Marching Orders, No. VII
“Prayer also shall be made for Him continually.” — Psalm lxxii. 15.
Very reverently, yet rejoicingly, let us accept
these words exactly as they are written. Most likely we have read them with private revision
of our own, and supposed them only to mean, “Prayer also shall be made unto Him continually.” But see! there it is, “For Him’*’!
To many it may be a new thought, to some a very startling one, that we are not only to pray to our King, but for our King. Yet words cannot be plainer, and we lose untold sweetness by gratuitously altering them.
For whom shall prayer be made? There can be no doubt as to this. The glowing, far-reaching statements and promises of this most Messianic psalm could never apply to any mortal monarch. Solomon in all his glory is but the transparent typical veil through which we discern the far excelling glory of Messiah and “the glorious majesty of His kingdom.” And the only word which for a moment seems to dim the clearness is this one, “For Him.” But gaze once more, and let Love arise and come to the aid of Faith, and her quick eye shall pierce the shadow and trace new splendor through it. The more fervently we love any one, the more we want to pray for them. The very thought of the loved one is changed into prayer when it glows under the pressure of spirit.
Intercession is the very safety valve of love. We all know or have known this. There is solace and relief and delight in doing something for the object of our love; but the more our circumstances or ability or relative position hamper us and make us feel that our acts can bear but small proportion to our love (especially when gratitude is a large element in it), the more we feel that prayer is the truer and greater outlet. And when we have to feel that we really can do nothing at all in return for some remarkable kindness and affection, how exceedingly glad we are that we may and can pray!
Should there not be analogy here with the “depth and height” of the love of Christ? We have talked unhesitatingly, sometimes even a little boldly, of “working for Jesus.” And even a glimpse of His “kindness and love” has been enough to set us working “for Him,’* as we call it. Then comes a clearer and brighter view of the “exceeding great love of our Master,” and we are pressed in spirit, and all the work we ever could or can do for Him is seen to be just nothing, and oh how we do want to do more “for Jesus”! Now has not our God provided a beautiful safety valve for the full hearts of His loving children in this most condescending permission and command? Not oly “to Him shall be given of the gold ofSheba,” but “prayer also shall be made for Him “! Yes, we may pour out our hearts in prayer for our King, besides spending our lives in working for Him. And I do not know that there is any purer and intenser joy than such prayer, pressed out by adoring love. There is no room for looking at self and difficulties and troubles and fears, when there is a gush of prayer summed up in “Father, glorify Thy Son!” We know that He hears this, and that we have the petitions that we desire of Him. And we go on, pleading His own great promises to the Son of His love, and rejoicing at the same time in their certainty; praying that Jesus may see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, even in our own poor sinful hearts and lives, and in those for whom or over whom we are watching, and in myriads more; asking that the heathen may be given Him for His inheritance, and that all nations may call Him the Blessed One; and widening out to the grand prayer for Him with which the psalm closes, “And let the whole earth be filled with His glory! Amen, and amen.” For this psalm is not only Messianic, but emphatically missionary, and so the prayer which is so graciously suggested and ordered in it is really the sum and culmination of all missionary intercession. And it is the spirit of it which ennobles and ought quite to transfigure all our missionary intercession. Let us keep the bright thought before us, that this is really, even if indirectly and unconsciously, making prayer “for Him”; and I would humbly say that if we take it up and so frame our petitions that they shall be directly and consciously “for Hi?n,” we shall hardly fail to find freshness of power and gladness in thus entering simply and literally this singularly bright vista of prayer which God has opened for us.