With Christ in the School of Prayer (17) ... Prayer in Harmony with God

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 17, Prayer in Harmony with God:

Childlike simplicity accepts the truth without difficulty, and often cares little to give itself or others any reason for its faith but this:  God has said.  But it is the will of God that we should love and serve Him, not only with all the heart but also with all the mind.

So, how God can grant to prayer such mighty power?  How can the action of prayer be harmonized with the will and the decrees of God?  How can God’s sovereignty and our will, God’s liberty and ours, be reconciled?—these and other like questions are fit subjects for Christian meditation and inquiry.

There must be on the part of the Son an asking and receiving.  In the holy fellowship of the Divine Persons. The Father gave the Son the place and the power to act upon Him.

The Father-heart holds itself open and free to listen to every prayer that rises through the Son, and that God does indeed allow Himself to be decided by prayer to do what He otherwise would not have done.

The Lord Jesus is the first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things:  all things were created through Him and unto Him, and all things consist in Him.  In the counsels of the Father, had always a voice; in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.

Let us not forget that there is not with God as with man, a past by which He is irrevocably bound. God does not live in time with its past and future; the distinctions of time have no reference to Him who inhabits Eternity.

This perfect harmony and union of Divine Sovereignty and human liberty is to us an unfathomable mystery, because God as THE ETERNAL ONE transcends all our thoughts.  

But let it be our comfort and strength to be assured that in the eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son,
the power of prayer has its origin and certainty,
and that through our union with the Son, our prayer can have its influence in the inner life of the Blessed Trinity.

More on the Prayer in Harmony with God at
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XVII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.