed attention to the necessity, in order to acceptable and
prevailing prayer, of perseverance, concord, strong faith, and large
expectation.
The passage cited from the eleventh chapter of Luke's Gospel gives an
account of what may be regarded as the most complete and comprehensive of
all the lessons communicated by Jesus to His disciples on the important
subject to which it relates. The circumstances in which this lesson was
given are interesting. The lesson on prayer was itself an answer to prayer.
A disciple, in all probability one of the twelve, after hearing Jesus pray,
made the request: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples." The request and its occasion taken together convey to us
incidentally two pieces of information. From the latter we learn that Jesus,
besides praying much alone, also prayed in company with His disciples,
practising family prayer as the head of a household, as well as secret
prayer in personal fellowship with God His Father. From the former we learn
that the social prayers of Jesus were most impressive. Disciples hearing
them were made painfully conscious of their own incapacity, and after the
Amen were ready instinctively to proffer the request, "Lord, teach us to
pray," as if ashamed any more to attempt the exercise in their own feeble,
vague, stammering words.
When this lesson was given we know not, for Luke introduces his narrative of
it in the most indefinite manner, without noting either time or place. The
reference to John in the past tense might seem to indicate a date subsequent
to his death; but the mode of expression would be sufficiently explained by
the supposition that the disciple who made the request had previously been a
disciple of the Baptist. Nor can any certain inference be drawn from the
contents of the lesson. It is a lesson which might have been given to the
twelve at any time during their disciplehood, so far as their spiritual
necessities were concerned. It is a lesson for children, for spiritual
minors, for Christians in the crude stage of the divine life, afflicted with
confusion of mind, dumbness, dejection, unable to pray for want of clear
thought, apt words, and above all, of faith that knows how to wait in hope;
and it meets the wants of such by suggesting topics, supplying forms of
language, and furnishing their weak faith with the props of cogent arguments
for perseverance. Now such was the state of the twelve during all the time
they were with Jesus; till He ascended to heaven, and power descended from
heaven on them, bringing with it a loosed tongue and an enlarged heart.
During the whole period of their discipleship, they needed prompting in
prayer such as a mother gives her child, and exhortations to perseverance in
the habit of praying, even as do the humblest followers of Christ. Far from
being exempt from such infirmities, the twelve may even have experienced
them in a superlative degree. The heights correspond to the depths in
religious experience. Men who are destined to be apostles must, as
disciples, know more than most of the chaotic, speechless condition, and of
the great, irksome, but most salutary business of Waiting on God for light,
and truth, and grace, earnestly desired but long withheld.
It was well for the church that her first ministers needed this lesson on
prayer; for the time comes in the case of most, if not all, who are
spiritually earnest, when its teaching is very seasonable. In the spring of
the divine life, the beautiful blossom-time of piety, Christians may be able
to pray with fluency and fervor, unembarrassed by want of words, thoughts,
and feelings of a certain kind. But that happy stage soon passes, and is
succeeded by one in which prayer often becomes a helpless struggle, an
inarticulate groan, a silent, distressed, despondent waiting on God, on the
part of men who are tempted to doubt whether God be indeed the hearer of
prayer, whether prayer be not altogether idle and useless. The three wants
contemplated and provided for in this lesson - the want of ideas, of words,
and of faith - are as common as they are grievous. How long it takes most to
fill even the simple petitions of the Lord's Prayer with definite meanings!
the second petition, e.g., "Thy kingdom come," which can be presented with
perfect intelligence only by such as have formed for themselves a clear
conception of the ideal spiritual republic or commonwealth. How difficult,
and therefore how rare, to find out acceptable words for precious thoughts
slowly reached! How many, who have never got any thing on which their hearts
were set without needing to ask for it often, and to wait for it long (no
uncommon experience), have been tempted by the delay to give up asking in
despair! And no wonder; for delay is hard to bear in all cases, especially
in connection with spiritual blessings, which are in fact, and are by Christ
here assumed to be, the principal object of a Christian man's desires.
Devout souls would not be utterly confounded by delay, or even refusal, in
connection with mere temporal goods; for they know that such things as
health, wealth, wife, children, home, position, are not unconditionally
good, and that it may be well sometimes not to obtain them, or not easily
and too soon. But it is most confounding to desire with all one's heart the
Holy Ghost, and yet seem to be denied the priceless boon; to pray for light,
and to get instead deeper darkness; for faith, and to be tormented with
doubts which shake cherished convictions to their foundations; for sanctity,
and to have the mud of corruption stirred up by temptation from the bottom
of the well of eternal life in the heart. Yet all this, as every experienced
Christian knows, is part of the discipline through which scholars in
Christ's school have to pass ere the desire of their heart be fulfilled.
