I was doing a bit of reading and I found this passage
about prayer. Considering that I ask many of you for prayer quite often I thought
it might interest you. I thought it was helpful. Here it is,
It is not part of the life of a
natural man to pray. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he
does not pray; I question that. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God
in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a man is born from
above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that
life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our
ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer
as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we
may get to know God Himself.
“Ask and ye shall receive.” We
grouse before God, we are apologetic and apathetic, but we ask very few things.
Yet what a splendid audacity a childlike child has! Our Lord says—“Except ye
become as little children.” Ask, and God will do. Give Jesus Christ a chance,
give Him elbow room, and no man will ever do thing unless he is at his wits’
end. When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is
the only way he can get into touch with Reality. Be yourself before God and
present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits’ end
over. As long as you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for
anything.
It is not so true that “prayer changes
things” as that prayer changes me and
I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of
Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a
question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.
–Oswald Cambers, My Utmost for His Highest, August 28
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