The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 672

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;:

PRAYER

632

For even sinners pray. This is evident from the heathen world, its forms of prayer, yet offers up supplications and petitions. It is evident from the ease with which a little child, taught by its mother, learns to pray; and from the many who, estranged from prayer, in sudden calamities bend the knees, and, altho they can not pray, still assume the attitude of prayer, willing which, however low

kingdom

to give half their

if

they only could pray.

And

lastly, it

evident from the thousands and tens of thousands who, convinced of the impossibility of praying for themselves, cry to others is

!

"

Pray for us Prayer in higher, holier sense the sinner can not offer. Everything in him is sinful, even his prayer. In his sin he has reversed the established order of things: not he existing for God, but God existing for him. Confirmed in his selfishness, the God of heaven and earth is to him little more than a Physician in every sickness and a Provider in every need; a wonderful Being, ever ready at his first cry to supply out of His fulness his every necessity. This is the egoism that inseparably belongs to every sinner's prayer. The prayer of the redeemed saint is: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen." The converted sinner offers first the petitions for Bis name, Uis Kingdom, and His will then he adds the petitions for bread, for forgiveness, for protection

from

But the unconverted

sin.

sin?ier

prayer for God's name, Kingdom, and

has no conception of a

will.

He

prays for bread

only; for forgiveness also, but only from the motive that bread and

luxury and deliverance from trouble

Wherefore

is

it

The depth

sinner's prayer.

may

not be denied him.

impossible to have too low an estimate of the of our fall

is in

nothing so apparent as All such prayer

in the sin of this degenerate, bastardized prayer.

may

be designated as a defying and vexing of God and His eternal love. In this sense the prayer of the sinner contains nothing of the

work

of the

Holy

All this prayer springs from the egoism

Spirit.

and has not the least value, rather the opposite. is the principal thing— altho our hands have un-

of the sinful heart,

But— and

this

strung the harp so that

it

he had so planned and constructed and it could produce the purest tones and And such is man's heart. Sin did not remove the

artist is just as great, for

tuned the instrument that fairest music.

produces nothing but discord, yet the

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