| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 7 |
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We desire also in this prayer that the kingdom of God may come in our own individual life with more and more power. Indeed this is the sense in which the prayer should be made first of all. The part of the world for whose surrender to God we are immediately responsible is that which is in ourself. Our prayer for the coming of the kingdom in other lives is not sincere and can have no power with God if we do
not seek to have it come in our own life. Joan of Are, when asked what was the secret of the victoriousness and unconquerableness of her white banner, answered, “I send it forth against the enemy, and then I follow it myself.” When we send out the white banner of such a prayer as this we should be careful to follow it with our own life.
While we ask that the kingdom of God may come in us we should make sure that its coming be not hindered, but in every way promoted, in us. This means that we should leave our sins, our grasping and greed, our jealousy, our resentment, our selfishness and pride, and whatsoever in us is unlovely and unholy, and that we let into our life whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely.
The kingdom of God can have its perfect realization in us only in heaven. But it must begin in us here or we shall never find ourself ready for heaven. Jesus said that he that believeth on him hath eternal life. The present tense contains a wonderful revealing — that the life of heaven begins in the heart of every follower of Christ the moment he becomes a true Christian. It may begin in a very feeble way — only a desire, a resolve, a decision of surrender, yet it is a germ of the life of Christ; it is a little seed of heaven planted in a heart; it is life, eternal life. “The kingdom of heaven is like into leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.” This little germ of eternal life, hid in a heart, will work its way through the life till the whole being has been assimilated to itself. The kingdom of heaven is come in us, therefore, only in the measure in which our life has come under the sway of its spirit.
There never is a day, therefore, for any of us when we do not still need to pray this prayer. Who of us has yet let the kingdom of God come in him as it might have come, as it may yet come? Who of us is ready now to have this kingdom rule in him absolutely, yielding to God’s sway every part of his being, bringing into subjection to Christ every thought, feeling, desire, and affection? That is the way to the highest possibilities of grace. We do not know what God could make of us, what he could accomplish through us, if only we would offer this prayer out of our deepest heart, and then follow it with the complete devotement of our life — body, soul, and spirit — to him.
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