03.35. If Ye Call On Him As Father

If Ye Call On Him As Father

It is no part of our purpose to discuss the problems of prayer. We are seeking to learn how to pray, and barren speculations have nothing to teach us. No part of the man must be shut out when the man is shut in. Reason is as truly of God as emotion, and neither divorced from the other leaves the soul maimed and incapacitated. Vision comes to love apart from reason, but reason conserves the vision and translates it into life. Our spiritual life stands in knowledge of God, but it is not a knowledge that is acquired or achieved by the energy of flesh and blood. Love is the bond of fellowship in prayer. Attempts to rationalize love dampen its fires, but where reason is dethroned, emotion becomes a conflagration. The study and the oratory are allies, but the inner chamber is better to be a place apart; then prayer enlightens thinking, and thinking kindles the altar fires of the heart. God as Father is the key to the problem of prayer. God is more than a Creator. He is our Father: Heavenly Father, holy Father, righteous Father; the God of love and still the God of law. "The Sabbath was made for man," (Mark 2:27) and the universe of God was made for the family of God.