does them he will gain, not life eternal,
but hell; and afterwards as he grows
up and becomes old he must shun
them as damned, and must turn away
from them in thought and intention.
But in order to so refrain from them
and shun and turn away from them,
he must pray to the Lord for help.”
(My emphasis, as in the following
citations.)
Be assured, peace
will truly come when
what is wrong within
us has been removed.
Such is the absolute,
vital necessity and
power of prayer!
Jesus, our Lord, Himself prayed,
we know, not only in the garden of
Gethsemane, when “He knelt down
saying, ‘Father, if it is Your will, take
this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done,’” but
certainly also already at His baptism in the Jordan. Prayer gave Him strength
to go on with His inward and outward struggles against the forces of evil
within Him and around Him.
Indeed, it is actually prayer that makes our own resistance to evil at all
possible. For, as it is put in Apocalypse Explained 938:
All the evils into which man is born derive their roots from the love of ruling over
others and from the love of possessing the goods of others, and all the delights of
man’s own life flow forth from these two loves, and all evils are from them, so the
loves and delights of these evils belong to man’s own life. And since evils belong
to the life of man, it follows that man from himself can by no means refrain from
them, for this would be from his own life to refrain from his own life. The ability
to refrain from them of the Lord is therefore provided, and that he may have this
ability the freedom to think that which he wills and to pray to the Lord for help is
granted him.
And in Apocalypse Explained 1164:
With those about to be reformed evils are removed by temptations, which are not
punishments but combats. Such persons are not compelled to resist evils, but they
compel themselves and pray to the Lord, and thus are delivered from the evils
which they have resisted. Such afterwards refrain from evils, not from any fear of
punishment but from an aversion to evil; and at length this aversion to evil is their
resistance.
The Knock of Prayer Opens the Door to Repentance
What this comes down to is that without prayer, the door to repenting and
becoming a genuinely spiritual person is not open. This is clear from the
question asked in True Christianity, 530: “How are we to repent?” The answer
is:
We are to do so actively. That is, we are to examine ourselves, recognize and admit
465