With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 213

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

Blessed Lord! In lowly adoration I would again bow before Thee. Thy whole redemption work has now passed into prayer; all that now occupies Thee in maintaining and dispensing what Thou didst purchase with Thy blood is only prayer. Thou ever livest to pray. And because we are and abide in Thee, the direct access to the Father is always open, our life can be one of unceasing prayer, and the answer to our prayer is sure.

Blessed Lord! Thou hast invited Thy people to be Thy fellow-workers in a life of prayer. Thou hast united Thyself with Thy people and makest them as Thy body share with Thee in that ministry of intercession through which alone the world can be filled with the fruit of Thy redemption and the glory of the Father. With more liberty than ever I come to Thee, my Lord, and beseech Thee: Teach me to pray. Thy life is prayer, Thy life is mine. Lord! teach me to pray, in Thee, like Thee.

Sunspots 966

Previous Sunspots posts have included a photo of spots on the sun, from NASA. I haven't been able to do that for this edition.

The previous Sunspots post pointed to a news article about Caitlin Clark, who recently scored more points than any other female college basketball player. Or not. NPR reports on two other great women scorers who have been mostly overlooked, Lynette Woodard and Pearl Moore.

ScienceAlert reports that scientists have produced cells that are part rice and part beef.

A Conversation writer compares Trump's claim of being persecuted with the actual persecution of Alexia Navalny.

Gizmodo reports on the discovery of small moons around Uranus and Neptune.

(Thanks to a relative for this item.) The Texas Christian University women's basketball team was so beset by injuries that they welcomed women who wanted to try out.

USA Today and many other outlets report on the discovery (by scientists -- aboriginal people knew about it) of a new, and large species of anaconda.

Neuroscience News reports that the belief of Pythagoras, that sounds related by simple ratios produced pleasing music, was not exactly correct. 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 212

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.  

To many a believer it was a new epoch in his spiritual life when it was revealed to him how truly and entirely Christ was his life, standing good as surety for his remaining faithful and obedient. It was then first that he really began to life a faith-life. No less blessed will be the discovery that Christ is surety for our prayer-life too, the centre and embodiment of all prayer, to be communicated by Him through the Holy Spirit to His people. ‘He ever liveth to make intercession’ as the Head of the body, as the Leader in that new and living way which He hath opened up, as the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. He provides in everything for the life of His redeemed ones by giving His own life in them: He cares for their life of prayer, by taking them up into His heavenly prayer-life, by giving and maintaining His prayer-life within them. ‘I have prayed for thee,’ not to render thy faith needless, but ‘that thy faith fail not:’ our faith and prayer of faith is rooted in His. It is, ‘if ye abide in me,’ the ever-living Intercessor, and pray with me and in me: ‘ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of what He has taught us more than once before, how all these wonderful prayer-promises have as their aim and their justification, the glory of God in the manifestation of His kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit-bearing branches of the Vine; it is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent Him, to live for perishing men; it is to His faithful servants and intimate friends who take up the work He leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the seed-corn, losing its life to multiply it manifold;—it is to such that the promises are given. Let us each find out what the work is, and who the souls are entrusted to our special prayers; let us make our intercession for them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the promises of power in prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin to realize how our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us makes us share in His own joy of blessing and saving men.

O most wonderful intercession of our Blessed Lord Jesus, to which we not only owe everything, but in which we are taken up as active partners and fellow-workers! Now we understand what it is to pray in the Name of Jesus, and why it has such power. In His Name, in His Spirit, in Himself, in perfect union with Him. O wondrous, ever active, and most efficacious intercession of the man Christ Jesus! When shall we be wholly taken up into it and always pray in it?

Do bacteria mutate randomly, and acquire antibiotic resistance, or do they mutate when exposed to antibiotics?

A post from The Conversation reminds us of the classic experiments conducted by Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück, who showed, in 1943, that bacteria mutate randomly, producing antibiotic-resistant organisms without exposure to the antibiotics. See the Wikipedia article on this Nobel prize winning research.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 965

A Conversation article discusses dietary supplements, with some warnings. 

Another Conversation article tells us about synthetic human embryos.

A Grist report suggests that we are now occasionally experiencing category 6 hurricanes.

A Conversation writer examines the ethnic and national diversity among the Israeli defense forces.

Joel Duff pleads with Christian leaders who routinely post material, opinions, copied from others without checking -- the equivalent of posting material from the tabloids on sale at supermarket checkout areas, he says.

Gizmodo warns us that Mac computers are vulnerable to viruses.

A Conversation writer discusses having relationships with artificial intelligences.

Caitlin Clark has set a record for points scored over a career in women's basketball, according to NPR and multiple other sources. She's not a ball hog -- she recently made her 1000th assist. The all-time record for either sex, set by Pete Maravich over 50 years ago, is likely the next record Clark will break.

Immigration and migration, what the Bible says (repost)

This was a fairly long post on what the Bible says about how to treat immigrants.

