| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 4 |
Page 3 |
This teaching applies also to the spirit in which all our prayers should be offered as well as to the order of the petitions. Indeed all our life is to be lived with a view to the glorifying of the divine name. God must be first in everything. We are to love him with all our heart, with all our strength, with all our mind. We are to seek first his kingdom and righteousness. We are to aim in all our life to give honor to him. “Whether ye eat, or drink,” says St. Paul, “or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Again, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” We are never to think in our daily and hourly living what will most honor us, what will be the easiest thing, or the most profitable, but what will most honor God. How it would modify human ambitions and change the whole aim of living if this were to become the universal rule, if our question should always be, “What will please God and make his name more glorious?”
Then, in all our praying as well as in our living, the first desire of our heart should be for the hallowing of God’s name. And not only is this prayer to be offered as a specific petition at the very gate, as we enter the temple, but in all our prayers, to the very close, the first object should be, not the obtaining of our requests for ourself, but the honoring of God. You want something very much. It seems to you to be essential to your happiness. Yet do you know that the granting of this thing so dear would glorify God? You are not sure. Instead, therefore, of pressing your requests for things you would like to have, you would better refer the mater to God, saying: “I dare not decide. I would rather leave it to God, asking that he would grant my requests if to do so would most honor his name.”
If we had learned this effacement of self in all our desires, whether in our work or in our praying, if God were always first in our desire, it would lift up our commonest life into a splendor radiant as that in which the angels live; and if we but lived thus altogether for the glory of God, we should have the divine companionship and help in all that we do.
Page 3