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"Family Worship," The Gospel Messenger vol. 14 no. 8 (Aug. 1892)
AUTHOR: | Hassell, Sylvester |
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The very general and deplorable neglect of family prayer among the people of God is both a sign and an occasion of the rapidly increasing degeneracy of these evil and perilous times, when Christianity has almost entirely evaporated into an empty and delusive name, when true and living faith has almost wholly departed from the earth. “Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know Thee not,” prays Jeremiah to the Lord (x.25) “and upon the families that call not upon Thy name.” O, for the spirit of the living God, to arouse his people from their deathful slumbers (Eph. v. 14) to a realization of the transcendent importance of eternal things, to a lively sense of their obligations to their Saviour and their fellow-creatures! O, that the light and glory of the Lord Jesus might soon shine within and upon them, and end the long, cold, dark night, and usher in the brightness, beauty and fruitfulness of a heavenly day!—Isa. lx. 1–22; Cant. ii. 10–13.
Dear brethren and sisters, let us address our fervent and unceasing petitions to the Most High for an early fulfillment of these precious promises. How can we expect the dead world of unbelievers to do any better than they do, when the church of Christ itself is so deeply immersed in the slumbers of worldliness or indifference? Is not this the Laodicean age of the church, wherein God says to her, “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.” We can quarrel and fight each other to the death on idle and unprofitable questions of form and philosophy, and neglect the manifestation, in our words and lives, toward each other and our fellow-men, as well as towards our God, of the loving, humble, blessed and all-important spirit of Jesus, without which all our profession of religion is, in the sight of the Lord, an abominable mockery—nothing but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, though we might know all things, and have faith to move mountains, and speak with an eloquence equal to that of angels (1Cor. xiii.) May the Lord speedily emancipate his people from the bondage and delusion of legalism, pseudo-spiritualism and antinomianism, and enable all of them to stand fast in that heavenly liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free (Gal. v. 1), acknowledging Him as their only master, their only prophet, priest and king. —Matt. xxiii. 5-12; Acts iii. 22, 23; Heb. vii. 21, Rev. xix. 16.
And one of the most vitally important matters in which we should heartily obey the commandment and follow the example of our Saviour-King, is the cultivation of the spirit of prayer (Luke xviii. 1; Rom. xii. 12; Eph. vi. 18; Philip. iv. 6) — to be continually coming in spirit unto God, humbling ourselves before Him, adoring and thanking Him, and supplicating Him for His mercies to ourselves and to our fellow-creatures. No mere man ever prayed so much as Jesus, our Divine High Priest—early in the morning, a great while before day (Mark i. 35), all the night (Luke vi. 12), when He was baptized (Luke iii. 21), when transfigured (Luke ix. 29), in Gethsemane (Luke xxii. 44), on Calvary (Matt. xxvii. 46; Luke xxiii. 34, 46), in his advocacy with the Father for all His people (John xvii), and his perpetual intercession for them at the right had of God (Heb. i. 3; vii. 25).
We are sinful and weak and blind, and can do nothing of ourselves; and it, therefore, pre-eminently becomes us to apply continually to God for cleansing, for strength and for guidance in everything that we do. Prayer has well been called “the offering up of our desires to God, for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, by the help of His spirit, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies.” It is called in the Scriptures, “an asking, a seeking and knocking, a lifting up of the soul, a pouring out the heart, a looking up to and talking with God, a wrestling with God, a taking hold of God, meditation, inquiring, crying, sigh
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