The lesson on prayer taught by Christ, in answer to request, consists of two
parts, in one of which thoughts and words are put into the mouths of
immature disciples, while the other provides aids to faith in God as the
answerer of prayer. There is first a form of prayer, and then an argument
enforcing perseverance in prayer.
The form of prayer commonly called the Lord's Prayer, which appears in the
Sermon on the Mount as a sample of the right kind of prayer, is given here
as a summary of the general heads under which all special petitions may be
comprehended. We may call this form the alphabet of all possible prayer. It
embraces the elements of all spiritual desire, summed up in a few choice
sentences, for the benefit of those who may not be able to bring their
struggling aspirations to birth in articulate language. It contains in all
six petitions, of which three - the first three, as was meet - refer to
God's glory, and the remaining three to man's good. We are taught to pray,
first for the advent of the divine kingdom, in the form of universal
reverence for the divine name, and universal obedience to the divine will;
and then, in the second place, for daily bread, pardon, and protection from
evil for ourselves. The whole is addressed to God as Father, and is supposed
to proceed from such as realize their fellowship one with another as members
of a divine family, and therefore say, "Our Father." The prayer does not
end, as our prayers now commonly do, with the formula, "for Christ's sake;"
nor could it, consistently with the supposition that it proceeded from
Jesus. No prayer given by Him for the present use of His disciples, before
His death, could have such an ending, because the plea it contains was not
intelligible to them previous to that event. The twelve did not yet know
what Christ's sake (sache) meant, nor would they till after their Lord had
ascended, and the Spirit had descended and revealed to them the true meaning
of the facts of Christ's earthly history. Hence we find Jesus, on the eve of
His passion, telling His disciples that up to that time they had asked
nothing in His name, and representing the use of His name as a plea to be
heard, as one of the privileges awaiting them in the future. "Hitherto," He
said, "have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be full." And in another part of His discourse: "Whatsoever ye
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in
the Son."
To what extent the disciples afterwards made use of this beautifully simple
yet profoundly significant form, we do not know; but it may be assumed that
they were in the habit of repeating it as the disciples of the Baptist might
repeat the forms taught them by their master. There is, however, no reason
to think that the "Lord's Prayer," though of permanent value as a part of
Christ's teaching, was designed to be a stereotyped, binding method of
addressing the Father in heaven. It was meant to be an aid to inexperienced
disciples, not a rule imposed upon apostles. Even after they had attained to
spiritual maturity, the twelve might use this form if they pleased, and
possibly they did occasionally use it; but Jesus expected that by the time
they came to be teachers in the church they should have outgrown the need of
it as an aid to devotion. Filled with the Spirit, enlarged in heart, mature
in spiritual understanding, they should then be able to pray as their Lord
had prayed when He was with them; and while the six petitions of the model
prayer would still enter into all their supplications at the throne of
grace, they would do so only as the alphabet of a language enters into the
most extended and eloquent utterances of a speaker, who never thinks of the
letters of which the words he utters are composed.
In maintaining the provisional, pro tempore character of the Lords' Prayer,
so far as the twelve were concerned, we lay no stress on the fact already
adverted to, that it does not end with the phrase, "for Christ's sake." That
defect could easily be supplied afterwards mentally or orally, and therefore
was no valid reason for disuse. The same remark applies to our use of the
prayer in question. To allow this form to fall into desuetude merely because
the customary concluding plea is wanting, is as weak on one side as the too
frequent repetition of it is on the other. The Lord's Prayer is neither a
piece of Deism unworthy of a Christian, nor a magic charm like the "Pater
noster" of Roman Catholic devotion. The most advanced believer will often
find relief and rest to his spirit in falling back on its simple, sublime
sentences, while mentally realizing the manifold particulars which each of
them includes; and he is but a tyro in the art of praying, and in the divine
life generally, whose devotions consist exclusively, or even mainly, in
repeating the words which Jesus put into the mouths of immature disciples.
