by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net
Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace
An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 8, The Boldness of God’s Friends.
“He speaks of how
they ought to pray, and repeats what he formerly said of God’s
Fatherliness and the certainty of an answer. But in between He adds the
beautiful parable of the friend at midnight, to teach them the two fold
lesson, that God does not only want us to pray for ourselves, but for
the perishing around us, and that in such intercession great boldness of
entreaty is often needful, and always lawful, yea, pleasing to God.
The parable is a perfect storehouse of instruction in regard to true intercession.
There is, first,
the love which seeks to help the needy around us: ‘my friend is come to me.’
Then the need which urges to the cry ‘I have nothing to set before him.’
Then follows the confidence that help is to be had: ‘which of you shall have a friend, and say, Friend, lend me three loaves.’
Then comes the unexpected refusal : ‘I cannot rise and give thee.’
Then again the perseverance that takes no refusal: ‘because of his importunity.’
And lastly, the reward of such prayer: ‘he will give him as many as he needs.’
A wonderful setting forth of the way of prayer and faith in which the blessing of God has so often been sought and found.
There
is a twofold use of prayer: the one, to obtain strength and blessing
for our own life; the other, the higher, the true glory of prayer, for
which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching, is
intercession, where prayer is the royal power a child of God exercises
in heaven on behalf of others and even of the kingdom.
It
is when we draw near to God as the friend of the poor and the perishing
that we may count on His friendliness; the righteous man who is the
friend of the poor is very specially the friend of God. This gives
wonderful liberty in prayer.
That
a child obtains what he asks of his father looks so perfectly natural,
we almost count it the father’s duty to give. But with a friend it is
as if the kindness is more free, dependent, not on nature, but on
sympathy and character.
The one thing by which man can honor and enjoy his God is faith.
Intercession is part of faith’s training-school. There our friendship
with men and with God is tested. There it is seen whether my
friendship with the needy is so real, that I will take time and
sacrifice my rest, will go even at midnight and not cease until I have
obtained for them what I need. There it is seen whether my friendship
with God is so clear, that I can depend on Him not to turn me away and
therefore pray on until He gives. O what a deep heavenly mystery this is
of persevering prayer.
He
trains them, in the school of answer delayed, to find out how their
perseverance really does prevail, and what the mighty power is they can
wield in heaven, if they do but set themselves to it. There is a faith
that sees the promise, and embraces it, and yet does not receive it.
O
let us thank Him that in delaying His answer He is educating us up to
our true position and the exercise of all our power with Him, training us
to live with Him in the fellowship of undoubting faith and trust, to be
indeed the friends of God. And let us hold fast the threefold cord
that cannot be broken: the hungry friend needing the help, and the
praying friend seeking the help, and the Mighty Friend, loving to give
as much as he needs.”
More on the Boldness of God’s Friends
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.VIII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.
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