Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 019. Endeavour After New Obedience

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 019. Endeavour After New Obedience



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 019. Endeavour After New Obedience

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V.

ENDEAVOUR AFTER NEW OBEDIENCE.

And as confession is made in sincerity and in truth, the conception of the life which we ought to live grows clearer. As satisfaction with self departs in the prayer for forgiveness, and we rejoice to realize that God is once more occupying the throne of the heart, so the ideal of the life of those who would “ascend into the hill of the Lord,” and “stand in his holy place,” or be hidden “in the covert of his presence,” is ever rising. We may go through a long list of the questions for self-examination provided in many devotional manuals, and few of these, perhaps, may touch us. But then there are the things left undone which we ought to have done, as well as the things done which we ought not to have done. There are failures, neglects, omissions, in regard to God, our neighbour, and ourselves which constitute a “burden that is intolerable”. And there is also the standard which we ought in our consciences to recognize of the life and character and conduct of the children of the Father, as it is portrayed by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount and in many a parable, or by St. Paul in the letter to Ephesus, or by St. John in his First Epistle, developing the sense of the new commandment given at the institution of the Sacrament of unity by his Master, “That ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another,” when He made that unity in love the evidence of discipleship.

I do not think that we are called upon to confess our sins to men, except in certain cases, or when we have individually wronged them; but we are called upon to acknowledge them before God “O Lord, against thee, thee only, have I sinned”. Nor should we tease ourselves about the past, which cannot be undone. But we should set before ourselves, and fix indelibly in our minds, that these things were wrong, offences against the laws of God, and some of them perhaps disgraceful in the opinion of men. One use of prayer is to maintain in us a higher standard, and prevent our principles insensibly sinking to our practice, or to the practice of the world around us. When a man listens to the voice of the tempter within him, he is inclined to do as others do, not to resist when the temptation seems great. But when he looks into the law of God and hears the words of Christ, his natural sense of right and wrong is restored to him, and he becomes elevated, purified, sanctified. [Note: Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, 259.]

In the secret of His presence we can lay bare to Him, without fear, the inmost secrets of the soul. This is what we cannot do even to the dearest friend on earth. It is what we sometimes dare not do. Our lips are sealed for very shame. But freely and unrestrainedly we can confide our most secret shames and sadnesses to the ear of our listening Lord. It is this that makes the prayer-chamber a place of such infinite relief to an overburdened spirit. [Note: G. H. Knight, In the Secret of His Presence, 67.]