Lesson 46: Prayer and Love, part 2
The first lesson taught here is that of a forgiving disposition. We pray, “Forgive, even as we have forgiven.” Scripture says, “Forgive one another, even as God also in Christ forgave you.” God’s full and free forgiveness is to be the rule of ours with men. Otherwise our reluctant, half-hearted forgiveness, which is not forgiveness at all, will be God’s rule with us. Every prayer rests upon our faith in God’s pardoning grace. If God dealt with us after our sins, not one prayer could be heard. Pardon opens the door to all God’s love and blessing. Because God has pardoned all our sin, our prayer can prevail to obtain all we need. The deep sure ground of answer to prayer is God’s forgiving love. When it has taken possession of the heart, we pray in faith. But also, when it has taken possession of the heart, we live in love. God’s forgiving disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a disposition in us.
As the power of His forgiving love shed abroad and is dwelling within us, we forgive even as He forgives. If there is great and grievous injury or injustice done to us, we seek first to possess a Godlike disposition; to be kept from a sense of wounded honor, from a desire to maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as he has deserved. In the little annoyances of daily life, we are watchful not to excuse the hasty temper, the sharp word, the quick judgment, with the thought that we mean no harm, that we do not keep the anger long, or that it would be too much to expect from feeble human nature, that we should really forgive the way God and Christ do. No, we take the command literally, “Even as Christ forgave, so also do you.” The blood that cleanses the conscience from dead works cleanses from selfishness too; the love it reveals is pardoning love that takes possession of us and flows through us to others. Our forgiving love to men is the evidence of the reality of God’s forgiving love in us, and so the condition of the prayer of faith.
There is a second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is made the test of our intercourse with God in prayer. How often the Christian, when he comes to pray, does his utmost to cultivate certain frames of mind which he thinks will be pleasing. He does not understand, or forgets, that life does not consist of so many loose pieces of which now the one, then the other, can be taken up. Life is a whole, and the pious frame of the hour of prayer is judged of by God from the ordinary frame of the daily life of which the hour of prayer is but a small part. It is not the feeling I call up but the tone of my life during the day that is God’s criterion of what I really am and desire. My drawing nigh to God is of one piece with my intercourse with men and earth: failure here will cause failure there. Not only when there is the distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbor and myself but the ordinary current of my thinking and judging, the unloving thoughts and words I allow to pass unnoticed; those can hinder my prayer. The effectual prayer of faith comes out from a life given up to the will and the love of God; not according to what I try to be when praying, but what I am when not praying, is my prayer dealt with by God.
Prayer: Oh my God, let Your love, shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Spirit, be in me a fountain of love to all around me, that out of a life in love may spring the power of believing prayer. Oh my Father, grant by the Holy Spirit that this may be my experience, that a life in love to all around me is the gate to a life in the love of my God. And give me especially to find in the joy with which I forgive day by day whoever might offend me, the proof that Your forgiveness to me is a power and a life.