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.
The Coming Glory.
Then comes the glorious future experience, the Kingdom Reign and Glory. Some day our Lord Jesus will rise up from His seat, and step again into the direct action of the affairs of earth. Soon after that day He will begin reigning over the earth as its King. The later pages of the Old Testament are all aglow with the glory of that time. He shall reign from the Mediterranean, at the centre of the earth, out to the farthest sea-coast line, and from the Euphrates east and west to the most distant ends of the earth.[92]
And those who have followed Him during these trying days of His absence, shall reign with Him over all the earth, and be sharers in His glory.[93] He will give both grace and glory.[94] Grace is the beginning of glory, and glory is the fulness of grace. It is all grace, free unmerited favour.
Now I have grouped these experiences in this way to get a clear understanding of them. But we must remember that they did not come in groups in Christ's life, and they won't in ours. The red and yellow threads, the dark and bright, are interwoven throughout the web, to make the beauty of the pattern. The minor chords come up here and there through the others, sometimes overcoming, sometimes yielding to, the joyous notes. The road of life runs valley and hill, valley and hill, up and down.
There were great crises in Christ's life, and there may be, there quite likely will be, crisis points in ours, but in the main the hard places intersperse with the smooth going. The weaver sitting at his loom runs in a dark shuttle-thread, and then a sharp blow of the beam puts it in place; then a bright thread and a sharp blow of the beam, and so, slowly, patiently, threads and blows follow each other till the design has been worked out.
Even so will it be in this "Follow Me" road. A glad, joyous experience may be followed by the one that is bitter and that hurts; and that again, perhaps, by something gladsome and cheery, while the daily round of life plods slowly on, day after day, week in and out, as the calendar works its steady way to the end, and then begins anew.
But all the while there's the presence of the wondrous One, unseen by outer eyes, but unmistakably real. And His presence gives peace. And there's an unfailing, guiding hand, whose grasp steadies you as you push along.