Thanks for reading, or re-reading.

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 211

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

The Only-begotten is the only one who has the right to pray: to Him alone it was said, ‘Ask, and it shall be given Thee.’ As in all other things the fulness dwells in Him, so the true prayer-fulness too; He alone has the power of prayer. And just as the growth of the spiritual life consists in the clearer insight that all the treasures are in Him, and that we too are in Him, to receive each moment what we possess in Him, grace for grace, so with the prayer-life too. Our faith in the intercession of Jesus must not only be that He prays in our stead, when we do not or cannot pray, but that, as the Author of our life and our faith, He draws us on to pray in unison with Himself. Our prayer must be a work of faith in this sense too, that as we know that Jesus communicates His whole life in us, He also out of that prayerfulness which is His alone breathes into us our praying.

Sunspots 964

Things I have spotted that may be of interest to others:

A splendid essay on eight principles of sound Christian thinking.

A Conversation writer discusses treason and the 14th amendment to the US Constitution.

Another Conversation writer tells us that there are limits to the length of legal briefs, and some lawyers do their best to get around such limits.

Gizmodo has an article which tells you how to find out what model your phone is.

Heart, Mind, Soul and Strength considers demons, whether real beings or diseases.

Gizmodo reports that a woman has received a brain implant device that controls her OCD and bipolar disease.

Gizmodo also reports on a Russian man who found his wife using artificial intelligence.

LiveScience reports that blue whales, the largest animals on earth, have been mating, occasionally, with another species of whale.

NPR reports that gardeners can now grow purple tomatoes. The purple color comes from snapdragon flowers.

Thanks for reading!

With Christ in the School of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 210

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

And we participate not only in the benefits of this His work, but in the work itself. This because we are His body. Body and members are one: ‘The head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of thee.’ We share with Jesus in all He is and has: ‘The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them.’ We are partakers of His life, His righteousness, His work: we share with Him in His intercession too; it is not a work He does without us.

We do this because we are partakers of His life: ‘Christ is our life;’ ‘No longer I, but Christ liveth in me.’ The life in Him and in us is identical, one and the same. His life in us is an ever-praying life. When it descends and takes possession of us, it does not lose its character; in us too it is the every-praying life—a life that without ceasing asks and receives from God. And this not as if there were two separate currents of prayer rising upwards, one from Him, and one from His people. No, but the substantial life-union is also prayerunion: what He prays passes through us, what we pray passes through Him. He is the angel with the golden censer: ‘UNTO HIM there was given much incense,’ the secret of acceptable prayer, ‘that He should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar.’ We live, we abide in Him, the Interceding One.

Sunspots 963

Things of interest that I have recently spotted:

Grammarphobia tells us about the history of the exclamation point/mark.

Gizmodo reports on a study indicating that cursive writing helps children learn more than keyboard use does.

A Conversation writer tells us about the smells we experience when we cut the grass. It's part of the plant's defense mechanisms.

A Conversation article discusses the question of why insects circle artificial lights at night, and answers that question.

Another Conversation article points out how getting enough good sleep increases athletic performance.

Thanks for reading!

Women singers in the Old Testament choir?

1 Chronicles 25:4 Of Heman; the sons of Heman: Bukkiah, Mattaniah, Uzziel, Shebuel, and Jerimoth, Hananiah, Hanani, Eliathah, Giddalti, and Romamti-Ezer, Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, Mahazioth. 25:5 All these were the sons of Heman the king’s seer in the words of God, to lift up the horn. God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. 25:6a All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of Yahweh, with cymbals, stringed instruments, and harps, for the service of God’s house; (World English Bible, public domain)

This seems to suggest that the three daughters were among the musicians under Heman, their father, in the time of David. The few other versions I checked said the same thing. The question, of course, is who "all these" refers to. I'm not sure.

Thanks for reading. 

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 209

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

He makes us share in His intercession.

To understand this, think first of His intercession: He ever liveth to make intercession. The work of Christ on earth as Priest was but a beginning. It was as Aaron He shed His blood; it is as Melchizedek that He now lives within the veil to continue His work, after the power of the eternal life. As Melchizedek is more glorious than Aaron, so it is in the work of intercession that the atonement has its true power and glory. ‘It is Christ that died: yea more, who is even at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us.’ That intercession is an intense reality, a work that is absolutely necessary, and without which the continued application of redemption cannot take place. In the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus the wondrous reconciliation took place, by which man became partaker of the Divine life and blessedness. But the real personal appropriation of this reconciliation in each of His members here below cannot take place without the unceasing exercise of His Divine power by the head in heaven. In all conversion and sanctification, in every victory over sin and the world, there is a real forth-putting of the power of Him who is mighty to save. And this exercise of His power only takes place through His prayer: He asks of the Father, and receives from the Father. ‘He is able to save to the uttermost, because He ever liveth to make intercession.’ There is not a need of His people but He receives in intercession what the Godhead has to give: His mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the cross. Nothing takes place without His intercession: it engages all His time and powers, is His unceasing occupation at the right hand of the Father.