The view now advocated regarding the purpose of the Lord's Prayer is in
harmony with the spirit of Christ's whole teaching. Liturgical forms and
religious methodism in general were much more congenial to the strict
ascetic school of the Baptist than to the free school of Jesus. Our Lord
evidently attached little importance to forms of prayer, any more than to
fixed periodic fasts, else He would not have waited till He was asked for a
form, but would have made systematic provision for the wants of His
followers, even as the Baptist did, by, so to speak, compiling a book of
devotion or composing a liturgy. It is evident, even from the present
instructions on the subject of praying, that Jesus considered the form He
supplied of quite subordinate importance: a mere temporary remedy for a
minor evil, the want of utterance, till the greater evil, the want of faith,
should be cured; for the larger portion of the lesson is devoted to the
purpose of supplying an antidote to unbelief.
The second part of this lesson on prayer is intended to convey the same
moral as that which is prefixed to the parable of the unjust judge - "that
men ought always to pray, and not to faint." The supposed cause of fainting
is also the same, even delay on the part of God in answering our prayers.
This is not, indeed, made so obvious in the earlier lesson as in the later.
The parable of the ungenerous neighbor is not adapted to convey the idea of
long delay: for the favor asked, if granted at all, must be granted in a
very few minutes. But the lapse of time between the presenting and the
granting of our requests is implied and presupposed as a matter of course.
It is by delay that God seems to say to us what the ungenerous neighbor said
to his friend, and that we are tempted to think that we pray to no purpose.
Both the parables spoken by Christ to inculcate perseverance in prayer seek
to effect their purpose by showing the power of importunity in the most
unpromising circumstances. The characters appealed to are both bad - one in
ungenerous, and the other unjust; and from neither is any thing to be gained
except by working on his selfishness. And the point of the parable in either
case is, that importunity has a power of annoyance which enables it to gain
its object.
It is important again to observe what is supposed to be the leading subject
of prayer in connection with the argument now to be considered. The thing
upon which Christ assumes His disciples to have set their hearts is personal
sanctification. This appears from the concluding sentence of the discourse:
"How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that
ask Him!" Jesus takes for granted that the persons to whom He addresses
Himself here seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Therefore,
though He inserted a petition for daily bread in the form of prayer, He
drops that object out of view in the latter part of His discourse; both
because it is by hypothesis not the chief object of desire, and also
because, for all who truly give God's kingdom the first place in their
regards, food and raiment are thrown into the bargain.
To such as do not desire the Holy Spirit above all things, Jesus has nothing
to say. He does not encourage them to hope that they shall receive any thing
of the Lord; least of all, the righteousness of the kingdom, personal
sanctification. He regards the prayers of a double-minded man, who has two
chief ends in view, as a hollow mockery - mere words, which never reach
Heaven's ear.
The supposed cause of fainting being delay, and the supposed object of
desire being the Holy Spirit, the spiritual situation contemplated in the
argument is definitely determined. The Teacher's aim is to succor and
encourage those who feel that the work of grace goes slowly on within them,
and wonder why it does so, and sadly sigh because it does so. Such we
conceive to have been the state of the twelve when this lesson was given
them. They had been made painfully conscious of incapacity to perform aright
their devotional duties, and they took that incapacity to be an index of
their general spiritual condition, and were much depressed in consequence.
The argument by which Jesus sought to inspire His discouraged disciples with
hope and confidence as to the ultimate fulfilment of their desires, is
characterized by boldness, geniality, wisdom, and logical force. Its
boldness is evinced in the choice of illustrations . Jesus has such
confidence in the goodness of His cause, that He states the case as
disadvantageously for Himself as possible, by selecting for illustration not
good samples of men, but persons rather below than above the ordinary
standard of human virtue. A man who, on being applied to at any hour of the
night by a neighbor for help in a real emergency, such as that supposed in
the parable, or in a case of sudden sickness, should put him off with such
an answer as this, "Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children
are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee," would justly incur the
contempt of his acquaintances, and become a byword among them for all that
is ungenerous and heartless. The same readiness to take an extreme case is
observable in the second argument, drawn from the conduct of fathers towards
their children. "If a son shall ask bread of any of you" - so it begins.
Jesus does not care what father may be selected; He is willing to take any
one they please: He will take the very worst as readily as the best; nay,
more readily, for the argument turns not on the goodness of the parent, but
rather on his want of goodness, as it aims to show that no special goodness
is required to keep all parents from doing what would be an outrage on
natural affection, and revolting to the feelings of all mankind.
