Heavenly Communings

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1873

Heavenly Communings.

PRAYER has very appropriately been called the Christian’s secret power; and while it is such in truth, it is no less the key to the ante-chamber of the Most High.

What Christian does not know that earnest, prevailing prayer never fails to unlock the door of Heaven to the waiting, contrite heart; and beyond its pearly portals, it gains an insight—a foretaste as it were—of its joys supreme and immortal. Prayer is also very beautifully termed the Christian’s vital breath. What a depth of meaning in that sentence! If, then, prayer is to the heart what breath is to the body, what must be the inevitable result if it be withheld. The consequences are too apparent to need comment; death is the result. In the case of the former, death spiritual; in the latter, death natural. Have any tried the experiment? Christian reader, did you ever try it? even for one day only? If you have, I will venture to affirm the experiment was unsatisfying indeed. You felt coldness and indifference settling upon you—you were ill at ease under the all-seeing eye of Him who is continually saying, “Draw nigh unto God, and he will draw nigh unto you.” No, my brother, my sister, you were not satisfied, for you felt in your heart you were drifting away from Christ; and what so saddens the heart and depresses the soul of one who has been brought out of spiritual Egypt into the Canaan of light and rest as to feel that Jesus, our deliverer, smiles not upon us. Ah! I fear too many have, and are, trying the dangerous and may be fatal experiment; trusting in the arm of flesh; forgetting or ignoring the unseen, the secret power; neglecting to unlock the door to the great audience chamber, where they may hold spiritual communings with the Father and with his dear Son, our Saviour. More than this, we are commanded to pray—“to pray always, with all prayer,” “to pray without ceasing”—and shall we, dare we, disobey the divine command?

Oh! what power there is in prayer. Daniel knew its power; he dared to pray before his open window in the face of his enemies, fearing not the king’s counselors, neither the lions’ jaws, for he trusted in the living God. And for example, we have another, a greater than Daniel. We have the great Exemplar, who was wont to spend whole nights in prayer, going out upon the mountain side, and there, while all nature was hushed in silence, keeping his lonely vigil, communing with his Father, God. Oh! what a sight for mortals; angels could but worship and adore. And, dear reader, if Christ, the pure, the sinless one, had need to pray, how much need have we, poor, short-sighted, frail children of the dust! O Jesus, our Exemplar, and teacher, teach us how to pray, and, O, grant that we may love more and more the

“Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, That calls us from a world of care, And bids us at our Father’s throne. Make all our wants and wishes known.”