Prayer: “MAN SPEAKS WITH GOD!”
I once made up a mock newspaper with headline:
“MAN SPEAKS WITH GOD!”
I held it up before the congregation and said… If people really believed that a man would speak with God they would flock from miles and kilometers just to watch the spectacle! It would be an event something like Moses ascending Sinai to speak with the Almighty!
The event is described in the 19th and 20th chapters of Exodus…
On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him…
When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. ..The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. (Ex. 19:16-19; 20:18, 21).
But now through Christ, our Saviour, Mediator, Justifier, Lord and Brother, God has come down to us… walked among us… given us His Spirit to indwell us and assist us in the feebleness of our praying. As C.S. Lewis marvels…
An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life… spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Christian, this great privilege is yours! You, conversing with the Almighty, creature with Creator, clay with Potter, within and without, in deep fellowship together! O what miracle of love! John, amazed gasps… “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” (John 3:1)!
Press on…
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