Part 4 (1/2)

This truth is so simple that the very ease with which we acquiesce in it robs it of its power. Let us pause and think what it implies. G.o.d's presence restored means victory secured. Then, we are responsible for defeat. Then, there must be sin somewhere causing it. Then, we ought at once to find out and put away the sin. We may confidently expect G.o.d's presence the moment the sin is put away. Surely each one is under the solemn obligation to search his life and see what part he may have in this evil.

G.o.d never speaks to His people of sin except with a view to saving them from it. _The same light that shows the sin will show the way out of it._ The same power that breaks down and condemns will, if humbly yielded to and waited on in confession and faith, give the power to rise up and conquer. It is G.o.d who is speaking to His Church and to us about this sin: ”HE WONDERED that there was no intercessor.” ”I WONDERED that there was none to uphold.” ”I SOUGHT for a man that should stand in the gap before Me, and found none.” The G.o.d who speaks thus is He who will work the change for His children who seek His face. He will make the valley of Achor, of trouble and shame, of sin confessed and cast out, a door of hope. Let us not fear, let us not cling to the excuses and explanations which circ.u.mstances suggest, but simply confess, ”We have sinned; we are sinning; we dare not sin longer.” In this matter of prayer we are sure G.o.d does not demand of us impossibilities. He does not weary us with an impracticable ideal. He asks us to pray no more than He gives grace to enable us to. He will give the grace to do what He asks, and so to pray that our intercessions shall, day by day, be a pleasure to Him and to us, a source of strength to our conscience and our work, and a channel of blessing to those for whom we labour.

G.o.d dealt personally with Joshua, with Israel, with Achan. Let each of us allow Him to deal personally with us concerning this sin, of restraining prayer, and its consequences in our life and work; concerning the deliverance from sin, its certainty and blessedness. Just bow in stillness and wait before G.o.d, until, as G.o.d, He overshadow you with His presence, lead you out of that region of argument as to human possibilities, where conviction of sin can never be deep, and full deliverance can never come. Take quiet time, and be still before G.o.d, that He may take this matter in hand. ”Sit still, for He will not be in rest until He have finished this thing this day.” Leave yourself in G.o.d's hands.

A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER

CHAPTER VII

Who shall Deliver?

”Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”--JER.

viii. 22.

”Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.

Behold, we come unto Thee; for Thou art the Lord our G.o.d.”-JER. iii.

22.

”Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.”-JER. xii. 14.

”O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank G.o.d through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death.”-ROM. vii. 24, viii. 2.

During one of our conventions a gentleman called upon me to ask advice and help. He was evidently an earnest and well-instructed Christian man.

He had for some years been in most difficult surroundings, trying to witness for Christ. The result was a sense of failure and unhappiness.

His complaint was that he had no relish for the Word, and that though he prayed, it was as if his heart was not in it. If he spoke to others, or gave a tract, it was under a sense of duty: the love and the joy were not present. He longed to be filled with G.o.d's Spirit, but the more he sought it, the farther off it appeared to be. What was he to think of his state, and was there any way out of it?

My answer was, that the whole matter appeared to me very simple; he was living under the law and not under grace. As long as he did so, there could be no change. He listened attentively, but could not exactly see what I meant.

I reminded him of the difference, the utter contrariety, between law and grace. Law demands; grace bestows. Law commands, but gives no strength to obey; grace promises, and performs, does all we need to do. Law burdens, and casts down and condemns; grace comforts, and makes strong and glad. Law appeals to self, to do its utmost; grace points to Christ to do all. Law calls to effort and strain, and urges us towards a goal we never can reach; grace works in us all G.o.d's blessed will. I pointed out to him how his first step should be, instead of striving against all this failure, fully to accept of it, and the lesson of his own impotence, as G.o.d had been seeking to teach it him, and, with this confession, to sink down before G.o.d in utter helplessness. There would be the place where he would learn that, unless grace gave him deliverance and strength, he never could do better than he had done, and that grace would indeed work all for him. He must come out from under law and self and effort, and take his place under grace, allowing G.o.d to do all.

