Your ShelfYour Projects

THE WEEK OF PRAYER

10%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 24, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 52.

Read the full edition

THE WEEK OF PRAYER.

By L. A. S.

THE Week of Prayer is not a lenten season, during which we are to try to be good enough and earnest enough in the work of God to balance up our lack of piety and earnestness during the preceding portion of the year. Any such conception as this is pure paganism.
Nor is the Week of Prayer a season set apart for the purpose of attracting the attention of God, and persuading Him to act in our behalf by exerting ourselves to an unusual degree in prayer-making and outward acts of devotion. This conception also is purely pagan.
God is not moved by our arguments, nor is His ear gained by our much speaking. It is not His part to be moved toward us; it is we who need to be moved toward Him. “God is love;” He was love from the first, and always will be love, and His attitude toward the human family has ever been that of infinite love; but we need more and more to become partakers of His nature, and to assume an attitude of greater love toward Him and His sacred cause. We should make a special effort to this end during this special prayer season.
God has rightly related himself to us, but we have not rightly related ourselves to Him. There is no good reason why this should be so. God desires and asks that this condition of things be changed, and that without delay. The Week of Prayer is a season when those who appreciate the importance of their privilege and duty in this respect will make most earnest efforts so to relate themselves to God that they will become unobstructed channels of His power and grace.
The Week of Prayer is not a mere elevation in our spiritual life, up which we are to mount for a few days, and then descend to our former level; but it is a stepping-stone to higher ground in Christian experience and service. The Christian pathway leads ever upward to higher ground. We may fail to realize this truth, but it is so. We may not see this higher ground, but it is there. We may see some around us who are on higher ground than we, but the higher ground to which God calls us stretches far up beyond their feet. On the heights we see “the man Christ Jesus;” to Him alone we must look to know the truth.
The apostle Paul did not count himself “to have apprehended,” but he pressed “toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3: 13, 14.
The prayer that is offered in the courts above for God’s Church on the earth is, “That ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness;” “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places;” “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Such is “the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” to us, now, during this Week of Prayer. He has not planned that there shall be any delay in filling us with His fullness. There will be no delay if we do not hinder Him. God does not ask us to accomplish all this, or any part of it; He only asks that we shall no longer hinder the doing of it by himself. And He is able to do for us “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” How wide shall we open the door of the heart to Him on this occasion? How large an inlet, and outlet as well, shall we provide for His fullness?
L. A. S.