My Year With Spurgeon #18

Before Daybreak With Christ
Charles Spurgeon
1884
"And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him. And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, All men seek for You. And He said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also for therefore came I forth. And He preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils." Mark 1:35-39

Dear Friends, there is always a connection, even if we do not see it, between that great crowd on Sunday, and the pleadings of the saints—a most intimate connection between the flocking converts of the ministry and those secret prayers which follow and precede it. There is such a connection that the two cannot be parted! God will not send great blessings in the way of open conversion if secret prayer is neglected.

There was about the Savior an intense desire to meet with God—to commune with the Father. Herein there is a living likeness between His prayers and ours, but yet His devotions must have been very different from ours because He had no sin to confess as we have. A large part of our communion with God must lie in our confession of sin, in our expression of personal weakness and in our pleading the righteousness of our Divine Redeemer.
But this Blessed One had no sins to admit before the Host High and no weakness to lament, for in Him was neither sin nor tendency to sin. I can conceive that much of His devotion was shown in converse with the Father, when His blessed mind, forever in agreement with the mind of God, spoke to God and God revealed Himself to Him. Intimate communion must have been the main ingredient of the Savior's prayers. Some of the sweetest devotion Christians ever enjoy does not lie in asking anything of the Father, but in the enjoyment of the Father, Himself. Two friends in closest communion do not spend their time in mutual explanations and setting things straight—nor even in asking favors of each other—they proceed to heart-to-heart conversation, known only to those who have enjoyed the like.
We are always in need and, therefore, our daily devotion must consist largely of petitions, but yet we are, by Divine Grace, the children of the Lord, and the child says many things to his Father beside that which takes the form of a request. Have we not, with joyful reverence, told our heavenly Father how we love Him? How we long to be more like He? How we desire to serve Him? That is how we talk—alone with God—our heart is to the heart of God as the echo to the living voice which calls to it. 

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible