| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 16 |
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For one thing, when two pray together, each is drawn out of self, to pray for something else besides his own needs. While praying only alone, important as is such prayer in the individual spiritual life, we are apt to narrow our petitions to things we want for ourselves. We bring our own burdens to God. We pray about our own affairs, pleading for prosperity in our own business, imploring help in our own difficulties, deliverance in our own perils, and grace for our own experiences. This is the tendency of secret prayer. Its very blessedness as a privilege is in the fact that we can come into such intimate communion with God, and can bring all our questions, our sorrows, our fears, our weaknesses, our mistakes, our heart hungers, to Him. There is a great blessing in secret prayer.
Praying by one’s self is a duty. We cannot pray in secret while another is present. But praying only alone, with no outlook on the needs of others, tends to make us selfish, to keep our thoughts on ourselves, to narrow our desires, to repress our sympathies, and to stunt our growth in spiritual life. But when two pray together, these unwholesome tendencies are corrected. We are led to forget our own burdens and cares, for the time at least, and think of the needs of others, or the wider interests of Christ’s kingdom. This is always a wholesome experience. It gives enlargement to our life.
Another advantage of prayer together is in the influence life has on life. You have some interest for which you are praying. You may pray very earnestly for this object which is so near your heart. But if another person who has the same interest and is carrying the same burden meets you, and you confer together about the matter, and then kneel side by side to pray, your fervour and earnestness will be intensified. Faith in the one makes the other’s faith stronger. Love in your friend’s heart for an imperiled life quickens the love in your heart. Your brother’s sympathy with you in your sorrow or your trial strengthens you in your pleading with God for comfort or relief. The interest of each grows deeper as both confer together.
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