The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1907, Page 34

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34

The Lutheran Pioneer.

be obtained. “Ye are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation,” says the apostle.
Through the Gospel the Holy Spirit comforts, and
guides, and keeps us in the true faith until the end
of our pilgrimage.

How great and important is the Holy Spirit’s
work! The Church has good reason to celebrate
with joy and thanksgiving the day of Pentecost —
“The festival of the Holy Ghost.” May the cele-
bration of this festival move us to greater diligence
in the use of the Gospel for our own salvation and

to greater zeal in the spreading of the Gospel for
the salvation of others. The Holy Spirit does His
work of grace through the Gospel, and whoever
would be saved must therefore diligently use the
Gospel; and whoever would save others must
therefore diligently apply the Gospel. “I am not
ashamed of the Gospel of Christ,” says St. Paul,
“for it is the power of God unto salvation to every
one that believeth.”

Christ Present With Us.

Christ has ascended into heaven. But that does
not mean that He is no longer present with us.
Visibly He did cease to be with His disciples.
“While they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud
received Him out of their sight.” His visible
presence was thus withdrawn. But He is not there-
fore absent from us. No. Our ascended Lord is
with us every day, though we see Him not. When
He gave the great missionary command to preach
the Gospel to every creature, He added the com-
forting promise: “Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world.” He is present with us
also in our mission work, and His presence gives
comfort and strength and blessing to the laborers in
the mission field.

When David Livingstone, the great African ex-
plorer and missionary, returned to Scotland after
sixteen years’ absence in Africa, he addressed a
large meeting in Glasgow. After speaking of the
hardships of a missionary’s life to which he would
soon return, he asked: “Shall I tell you what sus-
tained me in my exiled life among strangers whose
language I could not understand?” In the mo-
ment’s pause that followed the question deep silence
fell upon the audience and all eyes were directed
upon the missionary, who stood before them gaunt
and wrinkled with toil and hardship and the tor-
ture of twenty-seven fevers, blackened by years of
African suns, and with one arm hanging useless

from a lion’s bite. From his lips came the answer:
“Tt was this that comforted me, ‘Lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world’ ”

———©29____

Of Prayer.
(Concluded.)

How Snourp We Pray?

We have already heard that only Christians can
really and truly pray; and by Christians we mean
those who really are Christians, and not such as
only say they are. The reason this is so is because
only the Christian prays in Jesus’ name; that is,
only the true Christian comes to God trusting in
Jesus’ merits and righteousness and asks gifts of
God for Jesus’ sake. Now, it is only such a prayer
in Jesus’ name that is acceptable to God. The
only way of access to the Father is through His
Son. While our heavenly Father will never turn
a deaf ear to the name of Jesus when it is honestly
pleaded, He will never hear us if we despise that
blessed name. There is no other name by which
we can hopefully approach the throne of mercy.

Let us, therefore, humbly and heartily plead
the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; for
the force of prayer lies in this pleading the name
and work of God’s beloved Son. Let us hide our-
selves .behind the Lord Jesus, for we and our
prayers can only be accepted in the Beloved, through”
the person, the merit, the sacrifice, the ever living
intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in my name, He will give it you,’ John
16, 23. If we have not prayed in the name of
Jesus, we have not prayed at all, and what we sup-
posed were prayers were only “splendid sins.”

God also wants us to pray to Him with firm
confidence. “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask
in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,” Matt. 21, 22.
Whenever we bring our wants before God in prayer,
we shall be firmly convinced that God will hear us,
if it redound to His glory and our own and our
neighbor’s welfare. ‘To pray in doubt is an insult
to God, “for He has commanded us to pray and
has promised to hear us.” ‘To pray in doubt is to
doubt God’s power or His desire to hear us; it is
declaring God to be untruthful and faithless. Let
us, therefore, pray to God firmly believing His
promise that He will hear us; then our prayer
will be a right prayer, a prayer well pleasing to
our Father in heaven.