Chapter Three
The Golden Key
The depth of your prayer experience is ultimately your choice. How deep will you choose to go?
The Servant Girl is told that she has a journey to take, but she will ultimately choose her own level of experience. A deep, soul-satisfying encounter with God is available to every Believer in Jesus Christ. But many of us choose, foolishly, not to experience it.
Spurgeon says: "Most Christians, as to the river of experience, are only up to the ankles. Some others have waded till the stream is up to the knees. A few find it chest high. And a few—oh, how few!—find it a river to swim in, the bottom of which they cannot touch. My Brethren, there are heights in experimental knowledge of the things of God which the eagle’s eye of acumen and philosophical thought has never seen. And there are secret paths which the lion’s whelp of reason and judgment has not as yet learned to travel. God alone can bear us there, but the chariot in which He takes us up, and the fiery steeds with which that chariot is dragged are prevailing PRAYERS."
A deep prayer life is the key to open those doors, to follow in the footsteps of those we read about in Scripture. What level of experience will each of us choose? Will we just dip our toes in the water? Or maybe wade in ankle deep? Or will we dare to break free from the confines of the shore and swim in the depths, trusting in God alone?
Prayer is a command. Every day you are either obeying it or breaking it.
Recently I received a Christmas gift from two sisters that I count as precious. These teens have gifted me with drawings—self portraits--sketched by their own hands. I have been blessed to see God’s creation through their own eyes, a personal expression of their lives that flowed from within as their pencils touched the paper.
I received a similar gift from my Heavenly Father one day. He gave me a picture. After reading the sermon, “The Golden Key of Prayer” by Charles Spurgeon I sat one afternoon meditating on these truths. As I did, my Lord painted a picture before me of a long hallway extending beyond my sight, and the hallway was lined on both sides with doors. On each door was one verse of Scripture. In my hand was the golden key to unlock each of those doors. A journey full of surprises, blessings, growth and adventure lie behind those doors…and I had the key. The Golden Key of Prayer unlocks the Unsearchable Truths of Scripture. Jeremiah 33:3 says "Call to me, and I will answer you and show you great and unsearchable things that you do not know."
In Psalm 119:169 David prays “May my cry come before you, O LORD; give me understanding according to your word.” He uses the Golden Key to cry out to the Lord, and he, too, longs for the unsearchable truths and understanding found only within God’s Word.
To this day I have been unable to shake this image that God has set before me—the expression of a commandment He has issued. He has used it to call me to a pilgrimage of prayer to explore the depths of a place I had never been before. But as wonderful as this call is, may I never forget that it is a command…and a command that is repeated over and over throughout the Scriptures. He commands it for our good purpose, but it is still a command, and every day we either obey it or break it. Oh why do we persist in breaking it when the consequence of prayer is so blow-you-away amazing? He promises to answer! And not just answer! He will go beyond your expectations and show you great and unsearchable things! Obey His command…take the key….open a few doors…begin the adventure!
The Words are light, but the Illuminator makes them brighter.
In my minds eye I can see my spiritual journey as one that is taking place in total darkness, so black that like the deepest, darkest cave, you can’t see your own hand held in front of your face. It says in Psalm 119 “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” When one holds that lamp it will pierce the darkness, but it’s still only possible to see the next few steps ahead of you. If I want to stay on the path God has chosen for me, I must keep that lamp close by at all times and trust Him to lead me to my final destination one step at a time, because that is all I’ll be able to see at any one time. Now if I have a Companion walking beside me, and shining His illuminating light from within me, I will have another light source that allows me to see a little further out and widens my circle of light. I can see things just a little bit more clearly and in a little bit more detail.
When the Servant Girl approached the doors, with their Holy Words already shining light, she could see clearly, but her Companion was able to illuminate those Words to be seen in even greater detail. We need the Holy Spirit, our Teach of Truth to illuminate God's Word.
Spurgeon says, "My best aid has ever been to resort to the great Author of the sacred Word—even the Holy Spirit Himself. He can, by blessing the means which we are using, or by directly leading the mind in the right track put an end to all difficulty. He has the clue of every maze, the solution of every riddle. And to whom He wills, He can reveal the secret of the Lord. Dear young Believers, you who wish to understand the Scriptures, seek this light from above for this is the true light. Other lights may mislead but this is clear and sure. To have the Spirit of God lighting up the inner chambers of truth is a great gift. Truth of the deeper sort is comparable to a cavern into which we cannot find our way except by a guide and a light. When the Spirit of Truth is come He pours daylight into the darkness and leads us into all Truth of God. He does not merely show the Truth but He leads us into it so that we stand within it and rejoice in the hidden treasure which it contains. Then we know Him as our sacred Illuminator."
Years ago I recall listening to a teacher who asked us to raise our hands if we used a yellow marker to highlight passages of our Bible. He said that if we looked carefully at most Bibles we would see that we had highlighted the promises of God and words of encouragement. He said that he suspected that most of us were not busy highlighting the commands of God. He also challenged us saying that if we wanted to know the full Gospel of God, we needed to go back and read all the passages that we had not highlighted with our yellow pen.
That’s the day I stopped marking in my Bible for I was afraid I was emphasizing some passages at the expense of others and didn’t want to impede my ability to see the full counsel of God. Over the years God has marked up my Bible in His own way. I sometimes call it the “Holy Spirit Highlighter,” for there have been times that I have been reading and it was almost as if the words of a passage were glowing bright just for me at just that time and place in my life.
Like the Servant Girl in the passageway, I needed the Holy Spirit to illuminate the portion of the Word that He had chosen for me for that time and place.
Holy Words have the power to draw us in.
Spurgeon describes how the Word of God draws us in: "As a bewildered wanderer in a forest hails the light in a cottage window, hoping to find a guide there to set him on his homeward path, so do we hail the light of Holy Writ which shines in a dark place. As the mariner prizes his chart and compass, so do we welcome the Law of the Lord. Tossed on the changing sea of life, our eyes are gladdened by the clear ray of this pole-star of Heaven, the fixed Light of God!"
The Servant Girl, too, was drawn to the light of the Words…almost as if that guiding star was shining brightly on the other side of the door and the Words allowed some of that light to pierce through the darkness of the hallway. But to open the door, and get to the other side! That is where the Golden Key of Prayer is required.