Prayer In Real Troubles May Bring Us Closer To God Than Spiritual Desires

 

A chief object of all prayer is to bring us to God. But we may attain His presence and come closer to Him by the way we ask Him for other things, concrete things or things of the Kingdom, than by direct prayer for union with Him.

 

The prayer for deliverance from personal trouble or national calamity may bring us nearer Him than mere devout aspiration to be lost in Him. The poor woman’s prayer to find her lost sovereign may mean more than the prayer of many a cloister. Such distress is often meant by God as the initial means and exercise to His constant end of reunion with Him. His patience is so long and kind that He is willing to begin with us when we are no farther on than to use Him as a means of escape or relief. The holy Father can turn to His own account at last even the exploiting egoism of youth. And He gives us some answer, though the relief does not come, if He keeps us praying, and ever more instant and purified in prayer. Prayer is never rejected so long as we do not cease to pray. The chief failure of prayer is its cessation. Our importunity is a part of God’s answer, both of His answer to us and ours to Him. He is sublimating our idea of prayer, and realizing the final purpose in all trouble of driving us farther in on Himself.

A homely image has been used. The joiner, when he glues together two boards, keeps them tightly clamped rill the cement sets, and the outward pressure is no more needed; then he unscrews. So with the calamities, depressions, and disappointments that crush us into close contact with God. The pressure on us is kept up till the soul’s union with God is set. Instant relief would not establish the habit of prayer, though it might make us believe in it with a promptitude too shallow to last or to make it the principle of our soul’s life at any depth. A faith which is based chiefly on impetration might become more of a faith in prayer than a faith in God. If we got all we asked for we should soon come to treat Him as a convenience, or the request as a magic. The reason of much bewilderment about prayer is that we are less occupied about faith in God than about faith in prayer. In a like way we are misled about the question of immortality because we become more occupied with the soul than with God, and with its endless duration more than its eternal life, asking if we shall be in eternity more than eternity in us.

*impetration: obtaining by petition or entreaty

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 16-17

Prayer The Goal of Christian Life, Not Only The Means of It

 

Prayer is turning our will on God either in the way of resignation or of impetration.* We yield to His Will or He to ours. Hence religion is above all things prayer, according as it is a religion of will and conscience, as it is an ethical religion. It is will and Will. To be religious is to pray. Bad prayer is false religion. Not to pray is to be irreligious. “The battle for religion is the battle for prayer; the theory of religion is the philosophy of prayer.” In prayer we do not think out God; we draw Him out. Prayer is where our thought of God passes into action, and becomes more certain than thought. In all thought which is not mere dreaming or brooding there is an element of will; and in earnest (which is intelligent) prayer we give this element the upper hand. We do not simply spread our thought out before God, but we offer it to Him, turn it on Him, bring it to bear on Him, press it on Him. This is our great and first sacrifice, and it becomes pressure on God. We can offer God nothing so great and effective as our obedient acceptance of the mind and purpose and work of Christ. It is not easy. It is harder than any idealism. But then it is very mighty. And it is a power that grows by exercise. At first it groans, at last it glides. And it comes to this, that, as there are thoughts that seem to think themselves in us, so there are prayers that pray themselves in us. And, as those are the best thoughts, these are the best prayers. For it is the Christ at prayer who lives in us, and we are conduits of the Eternal Intercession.

 

Prayer is often represented as the great means of the Christian life. But it is no mere means, it is the great end of that Life. It is, of course, not untrue to call it a means. It is so, especially at first. But at last it is truer to say that we live the Christian life in order to pray than that we pray in order to live the Christian life. It is at least as true. Our prayer prepares for our work and sacrifice, but all our work and sacrifice still more prepare for prayer. And we are, perhaps, oftener wrong in our work, or even our sacrifice, than we are in our prayer—and that for want of its guidance. But to reach this height, to make of prayer our great end, and to order life always in view of such a solemnity, in this sense to pray without ceasing and without pedantry—it is a slow matter. We cannot move fast to such a fine product of piety and feeling. It is a growth in grace. And the whole history of the world shows that nothing grows so slowly as grace, nothing costs as much as free grace; a fact which drives us to all kinds of apologies to explain what seems the absence of God from His world, and especially from His world of souls. If God, to our grief; seems to us far absent from history, how does He view the distance, the absence, of history from Him?

