The Week of Prayer and After by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 30, 1915

The Week of Prayer and After

By Editor

ANOTHER week of prayer is past. To the people of God it has brought untold blessings. The editor never enjoyed an occasion of this kind so rich in spiritual blessings as the week just past, and this is the testimony which he has heard from many of his brethren. For these blessed experiences we praise the Lord.

What will the aftermath of the week of prayer prove to be? Shall we retain the blessings we have received, or will they gradually eke out of our hearts, and the close of another year find us again as sadly in need of a revival as we were at the beginning of this last occasion? True, we shall need a continual revival, a daily and hourly refreshing from the Lord, but it is the purpose of God that we shall retain what we receive, and that every added blessing shall serve only to increase our spirit of consecration, and the measure of our strength for Christian service.

We shall retain the blessing of the week of prayer if we follow on to know the Lord in the same way that we have received him. Says the apostle Paul to the Colossians: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” Col. 2:6, 7. We received the Lord Jesus during the week of prayer by the confession of sin, by the surrender of self, by the acceptance of the divine promises, by the exercise of living faith, by the ministry of service. We shall be able to walk in the Lord Jesus if we continue the exercise of these same activities. Our experience must not be a passive but an active experience.

We fail many times because our efforts are of a spasmodic character. We shall be made partakers of Christ only as “we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” Our power in the overcoming of sin will be in the formation of right habits of thought and life. Says the servant of the Lord: “If you will find voice and time to pray, God will find time and voice to answer.”—Review and Herald, April 1, 1890. “The life of the soul depends upon habitual communion with God.”—Id., April 22, 1884. “When it becomes the habit of the soul to converse with God, the power of the evil one is broken; for Satan cannot abide near the soul that draws nigh unto God.”—Id., Dec. 3, 1889. We need to form the habit of conversing with God, and when this habit is formed, the promise is that the power of the evil one shall be broken.

We should continue in the year to come as we have begun, keeping ourselves continually upon the altar. Let us keep our sins confessed up to date, living in all good conscience before God and our fellows, doing every day the best we know. Let us have daily communion with God in the study of his Word and in secret devotion. Let us seek every day to make our lives a blessing to our fellows. In this experience there will be life and light and liberty, and we shall have during 1916 not alone one week of communion with God, but fifty-two weeks,—a year of prayer, a year of earnest Christian service.