The genial, kindly character of the argument is manifest from the insight
and sympathy displayed therein. Jesus divines what hard thoughts men think
of God under the burden of unfulfilled desire; how they doubt His goodness,
and deem Him indifferent, heartless, unjust. He shows His intimate knowledge
of their secret imaginations by the cases He puts; for the unkind friend and
unnatural father, and we may add, the unjust judge, are pictures not indeed
of what God is, or of what He would have us believe God to be, but certainly
of what even pious men sometimes think Him to be. And He cannot only divine,
but sympathize. He does not, like Job's friends, find fault with those who
harbor doubting and apparently profane thoughts, nor chide them for
impatience, distrust, and despondency. He deals with them as men compassed
with infirmity, and needing sympathy, counsel, and help. And in supplying
these, He comes down to their level of feeling, and tries to show that, even
if things were as they seem, there is no cause for despair. He argues from
their own thoughts of God, that they should still hope in Him. "Suppose," He
says in effect, "God to be what you fancy, indifferent and heartless, still
pray on; see, in the case I put, what perseverance can effect. Ask as the
man who wanted loaves asked, and ye shall also receive from Him who seems at
present deaf to your petitions. Appearances, I grant, may be very
unfavorable, but they cannot be more so in your case than in that of the
petitioner in the parable; and yet you observe how he fared through not
being too easily disheartened."
Jesus displays His wisdom in dealing with the doubts of His disciples, by
avoiding all elaborate explanations of the causes or reasons of delay in the
answering of prayer, and using only arguments adapted to the capacity of
persons weak in faith and in spiritual understanding. He does not attempt to
show why sanctification is a slow, tedious work, not a momentary act: why
the Spirit is given gradually and in limited measure, not at once and
without measure. He simply urges His hearers to persevere in seeking the
Holy Spirit, assuring them that, in spite of trying delay, their desires
will be fulfilled in the end. He teaches them no philosophy of waiting on
God, but only tells them that they shall not wait in vain.
This method the Teacher followed not from necessity, but from choice. For
though no attempt was made at explaining divine delays in providence and
grace, it was not because explanation was impossible. There were many things
which Christ might have said to His disciples at this time if they could
have borne them; some of which they afterwards said themselves, when the
Spirit of Truth had come, and guided them into all truth, and made them
acquainted with the secret of God's way. He might have pointed out to them,
e.g., that the delays of which they complained were according to the analogy
of nature, in which gradual growth is the universal law; that time was
needed for the production of the ripe fruits of the Spirit, just in the same
way as for the production of the ripe fruits of the field or of the orchard;
that it was not to be wondered at if the spiritual fruits were peculiarly
slow in ripening, as it was a law of growth that the higher the product in
the scale of being, the slower the process by which it is produced; that a
momentary sanctification, though not impossible, would be as much a miracle
in the sense of a departure from law, as was the immediate transformation of
water into wine at the marriage in Cana; that if instantaneous
sanctification were the rule instead of the rare exception, the kingdom of
grace would become too like the imaginary worlds of children's dreams, in
which trees, fruits, and palaces spring into being full-grown, ripe, and
furnished, in a moment as by enchantment, and too unlike the real, actual
world with which men are conversant, in which delay, growth, and fixed law
are invariable characteristics.
Jesus might further have sought to reconcile His disciples to delay by
descanting on the virtue of patience. Much could be said on that topic. It
could be shown that a character cannot be perfect in which the virtue of
patience has no place, and that the gradual method of sanctification is best
adapted for its development, as affording abundant scope for its exercise.
It might be pointed out how much the ultimate enjoyment of any good thing is
enhanced by its having to be waited for; how in proportion to the trial is
the triumph of faith; how, in the quaint words of one who was taught wisdom
in this matter by his own experience, and by the times in which he lived,
"It is fit we see and feel the shaping and sewing of every piece of the
wedding garment, and the framing and moulding and fitting of the crown of
glory for the head of the citizen of heaven;" how "the repeated sense and
frequent experience of grace in the ups and downs in the way, the falls and
risings again of the traveller, the revolutions and changes of the spiritual
condition, the new moon, the darkened moon, the full moon in the Spirit's
ebbing and flowing, raiseth in the heart of saints on their way to the
country a sweet smell of the fairest rose and lily of Sharon;" how, "as
travellers at night talk of their foul ways, and of the praises of their
guide, and battle being ended, soldiers number their wounds, extol the
valor, skill, and courage of their leader and captain," so "it is meet that
the glorified soldiers may take loads of experience of free grace to heaven
with them, and there speak of their way and their country, and the praises
of Him that hath redeemed them out of all nations, tongues, and languages."
