By J.R. Miller
The deep sea hides great treasures. It is full of wonderful things. It contains a world of beauty. Yet he who only walks along the shore and looks at the shining sands, or picks up here and there a beautiful shell, or watches the waves break on the cold, grey rocks, or he who sails merely along the coast, not venturing out upon the deep waters--knows but little of the wonderful secrets of the sea, which fill its unsunned chambers.
The BIBLE is a great ocean. On one shore it breaks on the earth, rolling close to our feet; on the other it dashes up its silver spray on the golden street of heaven. It hides in its depth, the most glorious secrets. The bottom of the sea must hold vast treasures. Ships have gone down with their freightage of gold and silver and precious stones. But in the depths of the Holy Scriptures, are treasures infinitely richer than any which the sea contains. All the wealth of redemption is hidden there. There are promises there, and title-deeds to most glorious inheritances, and crowns brighter than any that ever rested on the brow of earthly king, and gem and jewels more brilliant than any that were ever worn in this world. In the depths of Holy Scripture, lie all the riches of God's love and all the treasures of divine knowledge.
But we can never find the wonderful things of the Bible by merely searching along its shores. Newton, after all his discoveries in science, spoke of himself as but a little child playing along the edge of an ocean, finding here and there a brilliant shell, while the ocean itself, with all its great depths, lay before him unexplored. This is still more true of the most diligent researches of the Bible. It is an inexhaustible book. Yet there are those who toil away and draw their nets through it, and find nothing. It is because they search only along the shore. Does the bible yield but little blessing or comfort to us? Do we fail to find in it, the precious things of which we hear others speak? Is it because we have not yet sounded its depths? Its best things come not to mere surface readers; they must be sought for with diligence, with eagerness, with love, with strong faith, with heart-hunger. "Put out into the depths, and let down your net," is Christ's word today to us as it was to his disciples.
The same is true of PRAYER. It has its great ocean depths. No one has begun to realize the possibilities of prayer. Well says the English poet: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Scientific men are busy measuring the forces of nature. They tell us of the energies of light, of heat, of gravitation, of electricity, and they think they have catalogued all the forces that are at work in this world. But last night a million women were on their knees praying to God for husbands and sons and fathers and brothers, and through the darkness and the silence their pleadings went up to God, and a new power was felt upon a million lives all over the world.
Today, in hundreds of thousands of sanctuaries, devout believers meet and mingle their hearts' breathings in prayers for the outpouring of God's Spirit, and all these importunities are heard in heaven and will bring down upon men's hearts and lives, a spiritual energy that shall be felt in penitences and repentings and new consecrations and obediences, in new holiness and love.
There is something overwhelming in the thought of the things which are wrought by prayer in this world. Think of all the secret prayers which rise from heart-closets, of all the supplications which go up from family altars, of all the pleadings which ascend from worshiping assemblies; and then remember that no true prayer of faith remains unanswered. Truly "more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of!"
Yet the great mass of Christian people are only sailing along the shore of the boundless sea of prayer. Take one or two of the promises: "Whatever you shall ask in my name--that will I do." Did Christ mean that? Who will say he did not? "Whatever you shall ask in my name!" Have we sounded that promise to its depths? Have we put it to its full and finest test? Have you brought all your desires to Christ and poured them all out before him? Have we done anything more than walk along the edge of that promise, and picked up a few of the treasures which lie in the shallows?
"Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." What a marvelous ocean of prayer, does this promise unveil to our eyes! Able to do all that we can ask. What can we ask? How much prayer can we put in words? When friends plead for friends; when mothers cry to God for their sick or dying children, or for their children imperiled, unsaved; when pastors supplicate for lost souls perishing in their sins; or when, under sense of need, beseech God for themselves, what desires can they express in words? Then what prayers can we think, which are too great to put into language! We never pray long for anything in deep earnestness, until we find our desires too big for words. We try to tell God of our sorrow for sin, of our weakness and sinfulness; of our desires to be better, to love Christ more; of our hunger after righteousness, after holiness. But with what faltering tongues do we speak! We can put only the merest fraction of our praying into speech. But what prayers can we think, as we bow before God and breathe out our soul's longings and sighings and hungers and aspirations! "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." What a measure of the possibility of prayer does this word suggest!
Then have we exhausted the blessing of prayers? Have we sounded its utmost depths? Have we drawn up its richest and best treasures? Do not many of us at times come back from our hours of devotion feeling that nothing has been accomplished? We ask and receive but small blessings; we seek and find but little gifts; we knock, and the door does not seem to open. We hunger and get but little bread for our souls. We plead for comfort in our sorrow, and receive only faint gleams of light and mere hints of what we know to be possible. We beseech God to give up his Spirit, and yet how little of the Spirit comes into our life! Is it not true that we have tried only the shores of prayer? There are depths into which we have not yet cast our nets. "Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch." We have only to obey his bidding to draw up blessings which shall overwhelm us by their richness and abundance.
