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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 53. The Ascension Life—Power in Possession
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The Ascension Life—Power in Possession
When our Lord Jesus had tarried long enough to make clear to His disciples His actual bodily resurrection, He ascended to the Father's right hand, and was seated there in the place of highest honour and power. So He began living the Ascension Life. That means two things, it is the life of fullest power in actual possession; and that power is exercised through prayer, (Eph_1:20-21; Act_2:33; Joh_14:12-13; Rom_8:34; Heb_7:25; Heb_9:24.) His, and then—ours. Through His intercession with the Father, and through our intercession in Christ's Name, the power comes from the Father through Christ to us, and so through us.
Our Lord Jesus is eager to have us follow Him here also. Following this time means, actually using the power that has been placed at our disposal. It means receiving from His pierced hand all He has actually redeemed for us by His precious blood. There is so much that is ours by right that we do not take and use. Some do not take because they don't live where they can take. And some live where they can take, who yet do not take.
Since the Father thinks of us as risen with Christ and seated with Him in the place of highest power, we should seek to live up there, by His grace. (Col_3:1; Eph_2:6.) The ascension life for us means simply living the actual life of power that has been made possible for us, and using that power through prayer.
It helps to remember here just how much may be included in that word "prayer." One cannot be all the time on his knees, praying with his lips. And it certainly was not meant that we should be. Yet there can be prayer "without ceasing." Prayer is an act, the kneeling, and giving voice to the desires of our hearts. Then the act grows into a habit, as this becomes one of the fixed things of our daily round. And the habit full grown, becomes a life. All the life grows out of that bit of kneeling-time, and all the life is carried to it. The hidden springs of the life are here.
And prayer becomes a mental attitude. You think of everything that comes up, opportunity, difficulty, emergency, crisis, plannings,—you instinctively come to think about each thing from the standpoint of the kneeling-time. And so prayer grows to be an atmosphere. You live your life in His presence to whom you kneel. He is always present. You come to recognize His presence, which means that His presence dominates all your life. He, this One whom you go to meet at the kneeling-time, He is always here with you, listening to the unspoken thoughts. By and by you come instinctively to think your thoughts as in His presence. Your longings, plannings, difficulties are held open before Him. Prayer becomes the atmosphere you breathe.
And so prayer comes to be a person. You are the prayer. The Father looking down comes to recognize you, by your very attitude of heart, as a prayer, a continual, walking, living prayer, as you go quietly about your simple, homely round. And the powers of evil, too, so recognize it. And the Man at the Father's right hand recognizes in you one whom He has redeemed, and who, by His grace, would be and do and have, in actual life, all He has gotten for you.
And through that six-fold continuous prayer, by the man who yields all, and reaches out for all that is now his, the power of God is being continually loosened out among men, and the Father's plan being worked out. So, our Lord's ascension life at the Father's right hand, finds its echo in the ascension life being lived by His follower on the earth.