*impetration: obtaining by petition or entreaty

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 15-16

Prayer Begins With God Approaching Us, Not Us Him

 

When we begin to pray we may catch and surprise ourselves in a position like this. We feel to be facing God from a position of independence. If He start from His end we do from ours. We are His vis-á-vis; He is ours. He is an object so far as we are concerned; and we are the like to Him. Of course, He is an object of worship. We do not start on equal terms, march up to Him, as it were, and put our case. We do more than approach Him erect, with courteous self-respect shining through our poverty. We bow down to Him. We worship. But still it is a voluntary, an independent, submission and tribute, so to say. It is a reverence which we make and offer. We present something which is ours to give. If we ask Him to give we feel that we begin the giving in our worship. We are outside each other; and we call, and He graciously comes.

 

But this is not the Christian idea, it is only a crude stage of it (if the New Testament is to guide us). We are there taught that only those things are perfected in God which He begins, that we seek only because He found, we beseech Him because He first besought us (2 Cor. v. 20). If our prayer reach or move Him it is because He first reached and moved us to pray. The prayer that reached heaven began there, when Christ went forth. It began when God turned to beseech us in Christ—in the appealing Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The Spirit went out with the power and function in it to return with our soul. Our prayer is the answer to God’s. Herein is prayer, not that we prayed Him, but that He first prayed us, in giving His Son to be a propitiation for us. The heart of the Atonement is prayer— Christ’s great self-offering to God in the Eternal Spirit. The whole rhythm of Christ’s soul, so to say, was Godhead going out and returning on itself. And so God stirs and inspires all prayer which finds and moves Him. His love provokes our sacred forwardness. He does not compel us, but we cannot help it after that look, that tone, that turn of His. All say, “I am yours if you will”; and when we will it is prayer. Any final glory of human success or destiny rises from man being God’s continual creation, and destined by Him for Him. So we pray because we were made for prayer, and God draws us out by breathing Himself in.

 

We feel this especially as prayer passes upwards into praise. When the mercy we besought comes home to us its movement is reversed in us, and it returns upon itself as thanksgiving. “Great blessings which are won with prayer are worn with thankfulness.” Praise is the converted consecration of the egoism that may have moved our prayer. Prayer may spring from self- love, and be so far natural; for nature is all of the craving and taking kind. But praise is supernatural. It is of pure grace. And it is a sign that the prayer was more than natural at heart. Spare some leisure, therefore, from petition for thanksgiving. If the Spirit move conspicuously to praise, it shows that He also moved latently the prayer, and that within nature is that which is above it. “Prayer and thanks are like the double motion of the lungs; the air that is drawn in by prayer is breathed forth again by thanks.”

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 14-15

Prayer Itself a Gift of God, Not Only Prayer's Answer

We are so egotistically engrossed about God’s giving of the answer that we forget His gift of the prayer itself. But it is not a question simply of willing to pray, but of accepting and using as God’s will the gift and the power to pray. In every act of prayer we have already begun to do God’s will, for which above all things we pray. The prayer within all prayer is “Thy will be done.” And has that petition not a special significance here? “My prayer is Thy Will. Thou didst create it in me. It is Thine more than mine. Perfect Thine own will”—all that is the paraphrase, from this viewpoint, of “Hear my prayer.” “The will to pray,” we say, “is Thy will. Let that be done both in my petition and in Thy perfecting of it.” The petition is half God’s will. It is God’s will inchoate. “Thy will” (in my prayer) “be done (in Thy answer). It is Thine both to will and to do. Thy will be done in heaven—in the answer, as it is done upon earth—in the asking.”

Prayer has its great end when it lifts us to be more conscious and more sure of the gift than the need, of the grace than the sin. As petition rises out of need or sin, in our first prayer it comes first; but it may fall into a subordinate place when, at the end and height of our worship, we are filled with the fullness of God. “In that day ye shall ask Me nothing.” Inward sorrow is fulfilled in the prayer of peti-ion; inward joy in the prayer of thanksgiving. And this thought helps to deal with the question as to the hearing of prayer, and especially its answer. Or rather as to the place and kind of answer. We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God’s great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer. Our soul is fulfilled if our petition is not.