I've been gone. Sorry.

Approximately a month ago, our computer died. During the replacement process, I discovered that somehow I hadn't backed up the file with my Google password as part of it. After many attempts, Google has allowed me to use a new password, which I am now doing, thank God!

Thanks for reading, if anyone is. I hope to post more soon. However, I'm still getting acquainted with a new (to me) keyboard, a new (to me) operating system, Windows 11, a new HTML file creator, and trying to figure out where OneDrive has found and/or saved (or not) my files.

Sunspots 962

According to Gizmodo, drivers with electric vehicles are wearing out their tires rapidly. This doesn’t affect me – the article says that someone who “drives like a grandmother” won’t have such quick wear.

Gizmodo also tells us that the moon is shrinking. Really.

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 209

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

 

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 208

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

As the disciples, when they saw Jesus pray, asked Him to make them partakers of what He knew of prayer, so we, now we see Him as intercessor on the throne, know that He makes us participate with Himself in the life of prayer.
How clearly this comes out in the last night of His life. In His high-priestly prayer (John xvii.), He shows us how and what He has to pray to the Father, and will pray when once ascended to heaven. And yet He had in His parting address so repeatedly also connected His going to the Father with their new life of prayer. The two would be ultimately connected: His entrance on the work of His eternal intercession would be the commencement and the power of their new prayer-life in His Name. It is the sight of Jesus in His intercession that gives us power to pray in His Name: all right and power of prayer is Christ’s; He makes us share in His intercession.

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 207

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24. 

‘I have prayed for thee;’ Or, Christ the Intercessor.
‘But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.’—Luke xxii. 32.
‘I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you.’—John xvi. 26.
‘He ever liveth to make intercession.’—Heb. vii. 25.
All growth in the spiritual life is connected with the clearer insight into what Jesus is to us. The more I realize that Christ must be all to me and in me, that all in Christ is indeed for me, the more I learn to live the real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ. The Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but the resting in Christ and finding strength in Him as our life, to fight the fight and gain the victory of faith. This is specially true of the life of prayer. As it too comes under the law of faith alone, and is seen in the light of the fulness and completeness there is in Jesus, the believer understands that it need no longer be a matter of strain or anxious care, but an experience of what Christ will do for him and in him—a participation in that life of Christ which, as on earth, so in heaven, ever ascends to the Father as prayer. And he begins to pray, not only trusting in the merits of Jesus, or in the intercession by which our unworthy prayers are made acceptable, but in that near and close union in virtue of which He prays in us and we in Him. 3 The whole of salvation is Christ Himself: He has given HIMSELF to us; He Himself lives in us. Because He prays, we pray too. As the disciples, when they saw Jesus pray, asked Him to make them partakers of what He knew of prayer, so we, now we see Him as intercessor on the throne, know that He makes us participate with Himself in the life of prayer.

Christ didn't come as a baby

 We don't seem to know what day, or even what year, Christ was born, but he was born.

Christ didn't come as a baby. He came as an embryo. Did He retain any of His divine omniscience and omnipotence during that pre-natal period? I don't know, but I suspect that He didn't retain all of it. The Bible teaches that He was tempted like we are. I don't know if fetuses are tempted. However, to really be like us, He must have had an experience much like ours, and I suspect that that meant, after He was born, not being able to speak for a year or so, and, before He was born, giving up some of his powers and awareness. Was this easy for the Creator of the Universe? I wouldn't think so--the cross wasn't.

If He gave anything up, He did it for me, you, and everyone else.

P. S. December 8, 2023: Christ came a long time before coming as an embryo, as creator. See John 1, and, as Paul put it:

Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. (World English Bible, public domain)

Sunspots 961

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*

Christianity: (and embryonic development) Christianity Today discusses a million or so frozen embryos, some of which have been frozen for decades.

Computing: Gizmodo reports that generating AI images takes more energy than you might think.

Education: (And Christmas and Hanukkah) Grammarphobia examines the different spellings of the names of these two celebrations.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view

Thanks for reading.

The problem of good

Christians are often asked to defend God, from attacks using the problem of evil: If God is good, and all-powerful, why are there things such as earthquakes, meteors, and Alzheimer's? Why does God allow human-caused evils, like global climate change, child sexual exploitation, and war? These can be serious questions, and hard ones to answer. This area of thought is often called "the problem of evil." C. S. Lewis answered that problem in his The Problem of Pain.

There are, then, problems for Christians. However, there are corresponding problems, much less frequently discussed, for atheists, namely the problem of good. As N. T. Wright put it in his Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues, if the universe is here because of mindless chance, how is it that there is so much in our surroundings to appreciate and cherish: leaf colors, rainbows, music, innocent laughter, beautiful human constructions, unselfish good deeds, uplifting literature, and much more?

Thanks for reading.