Scripture: "Pray without ceasing."—1 THESS. v. 17.
How different is the standard of the average Christian, with regard to a life in the service of God, from that which Scripture gives us. In the former the chief thought is, personal safety—grace to pardon our sin and to live such a life as may secure our entrance into heaven. How high above this is the Bible standard—a Christian surrendering himself with all his powers, with his time and thought and love wholly yielded to the glorious God who has redeemed him, and Whom he now delights in serving, in Whose fellowship is heaven begun.
To the former the command, "Pray without ceasing," is simply a needless and impossible life of perfection. Who can do it? We can get to heaven without it. To the true believer, on the contrary, it holds out the promise of the highest happiness, of a life crowned by all the blessings that can be brought down on souls around through his intercession. And as he perseveres it becomes increasingly his highest aim upon earth, his highest joy, his highest experience of the wonderful fellowship with the holy God.
"Pray without ceasing," Let us take that word in a large faith, as a promise of what God's Spirit will work in us, of how close and intimate our union to the Lord Jesus can be, and our likeness to Him, in His ever blessed intercession at the right hand of God. Let it become to us one of the chief elements of our heavenly calling, to be consciously the stewards and administrators of God's grace to the world around us. As we think of how Christ said, "I in them, and Thou in Me," let us believe that just as the Father worked in Him, so Christ the interceding High Priest will work and pray in us. As the faith of our high calling nils our hearts, we shall begin literally to feel that there is nothing on earth for one moment to be compared with the privilege of being God's priests, walking without intermission in His holy presence, bringing the burden of the souls around us to the footstool of His throne, and receiving at His hands the power and blessing to dispense to our fellow-men.
This is indeed the fulfilment of the word of old, "Man created in the likeness and the image of God."
