| The Building of Character |
Chapter 14 |
Page 4 |
It is well, also, that we think carefully of the things we ask for our friends. There is the same danger that exists in prayers for ourselves — that we press only our will for them, and request for them only things of an earthly kind. There is a good model for all intercession in the way Epaphras prayed for his friends in Colosse: “Always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” It is not merely health and prosperity and success in life that we are to ask for those we love, but that God’s will may be done in them, and that they may fulfil his plan and purpose for them.
The mother’s prayer for her children should not be, first, that they may win worldly honor, but that they may be complete in all God’s will, may be what God made them to be. The best place they can reach in this world is that for which God designed them when he gave them their being.
Ofttimes we are led to pray for our friends when they are in some trouble. For example, one we love is sick. We are touched with sympathy, and go to God with our heart’s burden. What shall our prayer be? That our friend may recover? Yes, that is love’s right and natural prayer, and we may ask this very earnestly. Jesus prayed three times that his own cup of sorrow might pass. But that must not be all of our prayer. It would be very sad if our friend were to get well, and were not to take some blessing out of his sick-room with him when he leaves it. Therefore we are to pray that he may be enriched in spiritual experience; that he may be made a better man through his illness; that he may be brought into close relation with Christ; that his life may be purified; that he may be made more thoughtful, gentle, unselfish, unworldly, more like Christ; in a word, that he may be made perfect and complete in all the will of God.
Page 4