It is prayerfulness.
A prayerless life is a life which has not recognized its dependence upon the LORD.
A life of prayer is a life which has come to see that it cannot go on far without the LORD.
That is why I believe the LORD has ordained prayer as His way of working and meeting the need.
He has said, in effect, You have to live by Me.
If you can go on without Me...all right, go on; but for My purpose you have to live by Me.
Prayer is our way of showing that we are dependent upon the LORD, and it is the way by which, therefore, the LORD comes in and manifests Himself.
If you look again at Paul’s revelation of the church, the Body of Christ, you will see how he lays down the principle of dependence, interdependence, mutual dependence, and how he strikes strong blows against anything in the nature of independence, separateness.
The Body is one, and no member in the Body can say to another, I have no need of you.
Every member must say, I am dependent upon you.
The hand cannot take the place of the foot. The whole body is constituted to demonstrate the law of dependence.
That is humility.
The opposite of that is striking out on your own, being a freelance and snapping your fingers at anybody and everybody else, and doing without them.
That is pride, and it is deception.
Pride is shown in possession or possessiveness; that is, taking hold of things to govern them ourselves, to be in possession of them.
It is the work in Adam, and it is in all of us.
It is shown in the desire to have in our own possession, to have in our own power, to have under our own hand, under our own influence, and it is a terrible thing.
It is in us all by nature more or less, and the ruin of the church has come along this line of men wanting to take charge, men wanting to possess, men wanting to bring their influence to bear upon things, so that the thing comes into their hold.
It is the ruin of the church. It was the ruin of the race. It was the ruin of Satan.
There is nothing like that about the LORD Jesus.
His was a letting go to the LORD, a letting go to the Father all the time.
~T. Austin Sparks~
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.