God commands us to move
beyond the impulsive use of prayer which is the manner of most people today. When
prayer is left untrained, men pray only when they have reached their wits’ end.
In moments of extreme physical danger, men who never make a daily friend of
God, cry to him in their need.
Spasmodic use of prayer
utterly neglects the right conceptions of God
revealed by Jesus and goes back to the pagan thought of Him. God becomes
nothing more than a power to be occasionally called in to our help.
This is the conception of
an idol worshiper bowing in an idol’s shrine. His god is a power, mysterious
and masterful, whose help he seeks in his emergencies. When, therefore, we pray
as an idol worshiper does, fitfully running to God in occasional crises, we
are going back in substance, if not in form, to paganism. But the best of
humanity have traveled a long way from such an idea of deity.
God desires to be to everyone
an inward and abiding friend, a purifying presence in daily life, the One whose
righteous purpose continually restrains and whose love upholds. Above all
advances made in human life none is so significant as this advance in the
thought of God.
We have moved from mud
huts to cathedrals, from tom-toms to orchestras. If we neglect these gains, we
should be rightly be regarded as strange anachronisms.
In our treatment of God
how often are we ancient pagans born after our time! We are examples of
religious reversal to type. We are misdated A. D. instead of B. C. when we use
God as a power to be occasionally summoned to our aid.
Consider a parable of a
father and his two sons. One son looked upon his father as a last resort in
critical need. He never came to him for friendly
talks, never sought his advice, in little difficulties never was comforted
by his help. He did not make his father
his confidant. He went to college and call home only when he wanted money. He fell
into disgrace, and called on his father only when he needed legal aid. He ran
his life with utter disregard of his father's character or purpose, and turned
to him only when in desperate straits. The other son saw in his father's love the
supreme motive of his life. He was moved by daily gratitude so that to be well-pleasing
to his father was his joy and his ideal. His father was his friend. He confided
in him, was advised by him, kept close to him, and in his crises came to his
father with a naturalness born of long habit.
Is there any doubt as to
which is the nobler sonship? And is not the former type a true picture of our
relationship with God when we leave prayer to be a merely impulsive and
untrained cry of need?
The use of prayer as
merely a spasmodic cry out of an occasional crisis, makes it utterly selfish
We think of God solely
with reference to our own emergencies. We never remember the Most High except
when we wish him to run an errand for us. Our prayer does not concern itself
with the fulfilment of his great purposes in us and in the world, and does not
relate itself to a life devoted to his will. In utter selfishness we forget God
until it occurs to us that we may get something from him.
Some men treat God as others treat their country. That regard for native land which in
some has inspired heroic and sacrificial deeds, appears in others in the disguise
of utter selfishness. Consider a man who does nothing whatever for his country;
is not interested in her problems; is careless of the franchise, evades every
public responsibility, and even dodges taxes. One would suppose that this man
never thought of his country at all. Upon the contrary, there are occasions
when he thinks of her at once. When his person or property is attacked and his
rights invaded, this same man will appeal clamorously to the government for
protection. He reserves every thought of his country for the hours of personal
crisis. His relationship with his government is exhausted in spasmodic cries
for help.
Deep in every one of us
lies the tendency to pray. If we allow it to remain merely a tendency, it
becomes nothing but a selfish, unintelligent, occasional cry of need. But
understood and disciplined, it reveals possibilities whose limits never have be
found.
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