In later conversations he told me the diagnosis of the disease had been correct. He admitted grace must do all. And yet, so deep was the thought that we must do something, that we must at least bring our faithfulness to secure the work of grace, he feared that his life would not be very different; he would not be equal to the strain of new difficulties into which he was now going. There was, amid all the intense earnestness, an undertone of despair; he could not live as he knew he ought to. I have already said, in the opening chapter, that in some of our meetings I had noticed this tone of hopelessness. And no minister who has come into close contact with souls seeking to live wholly for G.o.d, to ”walk worthy of the Lord unto all well pleasing,” but knows that this renders true progress impossible. To speak specially of the lack of prayer, and the desire of living a fuller prayer-life, how many are the difficulties to be met! We have so often resolved to pray more and better, and have failed. We have not the strength of will some have, with one resolve to turn round and change our habits. The press of duty is as great as ever it was; it is so difficult to find time for more prayer; real enjoyment in prayer, which would enable us to persevere, is what we do not feel; we do not possess the power to supplicate and to plead, as we should; our prayers, instead of being a joy and a strength, are a source of continual self-condemnation and doubt. We have at times mourned and confessed and resolved; but, to tell the honest truth, we do not expect, for we do not see the way to, any great change.

It is evident that as long as this spirit prevails, there can be very little prospect of improvement. Discouragement must bring defeat. One of the first objects of a physician is ever to waken hope; without this he knows his medicines will often profit little. No teaching from G.o.d's Word as to the duty, the urgent need, the blessed privilege of more prayer, of effectual prayer, will avail, while the secret whisper is heard: There is no hope. Our first care must be to find out the hidden cause of the failure and despair, and then to show how divinely sure deliverance is. We must, unless we are to rest content with our state, listen to and join in the question, ”Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people restored?” We must listen, and receive into our heart, the Divine promise with the response it met with: ”Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto Thee, for Thou art the Lord our G.o.d.” We must come with the personal prayer, and the faith that there will be a personal answer. Shall we not even now begin to claim it in regard to the lack of prayer, and believe that G.o.d will help us: ”Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.”

It is always of consequence to distinguish between the symptoms of a disease and the disease itself. Feebleness and failure in prayer is a sign of feebleness in the spiritual life. If a patient were to ask a physician to give him something to stimulate his feeble pulse, he would be told that this would do him little good. The pulse is the index of the state of the heart and the whole system: the physician strives to have health restored. What everyone who would fain pray more faithfully and effectually must learn is this, that his whole spiritual life is in a sickly state, and needs restoration. It is as he comes to look, not only at his shortcomings in prayer, but at the lack in the life of faith, of which this is the symptom, that he will become fully alive to the serious nature of the disease. He will then see the need of a radical change in his whole life and walk, if his prayer-life, which is simply the pulse of the spiritual system, is to indicate health and vigour. G.o.d has so created us that the exercise of every healthy function causes joy. Prayer is meant to be as simple and natural as breathing or working to a healthy man. The reluctance we feel, and the failure we confess, are G.o.d's own voice calling us to acknowledge our disease, and to come to Him for the healing He has promised.

And what is now the disease of which the lack of prayer is the symptom?

We cannot find a better answer than is pointed out in the words, ”Ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

Here we have suggested the possibility of two types of Christian life.

There may be a life partly under the law and partly under grace; or, a life entirely under grace, in the full liberty from self-effort, and the full experience of the Divine strength which it can give. A true believer may still be living partly under the law, in the power of self-effort, striving to do what he cannot accomplish. The continued failure in his Christian life to which he confesses is owing to this one thing: he trusts in himself, and tries to do his best. He does, indeed, pray and look to G.o.d for help, but still it is he in his strength, helped by G.o.d, who is to do the work. In the Epistles to the Romans, and Corinthians, and Galatians, we know how Paul tells them that they have not received the spirit of bondage again, that they are free from the law, that they are no more servants but sons; that they must beware of nothing so much as to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Everywhere it is the contrast between the law and grace, between the flesh, which is under the law, and the Spirit, who is the gift of grace, and through whom grace does all its work. In our days, just as in those first ages, the great danger is living under the law, and serving G.o.d in the strength of the flesh. With the great majority of Christians it appears to be the state in which they remain all their lives. Hence the lack to such a large extent of true holy living and power in prayer.