Think On This My Friend!

In the example and the teaching of Jesus Christ, prayer takes its normal relation to God’s person, God’s movements and God’s Son. Jesus Christ was essentially the teacher of prayer by principle and example. We have glimpses of His praying which, like a guide, tells us how full of prayer the pages, chapters and volumes of His life were. The essence which covers not only one segment, but includes the whole circle of His life, and character, is pre-eminently that of prayer! “In the days of his flesh,” the Divine Bible record reads, “when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears.” The suppliant of all suppliants is what He was and still is, the intercessor of all intercessors. In lowliest form He approached God, and with strongest pleas He prayed and supplicated.

Jesus Christ teaches us the importance of prayer by His urgency to His disciples to pray. But He shows us more than that. He shows how far prayer enters into the purposes of God. We must always keep in mind that the relation of Jesus Christ to God is the relation of asking and giving, the Son always asking, the Father always giving. We must never forget that God has put the conquering, inheriting and expanding forces of Christ’s cause in prayer. “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for thy possession.”

This was the part symbolizing the royal announcement and the widespread condition when the Son was enthroned as the world’s Mediator, and when He was sent on His mission of receiving grace and power. We very obviously learn from this how Jesus would stress praying as the one sole condition of His receiving His possession and inheritance.

Is there any other work or higher work for a disciple to do than what His Lord did? Is there any loftier employment, more honorable, more divine, than to pray for people? Do we take their hurts, their sins, and their perils before God; and pray that they will be one with Christ? Do we pray to break the evil controlled life which binds them, the hell which holds them and lift them to immortality and eternal life?

Think on this my friend!