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 13-14

The Work of Prayer

Prayer brings with it, as food does, a new sense of power and health. We are driven to it by hunger, and, having eaten, we are refreshed and strengthened for the battle which even our physical life involves. For heart and flesh cry out for the living God. God’s gift is free; it is, therefore, a gift to our freedom, i.e. renewal to our moral strength, to what makes men of us. Without this gift always renewed, our very freedom can enslave us. The life of every organism is but the constant victory of a higher energy, constantly fed, over lower and more elementary forces. Prayer is the assimilation of a holy God’s moral strength.

We must work for this living. To feed the soul we must toil at prayer. And what a labour it is! “He prayed in an agony.” We must pray even to tears if need be. Our cooperation with God is our receptivity; but it is an active, a laborious receptivity, an importunity that drains our strength away if it do not tap the sources of the Strength Eternal. We work, we slave, at receiving. To him that hath this laborious expectancy it shall be given. Prayer is the powerful appropriation of power, of divine power. It is therefore creative. Prayer is not mere wishing. It is asking with a will. Our will goes into it. It is energy. Orare est laborare.* We turn to an active Giver; therefore we go into action. For we could not pray without knowing and meeting Him in kind. If God has a controversy with Israel, Israel must wrestle with God. Moreover, He is the Giver not only of the answer, but first of the prayer itself. His gift provokes ours. He beseeches us, which makes us beseech Him. And what we ask for chiefly is the power to ask more and to ask better. We pray for more prayer. The true “gift of prayer” is God’s grace before it is our facility.

Thus prayer is, for us, paradoxically, both a gift and a conquest, a grace and a duty. But does that not mean, is it not a special case of the truth, that all duty is a gift, every call on us a blessing, and that the task we often find a burden is really a boon? When we look up from under it it is a load, but those who look down to it from God’s side see it as a blessing. It is like great wings—they increase the weight but also the flight. If we have no duty to do God has shut Himself up from us. To be denied duty is to be denied God. No cross no Christ. “When pain ends gain ends too.”
 

(*Latin for "To pray is to work.")

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 12-13

Prayer to God Opens Us to Our Brothers and Sisters

It is a difficult and even formidable thing to write on prayer, and one fears to touch the Ark. Perhaps no one ought to undertake it unless he has spent more toil in the practice of prayer than on its principle. But perhaps also the effort to look into its principle may be graciously regarded by Him who ever liveth to make intercession as itself a prayer to know better how to pray. All progress in prayer is an answer to prayer—our own or another’s. And all true prayer promotes its own progress and increases our power to pray.

The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin, or crime, or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this, or its punishment. We are left by God for lack of seeking Him. The history of the saints shows often that their lapses were the fruit and nemesis of slackness or neglect in prayer. Their life, at seasons, also tended to become inhuman by their spiritual solitude. They left men, and were left by men, because they did not in their contemplation find God; they found but the thought or the atmosphere of God. Only living prayer keeps loneliness humane. It is the great producer of sympathy. Trusting the God of Christ, and transacting with Him, we come into tone with men. Our egoism retires before the coming of God, and into the clearance there comes with our Father our brother. We realize man as he is in God and for God, his Lover. When God fills our heart He makes more room for man than the humanist heart can find. Prayer is an act, indeed the act, of fellowship. We cannot truly pray even for ourselves without passing beyond ourselves and our individual experience. If we should begin with these the nature of prayer carries us beyond them, both to God and to man. Even private prayer is common prayer the more so, possibly, as it retires from being public prayer.

Not to want to pray, then, is the sin behind sin. And it ends in not being able to pray. That is its punishment spiritual dumbness, or at least aphasia, and starvation. We do not take our spiritual food, and so we falter, dwindle, and die. “In the sweat of your brow ye shall eat your bread.” That has been said to be true both of physical and spiritual labour. It is true both of the life of bread and of the bread of life.

from "The Soul Of Prayer", by Peter Taylor Forsyth, NCPI: Blackwood 1916, 1949, 1999, pp. 11-12

The Nature of Power and Witness

Sometimes—and particularly when we use the language of battle—we might think, erroneously, that to have power to witness and to do battle our power must be supernatural. We might think that our warfare is almost a physical one, a kind of quasi-military operation. How wrong is such an idea! Paul once made it very clear that the weapons of our warfare are not worldly or carnal, but are spiritual and mighty to the pulling down of many strongholds of evil (II Corinthians 10:4). Jesus said that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52), a thought repeated in Revelation 13:10.