Shall we not learn to take God at his word in whatever promises he gives us for prayer? If only we have strong faith, there is no limit to the possibilities of answers to our supplications. Then every pleading will bring down a heavenly benefaction. Mothers will pray--and their children will be circled around with divine grace. Teachers will pray--and their pupils will come asking how to be Christians. Pastors will pray--and souls will be saved by scores and hundreds, flocking like doves to their windows. Congregations will pray--and the Spirit will come again as on the day of Pentecost, with mighty, resistless power. Mourners will pray--and the sweet comfort of God will come down into their hearts in heavenly blessedness. Christians will pray--and will be filled with all the fullness of God.
God wants to give us infinite blessing. The clouds above us are big with mercy. Let us not hinder the divine blessing, by our prayerlessness, or limit it by our coldness and lack of faith in prayer. Let us launch out into the deep sea of prayer and let down our nets, that they may be filled with the best and richest things God has to give.
The same thing is true of Christian experience. There are few who really attain to deep and joyous personal experience. There are few who possess a calm and triumphant assurance. The Word of God promises perfect peace to those whose minds are stayed on Christ; but are there are many Christians who realize this deep, tranquil, unbroken peace? Most believers have occasional seasons of joyful, assurance and holy confidence--in the closet, at the communion table, in the house of prayer. Now and then gleams of heavenly sunshine break in upon them and irradiate their souls for a moment--and then the old doubts and fears fill their sky again and shut out the light. The mass of Christian people know but little of abiding spiritual joy--joy which lives on through sorest trials and which nothing can quench. Too much of the joy of Christians, is like summer flowers which the first autumn frost kills.
Have we ever thought much of the possibilities of Christian experience? Suppose we take a few Scripture words which describe the privileges of the believer in Christ, and see how much or how little we know by experience of these privileges. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, there are sons of God. For you received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; by you received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."
That is one of Paul's pictures of the believer's privilege. Then here is John's inimitable picture of the same privilege: "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God--and such we are!" We know something of what childship means. We have learned it in our own homes. What on earth is more beautiful than childhood in a true, ideal home! How many of us have the child-feeling toward God--perfect love, perfect trust, perfect peace, sweet obedience, filial devotion, and unquestioning acquiescence!
Here is one of Paul's prayers for Christians: "That Christ may dwell in you hearts through faith; to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God." Here again we have hints of what is possible in Christian experience--Christ dwelling in the heart, rooted and grounded in love, strong to know the love of Christ, filled unto all the fullness of God. Have we sounded the depths of such spiritual blessedness as this? Too many of us scarcely ever dare claim to be Christians. We never get beyond "hoping" that we are forgiven and saved. We do not rise to the joy of assurance. We do not exalt and rejoice as God's children, and if children, then heirs. We are not filled with all the fullness of God. We do not know the love of Christ, in the sense that we are conscious ourselves of being loved by Christ with all infinite tenderness.
No doubt many of us have truly blessed experiences in our Christian life. We know something of the love of God, of loving him whom we have not seen, of believing in Christ and clinging to him in the darkness. We know something of communion with God, of fellowship with Christ, of heavenly comfort in sorrow.
This is not questioning the reality of the spiritual life of the humblest believer; it is only saying that most of us have only tasted the joy of being Christians. There are far deeper joys within our reach than we have yet experienced. Indeed many of us seem to get very little out of our religion. It does not seem to help us in our struggles with temptation. It does not keep us from being discontented and fretted. It does not light up our sick-rooms. It does not make us victorious in disappointments and sorrow. It does not soften our hearts and make us gentle toward the erring and toward those who injure us. It does not make us brave and heroic in our loyalty to Christ and to the truth. The beauty of the Lord does not shine always in our faces and glow in our characters and appear in our dispositions and tempers. Is this your Christian experience? Is this ordinary Christian life the best that Christ is willing to help us to live? Surely not. We are like the Galilean fisherman--toiling and taking nothing. Is it any wonder some of us are discouraged and are almost ready at times to give up?
But listen to the Master's voice as it breaks upon our ears: "Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch." The trouble with us, is we have been living in the shallows of God's love. We have been like timid seamen, not venturing out of sight of land, merely dropping our nets along the shore. We have a little faith, a little consciousness of God's love, a little feeling of assurance, a little measure of peace, a little of the child-spirit. But the depths of love, the fullness of joy and peace, the fullness of the blessing of adoption and childship, we have not yet learned. Shall we not strive for richer and more blessed Christian experience? Shall we not push out into the wide sea of God's love? Half consecration knows nothing of the best things of divine grace. We must cut the last chain which binds us back to the shore of this world, and, like Columbus, put out to sea to discover new worlds of blessing.
It is more love we need--more love for Christ. Then more love will give us more faith, and more faith in turn will give us more love. Christian experience begins when we first accept Christ and believe that he loves us, and then commit our lives to him. We begin to trust him, and peace comes as we learn to believe in him and to lay our burdens on him. We know him better and better as we go on trusting him, venturing on him and for him, and following him. So there grows between us and him--a close, tender, intimate fellowship, a friendship more precious than the sweetest of human friendships. The limits of this experience of Christ's love, no one can set. There have been those who have indeed found heaven on earth in their communion with Christ. Let us seek for this today!
What should we do? There is only one thing. We must give ourselves to God as we have never done before. We must open all our soul to the divine Spirit that he may come in and take full possession. We must put away our doubts and fears. We must crucify self--that Christ may be all and in all. We must arouse our spiritual energies until our lives shall be like flames of fire in devotion to God.
