The Christian in Complete Armor - Choice Extracts!

too proud to learn from the guide — he is unworthy to be taught by the
master.
"They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto
fables" (2 Timothy 4:3, 4). Satan commonly stops the ear from hearing sound
doctrine, before he opens it to embrace corrupt doctrine.
11. PRAYER AND THANKSGIVING
"Be anxious for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." Philippians 4:6.
Prayer the sign of life. What is prayer — but the breathing forth of that grace
which is breathed into the soul by the Holy Spirit? When God breathed into
man the breath of life, he became a living soul. Just so, when God breathes
into the creature the breath of spiritual life — he becomes a praying soul:
"Behold, he prays," says God of Paul to Ananias (Acts 9:11). Praying is the
same to the new creature, as crying to the natural babe. The child is not
learned by art to cry — but by nature — it comes into the world crying.
Praying is not a lesson got by forms and rules — but flowing from principles
of new life.
Prayer and reality. Prayer is an act in which we have immediately to do with
the great God, to whom we approach in prayer. It is too sacred a duty to be
performed between sleeping and waking, with a heavy eye or a drowsy heart
— this God complained of: "There is none that calls upon Your name, that
stirs up himself to take hold of You" (Isaiah 64:7). He counts it no prayer,
where the heart is not stirred up and awake. Our behavior in prayer has an
universal influence upon all the passages of our whole life. As a man is in
prayer — so he is likely to be in all the rest; if he is careless in praying — then
he is negligent in hearing, and loose in his walking. Prayer is the channel, in
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