What, then, are these spiritual weapons and how shall we fight? Looked at from one point of view, these spiritual weapons are frail and ineffective, for Paul lines them up with such things as faith, hope, love, truth, salvation and the like. Testimony to the truth of Christ and the gospel can only be given using these spiritual weapons. Such things the natural man does not even recognise until the Spirit invades him with the truth. Love becomes to him a brilliant revelation of the nature of God and the power for the redemption of Man. God forgives the sinner, justifies the ungodly, purifies the polluted heart, relieves the conscience of heavy guilt, reconstitutes the idolater, makes holy the evil heart and mind, and reveals God the Father truly as love. The gospel then is the power of God unto salvation. The word of the cross saves the perishing, and the love of God is poured into the hearts of the hateful.

None of these things could happen unless the Spirit of truth and love reveals these to human beings. His power is that He is the Spirit of truth, of love, of sonship, of holiness and of life. His presence in the ekklesia is what keeps it in love, unity and fellowship. The pictures of the company of believers in the chapters of Acts are so heart-warming. The testimony of history in times of persecution and suppression of Christians is beyond the natural actions of humanity. It can only be of God. This is how we know the reality and power of witness by the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. What commenced in the new company of believers on the day of Pentecost has gone on in this age of the Spirit.

We ought not to idealise the community of Christ, nor make heady claims of extraordinary success. Christians are not paragons of virtue, moral beyond all reproach and perfect above others. Sadly enough, the history of Christianity is stained with terrible deeds claimed to have been in the name of Christ and for the advancement of the human race. We question whether many of these deeds came out of the true people of God, for we know so often that the community has been in the hands of wicked men. And at times dreadful evil has happened and cruelty executed. Wars cannot be justified. And yet some have been fought by Christians over unjustifiable causes. At the same time such things cannot be excused. The Church has known apostasy and has betrayed its Lord. Yet, given all this to have been part of its history, the Church has come to see and acknowledge these failures and to give renewed witness to the Lordship of Christ and the glory of the age to come, and the holy triumphs of the telos. This is the true community of eternal life.

 

from "God and Man in the Mission of the Kingdom", by Geoffrey C. Bingham, Redeemer Baptist Press: North Parramatta, 2003, pp. 176-178

What's on this week? (September 6-12, 2010)

Sorry that the blog has been out of action for a little while. It's good to be back.
A couple of special events this week to let you know about, as well as the regular weekly programme.

On Monday September 6th, 9.30am to 11.30am, Andrew Klynsmith will be leading the Ministry Study, looking at receiving the forgiveness of sins through repentance and faith. The study is a blend of teaching and discussion, and includes morning tea. Martin Bleby prepared the study; Andrew is reading it for him, as Martin is New South Wales for a couple of Spring Schools.

And that is the second special notice. This coming weekend, Friday, September 10th and Saturday September 11th,  is the Spring School at Wamberal. Please see this brochure for more details.

The regular weekly classes this week:


Mondays@Christies Beach Baptist Church 7.30-9.30pm:

Acts of the Apostles Martin Bleby
 
Called of God Grant Thorpe
Christies Beach Baptist Church, Fowey St, Christies Beach
   
Keith Chessell-The Story of God: The Story of God (New Testament) Keith Chessell

• 7.30pm Monday–Mount Barker;
• 7.15pm Tuesday–Victor Harbor;
  
• 7.30pm Wednesday–Mitcham.

Cornerstone College, 68 Adelaide Road, Mount Barker
Victor Harbor High School, George Main Road, Victor Harbor;
Mitcham Baptist Church, 20 Albert St, Mitcham

 
Tuesdays@NCTM (6.45pm tea, $3),7.30-9.30pm:

The Story of Salvation Andrew Klynsmith and Hank Schoemaker
An interactive overview of the whole Bible, helping to supply a reliable framework for faith in God, especially for younger believers and enquirers.
 
