The Resources of a Great Apostle
* For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through
your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” PHIL. 1. 19.
Ir is good to be permitted to turn into a
strong man’s life and to examine his resources. It is a great privilege to be allowed to look into his treasury from which he gets his.current coin to meet the urgent demand of circumstances. And that is our privilege with the Apostle Paul. Here is the great apostle in captivity at Rome. The greatest of all itinerant missionaries is now in bonds. He has roamed at large on enterprising ventures in the cause of the Kingdom of God. He has trudged through Asia Minor and through lands still more remote. He has crossed icy-cold mountains and feverhaunted plains. He has been a torch-bearer for the Kingdom of Light, and genial fires have been kindled in every place in which he has ministered. And now he is in bonds. The missionary is a captive. The torch-bearer is confined. It looks as if his work is over. But no! To this man the imprisonment of the body is not the paralysis of the soul. Even a blind alley may be a mystic thoroughfare. A chain may be the witness of a nobler freedom. A prison may be the birthplace of heavenly springs. That is his faith, and on what does he rely? “I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayers and the nepey of the spirit of Christ.”
And so the Apostle finds a gracious part of his resources in the prayers of others. And so it comes to pass that apparent weaklings can be the companions of mighty warriors. That is how the man with one talent can be the invisible helpmeet of the man with ten. Even a child can bring succour to the Apostle Paul. This is the supreme application of the old fable — the mouse can liberate the lion. We can, by prayer, liberate the powers of great men and women, and make them mighty masters of difficult circumstances. We can, by prayer, impart to them a sovereignty by which they are able to handle circumstances and turn them to be ministers of salvation, to the glory of the Saviour’s name. I can, by prayer, become as a part of another man, and I can go forth with him to his battles and his conquests. I can travel through Mongolia with James Gilmour, and I can help him to be light-hearted in the midst of ci ee ee ee 152 The Resources of a Great Apostle Es ecieteactidatebe Kaiya Mihi ah La OTS Ce 34
appalling tasks. I can be part of a statesman’s personality when he is fighting some great iniquity, or championing the children of oppression. I can be a great companion of some mighty preacher when he stands in the pulpit, and I can multiply his resources when he proclaims the Word of Life. Yes, I can, by prayer, league myself with another, and I can be a mighty helpmeet in giving him conquest over circumstances so as to make them the ministers of salvation. In this way Onesimus can be a part of Paul, Aquila can be a part of Apollos, and any child can be a part of any great campaigner in the warfare of the Kingdom of God.
Prayer is the appointed means by which rivers of energy are unsealed and directed to some crying needs. And therefore vital prayer is not a word, it is an act. It is as much an act as the waterman’s lifting of a sluice-gate which lets the higher waters into the lock where the waters are low. Prayer prepares the ways for the supply of the Spirit of Jesus, and in that holy energy we have the power which overmatches and conquers difficulties which are otherwise invincible.