The Week of Prayer in Our Schools by J. L. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 11, 1913

The Week of Prayer in Our Schools

By J. L. S.

We are coming to the most important week in the entire school year. It is the week of prayer, the time set apart for our people everywhere as a time of consecration and prayer. We are hoping, believing, and praying that our schools will earnestly enter into this period of prayer, and derive a very large amount of spiritual help.

We are living in an age of great intensity. Christian people seem too busy to pray. The hurry and excitement of life do not give time for quiet meditation and communion with God. Teachers in our schools are busy, and a large number of them have heavy work to carry. Yet God calls them to a life of earnest prayer. It is the prayer life that stimulates a desire for prayer among the students. Prayer is our means of communing with God. It is the key which unlocks the storehouse of heaven. “Unceasing prayer is the unbroken union of the soul with God so that life from God flows into our lives; and from our lives purity and holiness flow back to God.” Communion with God lifts us above our surroundings, gives us new views of God and his work and purpose in our lives. The ministry of intercession provides us the means of being lifted above the things of life into the communion of God and the atmosphere of heaven.

In Jesus’ school, prayer was one of the most important subjects of study. The Master practised the prayer life. And so profoundly did his manner of life affect the disciples that they earnestly besought him to teach them to pray. As a result, we have that beautiful prayer, so simple, and yet so comprehensive. We call it the Lord’s Prayer, yet really it is the prayer he taught his disciples to pray.

Today, as in the school of the twelve disciples, prayer in the life of the teacher leads to the same desire on the part of the pupil. We have a large number of young people in our schools. Their education and training will very largely affect our work in the near future. How much these dear young people need to learn how to pray, how to take hold of God in earnest, believing prayer, and learn from actual experience that God does hear and answer when they call upon him. Hudson Taylor said, while preparing to go to China, that he could not go to a mission field until he knew for a certainty that God heard and answered prayer. It was with abiding faith in God that he went to China; and the results of his life show the marvelous way in which God used him in his work. If all the young people in our schools had the definite assurance that God does hear and answer prayer, what remarkable results would follow! Men of greater might and power would be developed, and laborers, made ready for the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, would go forth into the Master’s service.

We are living in the time when God’s Spirit is to be poured out; and without it the advent movement will miss its goal. It is the prayer life that prepares the way for the life of power. The three and one-half years in the school of prayer led the disciples to that upper chamber; and it was the ten days in that chamber which prepared for Pentecost and brought the results that followed.

As educators, may we this coming week of prayer consider the importance of prayer, our own relation to it, the place it should occupy in school work, and the wisest means to make that possible.

There are more than five thousand children and young people in our mission schools in heathen lands. Some are Kafirs, others, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, and believers in other religions. How important it is that these students accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and prepare themselves as workers for their own people! Let us pray during this week of prayer that God may greatly bless our teachers and their schools, that a still larger number may accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and be trained and fitted for service among their own people.

J. L. S.