Thoughts From The Past - Use Them to PRAY Part II

Christ, when He saw that He must die, and that now His time was come, He wore His body out: He cared not, as it were, what became of Him: He wholly spent Himself in preaching all day, and in praying all night, preaching in the temple those terrible parables and praying in the garden such prayers, as the seventeenth of John, and “Thy will be done!” even to a bloody sweat.-THOMAS GOODWIN.

There was a great cape at the south of Africa and so many storms and so much loss of life until it was called the Cape of Death. One day in 1789 a bold navigator shoved the prow of his vessel into the storms that thundered around it and found a calm sea. He then named it the Cape of Good Hope. So there is a cape that jutted out from earth into the sea of eternity called death. All were afraid of it. All navigators, sooner or later, must contend with these murky waters. But once upon a time, nearly two thousand years ago, a brave navigator from heaven came and drove the prow of His frail humanity bark down into the gloomy waters of this cape and lay under its awful power for three days. Emerging therefrom, He found it to be the door to endless calm and joy, and now we call it Good Hope.-JOHN W. BAKER

Sin is so unspeakably awful in its evil that it struck down, as to death and hell, the very Son of God Himself. He had been amazed enough at sin before. He had seen sin making angels of heaven into devils of hell. Death and all its terrors did not much move or disconcert our Lord. No. It was not death: It was sin. It was hell-fire in His soul. It was the coals, and the oil, and the rosin, and the juniper, and the turpentine of the fire that is not quenched.-ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.

What satisfaction must it be to learn from God Himself with what words and in what manner, He would have us pray to Him so as not to pray in vain! We do not sufficiently consider the value of this prayer; the respect and attention which it requires; the preference to be given to it; its fullness and perfection; the frequent use we should make of it; and the spirit which we should bring with it. “Lord, teach us how to pray.”-ADAM CLARK

Jesus closes His life with inimitable calmness, confidence and sublimity. “I have glorified Thee; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” The annals of earth have nothing comparable to it in real security and sublimity. May we come to our end thus, in supreme loyalty to Christ.-EDWARD BOUNDS

The cup! the cup! the cup! Our Lord did not use many words: but He used His few words again and again, till this cup! and Thy will!-Thy will be done, and this cup-was all His prayer. “The cup! The cup! The cup!” cried Christ: first on His feet: and then on His knees: and then on His face. . . . “Lord, teach us to pray!”-ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.

During the great Welsh Revival a minister was said to be very successful in winning souls by one sermon that he preached-hundreds were converted. Far away in a valley news reached a brother minister of the marvelous success of this sermon. He desired to find out the secret of the man’s great success.-He walked the long way, and came to the minister’s poor cottage, and the first thing he said was: “Brother, where did you get that sermon?” He was taken into a poorly furnished room and pointed to a spot where the carpet was worn threadbare, near a window that looked out upon the everlasting hills and solemn mountains and said, “Brother, there is where I got that sermon. My heart was heavy for men. One night I knelt there-and cried for power as I never preached before. The hours passed until midnight struck, and the stars looked down on a sleeping world, but the answer came not. I prayed on until I saw a faint streak of gray shoot up, then it war silver-silver became purple and gold. Then the sermon came and the power came and men fell under the influence of the Holy Spirit.”-G. H. MORGAN

Holy Spirit Teach US to PRAY!