God's Sabbath

T HE S ABBATH B LESSING

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er of them that diligently seek Him.’ ‘If we ask anything accord ing to His will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.’ Hebrews 11:6, 1 John 5:14, 15. With the perse vering faith of Jacob, with the unyielding persistence of Elijah, we may present our petitions to the Father, claiming all that He has promised. The honour of His throne is staked for the fulfilm ent of His word.” Prophets and Kings , 156.3–157.2.

Our Own Faith

Just as Elijah successfully prayed with great resolve and persistence until Israel received the blessing of flooding rain, so we are to pray with equal faith and tenacity for the bless ings God has promised us in the Sabbath. Our faith needs to grow to be like that of Jacob when he wrestled with the angel (see Genesis 32:23–32) and with determination to gain the promised blessing he cried out: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32:26. A heart-felt prayer of this kind will be most surely answered by the Almighty. He cannot withdraw Himself from such a per son clinging to Him, while pleading his great need. This story contains much comfort for God’s children. We gen erally do not receive from the Sabbath all that God intends. We lack a real sense of our need for such blessings. But if we will come to God with the unwearied persistence of Elijah, cling to the Saviour as he and Jacob did, we can be assured that the Lord will give us a true sense of our need to obtain from the Sab bath what He has put into it. Having been blessed with this con sciousness of our need, we can then press our case with contin ued powerful faith and intense determination, assured that the blessing will be bestowed. The Sabbath will then become to us what the Lord designed it should be. So rich and rewarding will be the experience thus gained, and so clear the views of God’s love and power, that we will see with greater and greater clarity the infinite might of the Omnipotent and the smallness of the human agent. It is the sharpening of this perception which generates a correspondingly increased