Life on the Highest Plane
An Upper Room - Responsive Cooperation
I would speak a word to fellow-missionaries. "Has your mission station 'an upper room' where doctors come from the hospital, teachers from the school, evangelists from the field, wives from the home, administrators from the desk to lay before the Lord of Heaven and earth the difficulties, problems and needs of the whole parish committed to you?
"What is the outstanding purpose of your life as a missionary? Is it to heal the sick? To teach school? To keep accounts or to keep a home? To preach the Gospel merely? No one of these things is an end in itself but each one a means to an end. What then is the purpose of your life and mine as missionaries? Jesus Christ tells us, 'Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that ye should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye should ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.' Jesus Christ said very little to His disciples about work but He said much about fruit-bearing. Upon that He put tremendous emphasis, even to making true discipleship depend upon it. In fact He said that only through much fruit-bearing can we glorify the Father. But work and fruit-bearing are by no means synonymous. Some of our work is the energy of the flesh, the working off of a surplus nervous energy or the dissipation of a limited supply of it. But what is fruit-bearing? We shall know very clearly when some day we stand alone before Him with whom we have to do and render our account. Will it be the number of patients treated or pupils taught or meetings led or hours spent in interviews? No, God keeps but one kind of statistics. He only writes names in the book of life. It is not the output of our work but the fruitage of that output that counts with Him. A short time ago a missionary said to me, 'I have never worked so hard as I have this year and have never seen so few results. It is because I have prayed so little!' Oh! if we could but come to believe today that it is the bearing of eternal fruit and not the burning of nervous energy that God wants, we should see that intercession may, no must, have its God-appointed place in our lives.
I would speak a word to parents. Has your home "an upper room"? Will your boy or girl carry out into life as his most priceless possession the prayers offered at the family altar? I know it is out of date. But I know too that juvenile crime is on the increase; that immorality is stalking through the land, robbing thousands upon thousands of boys and girls of the bloom of purity and leaving its black stain upon their souls; that there exists today a junior society for the aggressive promotion of atheism. Everywhere I see and hear that parents have lost both the confidence of and the control over their children. I wonder what "an upper room" with a family altar might do in your home! A few days ago a friend whose life is deeply spiritual said that of all the formative influences in her Christian life the family prayers held daily in her home were the greatest. Four times in the book of Acts it is recorded that a whole household was converted and baptized at one time. Will your family circle be unbroken in Heaven? "Ye have not because ye ask not.}
I would speak a word to each individual Christian. Have you "an upper room" in your life? Oh! I know you have 'an inner room" where you pray for yourself and your family and your interests. But do you have 'an upper room' where you intercede for others? Where you bear upon your heart the need of the whole world and remember in prayer all the Kingdom interests? A few weeks ago I met a radiant Christian. She had leisure from herself. She enjoyed living. She had not much money and had never gone far from her home city yet she was a citizen of the world through prayer. Her face fairly beamed as she said, "No one will ever know how much she can get out of a dollar until she has used it to buy twenty five-cent stamps!" For what use? On her heart were forty-four missionaries in different countries to whom she wrote and for whom she prayed. Her own life was immeasurably enlarged and enriched through intercession for these friends, most of whom she had never seen.
If you work in an office, a store or a factory, or teach in a school, could you not tithe your noon hour and give ten minutes to God for intercession? If you live at home and are able to control better your own time could you not set aside a longer time as a free-will offering for prayer? If you have a kindred spirit among your friends could you not meet together once a week for intercession? "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?"
If you need help in the establishment of your "upper room" you would find it in such books as Andrew Murray's "Helps to Intercession" or Hugh McKay's "Prayer Cycle for World-wide Missionary Work." But perhaps you would gain the greatest help from just following the instructions of the Bible on intercessory prayer and then make out your own list of objects for intercession.
James 5:16, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 22)
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