New Creation Teaching Centre, 936 Ackland Hill Rd, Coromandel East
  

Wednesdays@North-Western Community Church,7.30-9.30pm:
A Story of Fire Bryce Clark
Positive effects of the power of God in the lives and communities of Aboriginal Christians in Australia, as the Holy Spirit moves with the fire of the gospel.
 
Northwestern Community Church, 193 Port Rd, Queenstown
  

Thursdays@NCTM 9.30-11.30am

Nine Prophets John Calvert
 
God and Prayer Martin Bleby
 
New Creation Teaching Centre, 936 Ackland Hill Rd, Coromandel East

The programme for term 3

Mondays@Christies Beach Baptist Church 7.30-9.30pm:
Acts of the Apostles Martin Bleby (cont'd)In this treatment we see the Acts of the Apostles as a crucial stage in the whole purpose and action of God. We are still in the unfolding of this action!

Called By God Grant Thorpe
God changes everything for sinners by setting His love on them and calling them to Himself and into his gracious purpose. This calling and election is a problem to the human mind, but when someone turns to Jesus Christ and sees that he has been given up to death for their sins, they know God’s will, not just in general, but for themselves in particular. Their life is then directed from eternity and to eternity and can be lived with wonderful certainty.
 
Christies Beach Baptist Church, Fowey St, Christies Beach


Keith Chessell-The Story of God: 
The Story of God (New Testament) Keith Chessell (cont'd)Salvation history—the unique story of human life with God, the Creator, Redeemer and eternal heavenly Father, who in Jesus Christ has fulfilled all that He purposed and promised.

• 7.30pm Monday–Mt Barker;
  
• 7.15pm Tuesday–Victor Harbor;
  
• 7.30pm Wednesday–Mitcham.

Mount Barker: Cornerstone College, 68 Adelaide Road, Mount Barker;
Victor Harbor High School, George Main Road, Victor Harbor;
Mitcham Baptist Church, 20 Albert St, Mitcham


Tuesdays@NCTM (6.45pm tea, $3), 7.30-9.30pm:
The Story of Salvation Andrew Klynsmith and Hank Schoemaker (cont'd)
An interactive overview of the whole Bible, helping to supply a reliable framework for faith in God, especially for younger believers and enquirers.

New Creation Teaching Centre, 936 Ackland Hill Rd, Coromandel East


Wednesdays@NorthWestern Community Church, 7.30-9.30pm:
A Story of Fire Bryce Clark
Positive effects of the power of God in the lives and communities of Aboriginal Christians in Australia, as the Holy Spirit moves with the fire of the gospel.

Northwestern Community Church, 193 Port Rd, Queenstown

Thursdays@NCTM 9.30-11.30am
Nine Prophets John Calvert
Beginning from Deuteronomy 18, nine of the lesser known and better known prophets of the Old Testament will be examined, as speakers of God’s word to their own times, and to ours.

God and Prayer Martin Bleby (con'td)
Can we say that God has called human creatures to be, through prayer, nothing less than God’s fellow-workers in all that God is doing? Where must we be, and what must we know, to be able to pray in this way?

New Creation Teaching Centre, 936 Ackland Hill Rd, Coromandel East

What's on this week? (July 5-11, 2010)

Thank you to all who prayed for us over the past week, in the lead-up to a special meeting of the NCTM Council held last Friday night. We will let you know the outcome of that special meeting in the near future, after some preliminary actions are taken.

We have had a very good term, and now there is a break over the time of school holidays. The sessions from the various classes will be available on Sermonaudio before too long. You can always check out the New Creation page at Sermonaudio by clicking on the button at the top of this page.

Beginning July 19th, the annual Ministry School—this year's theme is Shepherds After God's Own Heart—will be held. Please contact NCTM or visit our webpage for more information. Please book in soon for meals if you are wanting them.

On Monday July 5th, 9.30am to 11.30am, Martin Bleby will be taking the July Ministry Study, looking at the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins. The study is a blend of teaching and discussion, and includes morning tea. 

The regular weekly classes recommence on July 26th, the week after Ministry School.


Blessings to you all.