| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 1 |
Page 7 |
The Lord’s Prayer has its earnest warning against putting selfish and earthly desires first. We must confess that even into our praying self is apt to creep — not self only, but the lower self. Especially in our secret prayers the tendency is to speak to our Father in the first person singular, our thoughts absorbed altogether in our own wants to the exclusion of the needs of all others. This tendency is rebuked in the phrasing of this form of prayer, where we are taught to approach God as “Our Father,” not “My Father,” and to plead, “Give us our daily bread,” “Forgive us our debts,” “Deliver us from evil” We may not forget others even when we bow alone before God. The last place in the world where we should carry our selfishness is into God’s presence when we pray to him.
No doubt, however, there is a sense in which we should pray much for ourself, for the time shutting out every other person. Our fellowship with God must be individual. Yet in this personal part of our praying there is need also of great watchfulness, lest we do not seek for ourself the things that are really best. Our desires are apt to gravitate earthward, and the danger is that we choose lower rather than higher things; that we plead to be saved from costly self-denials rather than to receive the spiritual blessings which are folded up in self-denials; that we ask for worldly prosperity rather than for likeness to Christ.
Perhaps it were better if we should pray less than we do — that is, if ofttimes we should decline to choose at all for ourself, or to make any definite requests, simply pleading with God to bless us, and referring especially all that concerns earthly things to his wisdom and love. A minister sat with a father and mother by the bed of a child, who was hovering between life and death. He was about to pray for the little sufferer, and turning to the parents he asked, “What shall we ask God to do? After some moments the father answered, with deep emotion: “I would not dare to choose. Leave it to him.”
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