The New Life

Prayer.
Fatherly love, the complete blotting out of my sins
in Christ, by which every hindrance in this direction
is taken away, and the intercession of the Spirit in
me, by which my ignorance or weakness cannot deprive
me of the blessing. Teach me with faith in
Thee, the Three-One, to pray in fellowship with
Thee.
And confirm me in the strong living certitude
Amen.
that I receive what I believingly ask.
1. In prayer the principal thing is faith. The whole of salvavation,
the whole of the new life is by faith, therefore also by
prayer. There is all too much prayer that brings nothing, because
there is little faith in it. Before I pray, and while I pray,
and after I have prayed, I must ask : Do I pray in faith? I
must say : I believe with my whole heart.
2. To arrive at this faith we must take time in prayer : time
to set ourselves silently and trustfully before God, and to become
awake to His presence : time to have our soul sanctified in fellowship
with God : time for the Holy Spirit to teach us to hold
fast and use trustfully the word of promise. No earthly knowledge,
no earthly possessions, no earthly food, no intercourse
with friends, can we have without time, sufficient time. I^et us
not think to learn how to pray, how to enjoy the power and the
blessedness of prayer, if we do not take time with God.
3. And then there must be not only time every day, but perseverance
from day to day. Time is required to grow in the
certitude that we are acceptable to the Father, and that our
prayer has power, in the filial confidence which knows that our
prayer is according to His will, and is heard. We must not
suppose that we know well enough how to pray, and can but
ask, and then it is over. No : prayer is converse and fellowship
with God, in which God has time and opportunity to work in
us, in which our souls die to their own will and power, and become
bound up and united with God.
4. For encouragement in persistent prayer, the following instance
may be of service. In an address delivered at Calcutta,
George Miiller recently said that in 1844 five persons were laid
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