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 18, In Harmony with the Destiny of Man
“The
image he bears decides his destiny. Bearing God’s image, he belongs to
God: prayer to God is what he was created for. Prayer is part of the
wondrous likeness he bears to His Divine original; of the deep mystery
of the fellowship of love in which the Three-One has His blessedness,
prayer is the earthly image and likeness.
We
must turn back to God’s own record of man’s creation to discover there
what God’s purpose was, and what the capacities with which man was
endowed for the fulfilment of that purpose.
It was to fill, to subdue, to have dominion
over the earth and all in it. All the three expressions show us that
man was meant, as God’s representative, to hold rule here on earth.
It
was the will of God that all that was to be done on earth should be
done through him: the history of the earth was to be entirely in his
hands.
As
God’s representative man was to have ruled; all was to have been done
under his will and rule; on his advice and at his request heaven was to
have bestowed its blessing on earth.
In
Abraham we see how prayer is not only, or even chiefly, the means of
obtaining blessing for ourselves, but is the exercise of his royal
prerogative to influence the destinies of men, and the will of God which
rules them.
There
was an inner agreement and harmony between God and man, and incipient
God-likeness, which gave man a real fitness for being the mediator
between God and His world, for he was to be prophet, priest, and king,
to interpret God’s will, to represent nature’s needs, to receive and
dispense God’s bounty.
Prayer
is not merely the cry of the suppliant for mercy; it is the highest
form of putting forth of his will by man, knowing himself to be of
Divine origin, created for and capable of being, in king-like liberty,
man is the executor of God’s plan.
It
is for those who abide in Him, who have forsaken self to take up their
abode in Him with His life of obedience and self-sacrifice, who have
lost their life and found it in Him, who are now entirely given up to
the interests of the Father and His kingdom.
Such have indeed the
power, each in their own circle, to obtain and dispense the powers of
heaven here on earth.
Believers of the living
God! Your calling is higher and holier than you know.. As kings, and
priests unto God, would God rule the world; your prayers bestow and
withhold the blessing of heaven.”
More on the Prayer In Harmony with the Destiny of Man
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XVIII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.
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