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 14, Prayer and Love.
The first lesson taught here is that of a forgiving disposition. We pray, ‘Forgive, even as
we have forgiven.’ Scripture says, ‘Forgive one another, even as God
also in Christ forgave you.’ God’s full and free forgiveness is to be
the rule of ours with men.
Pardon
opens the door to all God’s love and blessing: because God has
pardoned all our sin, our prayer can prevail to obtain all we need.
Our
forgiving love to men is the evidence of the reality of God’s forgiving
love in us, and so the condition of the prayer of faith.
There is a
second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is made the
test of our intercourse with God in prayer. How often the Christian,
when he comes to pray, does his utmost to cultivate certain frames of
mind which he thinks will be pleasing.
The
hour of prayer is but a small part. It is not about the feeling I call up. What matters is the
tone of my life during the day. This is God’s criterion of what I really am
and desire. My drawing nigh to God is of one piece with my intercourse
with men and earth: failure here will cause failure in our prayer life.
The unloving thoughts and words I allow
to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer. The effectual prayer of faith
comes out from a life given up to the will and the love of God. Not
according to what I try to be when praying, but what I am when not
praying, is what God responds to in prayer.
We
may gather these thoughts into a third lesson: In our life with men
the one thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of
forgiveness is the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives:
it is only when we are dwelling in love that we can forgive as God
forgives. In love to the brethren we have the evidence of love to the
Father, the ground of confidence before God, and the assurance that our
prayer will be heard, (1 John iv. 20, iii. 18-21, 23.).
Neither
faith nor work will profit if we have not love; it is love that unites
with God, it is love that proves the reality of faith. The right
relations to the living God above me, and the living men around me, are
the conditions of effectual prayer.
To
look on each wretched one, however unlovable he be, in the light of
the tender love of Jesus the Shepherd seeking the lost; to see Jesus
Christ in him, and to take him up, for Jesus’ sake, in a heart that
really loves, —this, this is the secret of believing prayer and
successful effort.
Let
us ask whether our prayer be indeed the expression of a life wholly
given over to the will of God and the love of man. Love is the only
soil in which faith can strike its roots and thrive.
It
is suffering and forbearing love that prevails with God in prayer. The
merciful shall obtain mercy; the meek shall inherit the earth.
More on Prayer and Love...
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XIV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.
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