Such considerations, however just, would have been wasted on men in the
spiritual condition of the disciples. Children have no sympathy with growth
in any world, whether of nature or of grace. Nothing pleases them but that
an acorn should become an oak at once, and that immediately after the
blossom should come the ripe fruit. Then it is idle to speak of the uses of
patience to the inexperienced; for the moral value of the discipline of
trial cannot be appreciated till the trial is past. Therefore, as before
stated, Jesus abstained entirely from reflections of the kind suggested, and
adopted a simple, popular style of reasoning which even a child could
understand.
The reasoning of Jesus, while very simple, is very cogent and conclusive.
The first argument - that contained in the parable of the ungenerous
neighbor - is fitted to inspire hope in God, even in the darkest hour, when
He appears indifferent to our cry, or positively unwilling to help, and so
to induce us to persevere in asking. "As the man who wanted the loaves
knocked on louder and louder, with an importunity that knew no shame, and
would take no refusal, and thereby gained his object, the selfish friend
being glad at last to get up and serve him out of sheer regard to his own
comfort, it being simply impossible to sleep with such a noise; so (such is
the drift of the argument), so continue thou knocking at the door of heaven,
and thou shalt obtain thy desire if it were only to be rid of thee. See in
this parable what a power importunity has, even at a most unpromising time -
midnight - and with a most unpromising person, who prefers his own comfort
to a neighbor's good: ask, therefore, persistently, and it shall be given
unto you also; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you."
At one point, indeed, this most pathetic and sympathetic argument seems to
be weak. The petitioner in the parable had the selfish friend in his power
by being able to annoy him and keep him from sleeping. Now, the tried
desponding disciple whom Jesus would comfort may rejoin: "What power have I
to annoy God, who dwelleth on high, far beyond my reach, in imperturbable
felicity? 'Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to
His seat! But, behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but
I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot
behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him.' "
The objection is one which can hardly fail to occur to the subtle spirit of
despondency, and it must be admitted that it is not frivolous. There is
really a failure of the analogy at this point. We can annoy a man, like the
ungenerous neighbor in bed, or the unjust judge, but we cannot annoy God.
The parable does not suggest the true explanation of divine delay, or of the
ultimate success of importunity. It merely proves, by a homely instance,
that delay, apparent refusal, from whatever cause it may arise, is not
necessarily final, and therefore can be no good reason for giving up asking.
This is a real if not a great service rendered. But the doubting disciple,
besides discovering with characteristic acuteness what the parable fails to
prove, may not be able to extract any comfort from what it does prove. What
is he to do then? Fall back on the strong asseveration with which Jesus
follows up the parable: "And I say unto you." Here, doubter, is an oracular
dictum from One who can speak with authority; One who has been in the bosom
of the eternal God, and has come forth to reveal His inmost heart to men
groping in the darkness of nature after Him, if haply they might find Him.
When He addresses you in such emphatic, solemn terms as these, "I say unto
you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you," you may take the matter on His word, at least pro
tempore. Even those who doubt the reasonableness of prayer, because of the
constancy of nature's laws and the unchangeableness of divine purposes,
might take Christ's word for it that prayer is not vain, even in relation to
daily bread, not to speak of higher matters, until they arrive at greater
certainty on the subject than they can at present pretend to. Such may, if
they choose, despise the parable as childish, or as conveying crude
anthropopathic ideas of the Divine Being, but they cannot despise the
deliberate declarations of One whom even they regard as the wisest and best
of men.
The second argument employed by Jesus to urge perseverance in prayer is of
the nature of a reductio ad absurdum, ending with a conclusion
[hungarumlaut]fortiori. "If," it is reasoned, "God refused to hear His
children's prayers, or, worse still, if He mocked them by giving them
something bearing a superficial resemblance to the things asked, only to
cause bitter disappointment when the deception was discovered, then were He
not only as bad as, but far worse than, even the most depraved of mankind.
For, take fathers at random, which of them, if a son were to ask bread,
would give him a stone? or if he asked a fish, would give him a serpent? or
if he asked an egg, would offer him a scorpion? The very supposition is
monstrous. Human nature is largely vitiated by moral evil; there is, in
particular, an evil spirit of selfishness in the heart which comes into
conflict with the generous affections, and leads men ofttimes to do base and
unnatural things. But men taken at the average are not diabolic; and nothing
short of a diabolic spirit of mischief could prompt a father to mock a
child's misery, or deliberately to give him things fraught with deadly harm.
