Oh that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come even to His seat! I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments.(Job 23:3-4)There is no reality without struggling. If you are not called to wrestle, it is only because the wrestling is being done for you.Dr. ForsythThe reason the experience of Redemption is so easy is because it cost God so much. If my religion slips easily into my life it is because someone else has paid the price for it. If, however, the simple experience is taken as true to the whole of life, we will be misled; only if we take the experience of those who have paid the price for us, do we get to Reality. It is men like Job and the apostle Paul who bring us to the basis of things, not the average Christian among us, who knows no more why the basis of his salvation is Redemption than the average common-sense man knows the basis of ordinary human life. We must get hold of the great souls, the men who have been hard hit and have gone to the basis of things, and whose experiences have been preserved for us by God, that we may know where we stand. One of the reasons for the futility of pseudo-evangelism is that it bases its doctrine on the shallow weak things it has saved. Thank God, Christianity does save the shallow weak things, but they are not the ones to diagnose Christianity, they are the expression of the last reach of Christianity. Paul said—“. . . not many mighty, not many noble, are called”—he did not say “not any mighty, not any noble.” It is Our Lord Himself, and men like Job in the Old Testament and Paul in the New who give us the indication of where we are to look for the foundation of our faith when it is being shaken.Job’s cry, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” is the birth of evangelical prayer on the basis of Redemption. The “finding” cannot be by reasoning or by religious faith; the only way to find God is through prayer. In the religious life of the Pharisee, prayer becomes a rite, a ceremony. In all religion based on sound principles prayer is an exercise, a ceremony, it is not blood or passion, not actual from the whole manhood. In such prayers there is magnificently beautiful diction which one needs to be in a calm, quiet state of mind to appreciate. The most beautiful prayers are prayers that are rites, but they are apt to be mere repetition, and not of the nature of Reality. There is no sting in them, no tremendous grip of a man face to face with things. There is no way out by rites or by religious beliefs, but only, as Jesus Christ indicates, by prayer.It takes a tremendous amount of reiteration on God’s part before we understand what prayer is. We do not pray at all until we are at our wits’ end. “. . . their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble” (Psalm 107:5-6). During this war* many a man has prayed for the first time in his life. When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality. “Oh that I knew where I could get into touch with the Reality that explains things!” There is only one way, and that is the way of prayer (see 1 John 5:14-15).There are undoubtedly things which present a puzzle, e.g., the presentation of the basis of Redemption; how am I going to understand whether the Redemption covers everything, or only partially covers? Never by reasoning, only by prayer; and as sure as God is God you will get the answer and know of a certainty. If we take the line of disputing and spitting fire like Eliphaz did, we will get at nothing. We do not get insight by struggling, but by going to God in prayer. Most of us are wise in our own conceits, we have notions of our own which we want to see through. There is nothing to be valued more highly than to have people praying for us; God links up His power in answer to their prayers.Redemption is easy to experience because it cost God everything, and if I am going to be regenerated it is going to cost me something. I have to give up my right to myself. I have deliberately to accept into myself something that will fight for all it is worth, something that will war against the desires of the flesh, and that will ask me to go into identification with the death of Jesus Christ, and these things produce a struggle in me. The majority of us prefer to get up and ride rather than to “get out and shove.” It is only the people who “get out and shove” who really make things go. The men who are up against things just now and who are determined to get at Reality at all costs, and will not accept a thing on the religious line unless that line states Reality—these are the men who are paying the price for the next generation. The reason we are here in the natural world is because our mothers struggled for our existence, and the more unhindered the birth pangs the stronger and healthier the child. A thing is worth just what it costs.Oswald Chambers Baffled to fight better: Talks on the Book of Job.
