[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-1214":3},"DECEMBER 14\r\nHis disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray ... and he said\r\nunto them, When ye pray, say ... Thy kingdom come (Luke 11:1, 2).\r\nWhen they said, \"Teach us to pray,\" the Master lifted His eyes Wand swept the far horizon of God. He gathered up the ultimate dream of   the Eternal, and, rounding the sum of everything God intends to do    in the fife of man, He packed it all into these three terse\r\npregnant phrases and said, \"When you pray, pray after this manner.\"    What a contrast between this and much praying we have heard. When\r\n\r\nwe follow the devices of our own hearts, how runs it? \"O Lord bless me, then My family, My church, My city, My country,\" and away on  the far fringe as we close up, there is a prayer for the extension\r\nof His Kingdom throughout the wide parish of the world.\r\nThe Master begins where we leave off. The world first, my personal needs second, is the order of this prayer. Only after my prayer has  crossed every continent and every far-flung island of the sea,\r\nafter it has taken in the last man in the last backward race, after it has covered the entire wish and purpose of God for the world, only then am I taught to ask for a piece of bread for myself.\r\nWhen Jesus gave His all, Himself for us and to us in the holy\r\nextravagance of the Cross, is it too much if He asks us to do the\r\nsame thing? No man or woman amounts to anything in the kingdom, no soul ever touches even the edge of the zone of power, until this\r\nlesson is learned that Christ's business is the supreme concern of\r\nlife and that all personal considerations, however dear or important are tributary thereto. --Dr. Francis.\r\nWhen Robert Moffat, the veteran African missionary and explorer,  was asked once to write in a young lady's album, he penned these fines:\r\nMy album is a savage breast,\r\nWhere tempests brood and shadows rest, Without one ray of light;\r\nTo write the name of Jesus there,\r\nAnd see that savage bow in prayer,\r\nAnd point to world more bright and fair, This is my soul's delight.\r\n\"And His Kingdom shall have no frontier\" (Luke 1:33, the old Moravian version).\r\nThe missionary enterprise is not the Church's afterthought; It Is Christ's forethought.",1783499794119]