If, then, earthly parents, though evil in many of their dispositions, give
good, and, so far as they know, only good, gifts to their children, and
would shrink with horror from any other mode of treatment, is it to be
credited that the Divine Being, that Providence, can do what only devils
would think of doing? On the contrary, what is only barely possible for man
is for God altogether impossible, and what all but monsters of iniquity will
not fail to do God will do much more. He will most surely give good gifts,
and only good gifts, to His asking children; most especially will He give
His best gift, which His true children desire above all things, even the
Holy Spirit, the enlightener and the sanctifier. Therefore again I say unto
you: Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall
be opened."
Yet it is implied in the very fact that Christ puts such cases as a stone
given for bread, a serpent for a fish, or a scorpion for an egg, that God
seems at least sometimes so to treat His children. The time came when the
twelve thought they had been so treated in reference to the very subject in
which they were most deeply interested, after their own personal
sanctification, viz., the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. But their
experience illustrates the general truth, that when the Hearer of prayer
seems to deal unnaturally with His servants, it is because they have made a
mistake about the nature of good, and have not known what they asked. They
have asked for a stone, thinking it bread, and hence the true bread seems a
stone; for a shadow, thinking it a substance, and hence the substance seems
a shadow. The kingdom for which the twelve prayed was a shadow, hence their
disappointment and despair when Jesus was put to death: the egg of hope,
which their fond imagination had been hatching, brought forth the scorpion
of the cross, and they fancied that God had mocked and deceived them. But
they lived to see that God was true and good, and that they had deceived
themselves, and that all which Christ had told them had been fulfilled. And
all who wait on God ultimately make a similar discovery, and unite in
testifying that "the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul
that seeketh Him."
For these reasons should all men pray, and not faint. Prayer is rational,
even if the Divine Being were like men in the average, not indisposed to do
good when self-interest does not stand in the way - the creed of heathenism.
It is still more manifestly rational if, as Christ taught and Christians
believe, God be better than the best of men - the one supremely good Being -
the Father in heaven. Only in either of two cases would prayer really be
irrational: if God were no living being at all, - the creed of atheists,
with whom Christ holds no argument; or if He were a being capable of doing
things from which even bad men would start back in horror, i.e., a being of
diabolic nature, - the creed, it is to be hoped, of no human being.
.
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| User: "Mark T moi@ere55" |
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| Title: Re: Lessons On Prayer |
13 Jul 2007 05:45:57 PM |
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"Carl" <saints@nettally.com> wroteth:
we should pray and why. I hope you learn something from this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prayer for Carl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O Lord, Carl's posts are so dull that I think I must be dead. But if it be,
Lord, by your grace and favour, that I am not in fact dead - merely stunned
into mind-numbing oblivion by the overall tedium and general
inconsequentiality of the proceeedings - grant your servant this: grant that
Carl becomes 'called up yonder' to that 'place which you have prepared for
him' right away ... if that be not too forward a request, of course.
Amen.
--
My Blog - MARK T - my thoughts on Christianity/ song covers & pics & links
http://www.blognow.com.au/strooth/
FUNDY FUNHOUSE -
http://fundamentalistfunhouse.blogspot.com/
- a resource on the current Fundamentalist Dark Age and Christian
fundamentalism.
My Soundclick Page - download my original songs in mp3 format
http://www.soundclick.com/marktindall
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| User: "RedFox" |
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| Title: Re: Lessons On Prayer |
13 Jul 2007 10:20:23 PM |
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In article <469800a1@dnews.tpgi.com.au>, "Mark T" <moi@ere55> wrote:
"Carl" <saints@nettally.com> wroteth:
we should pray and why. I hope you learn something from this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prayer for Carl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O Lord, Carl's posts are so dull that I think I must be dead. But if it be,
Lord, by your grace and favour, that I am not in fact dead - merely stunned
into mind-numbing oblivion by the overall tedium and general
inconsequentiality of the proceeedings - grant your servant this: grant that
Carl becomes 'called up yonder' to that 'place which you have prepared for
him' right away ... if that be not too forward a request, of course.
Amen.
+++=
O Lord
JohnW would be so lonely without him
Grant if it be thy will that they travel up yonder hand in hand
Or that if it be thy wheel for them (one each) that the wheels come in the
form of a tandem bicycle and that they pedal off into the sunset together
to the land that Internet forgot
Amen
==+++++++
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