( PDF ) Purpose in Prayer

Download PDF

ads:

PURPOSE IN PRAYER

E.M. Bounds

My Creed leads me to think that prayer is efficacious, and surely a

dayâs asking God to overrule all events for good is not lost. Still

there is a great feeling that when a man is praying heâs doing

nothing, and this feeling makes us give undue importance to work,

sometimes even to the hurrying over or even to the neglect of prayer.

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the

same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord run to

and fro throughout the whole earth still to show Himself strong on

behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh that God would give me

more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He

is waiting for Elijah to call on Him.âJames Gilmour of Mongolia

The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be,

the mightier the forces against evil everywhere. Prayer, in one phase

of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the

air; it destroys the contagion of evil. Prayer is no fitful,

shortlived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the

silence. It is a voice which goes into Godâs ear, and it lives as long

as Godâs ear is open to holy pleas, as long as Godâs heart is alive to

holy things.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that

uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt them may have

ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and Godâs heart is

set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them;

outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.

That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best

praying. They are Godâs heroes, Godâs saints, Godâs servants, Godâs

vicegerents. A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past;

a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past, the man of

many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service

to the incoming generation. The prayers of Godâs saints strengthen the

unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil. Woe to

the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich

incense of prayer; whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving

to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their

unhappy heritage. Fortunate are they whose fathers and mothers have

left them a wealthy patrimony of prayer.

The prayers of Godâs saints are the capital stock in heaven by which

Christ carries on His great work upon earth. The great throes and

mighty convulsions on earth are the results of these prayers. Earth is

changed, revolutionised, angels move on more powerful, more rapid

wing, and Godâs policy is shaped as the prayers are more numerous,

ads:

Livros Grátis

http://www.livrosgratis.com.br

Milhares de livros grátis para download.

more efficient.

It is true that the mightiest successes that come to Godâs cause are

created and carried on by prayer. Godâs day of power; the angelic days

of activity and power are when Godâs Church comes into its mightiest

inheritance of mightiest faith and mightiest prayer. Godâs conquering

days are when the saints have given themselves to mightiest prayer.

When Godâs house on earth is a house of prayer, then Godâs house in

heaven is busy and all potent in its plans and movements, then His

earthly armies are clothed with the triumphs and spoils of victory and

His enemies defeated on every hand.

God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on prayer.

The condition was put in the very existence of Godâs cause in this

world. Ask of Me is the one condition God puts in the very advance and

triumph of His cause.

Men are to prayâto pray for the advance of Godâs cause. Prayer puts

God in full force in the world. To a prayerful man God is present in

realised force; to a prayerful Church God is present in glorious

power, and the Second Psalm is the Divine description of the

establishment of Godâs cause through Jesus Christ. All inferior

dispensations have merged in the enthronement of Jesus Christ. God

declares the enthronement of His Son. The nations are incensed with

bitter hatred against His cause. God is described as laughing at their

enfeebled hate. The Lord will laugh; The Lord will have them in

derision. âYet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.â The

decree has passed immutable and eternal:

I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son;

This day have I begotten Thee.

Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,

And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potterâs vessel.

Ask of Me is the condition a praying people willing and obedient. âAnd

men shall pray for Him continually.â Under this universal and simple

promise men and women of old laid themselves out for God. They prayed

and God answered their prayers, and the cause of God was kept alive in

the world by the flame of their praying.

Prayer became a settled and only condition to move His Sonâs Kingdom.

âAsk, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it

shall be opened.â The strongest one in Christâs kingdom is he who is

the best knocker. The secret of success in Christâs Kingdom is the

ability to pray. The one who can wield the power of prayer is the

ads:

strong one, the holy one in Christâs Kingdom. The most important

lesson we can learn is how to pray.

Prayer is the keynote of the most sanctified life, of the holiest

ministry. He does the most for God who is the highest skilled in

prayer. Jesus Christ exercised His ministry after this order.

That we ought to give ourselves to God with regard to things both

temporal and spiritual, and seek our satisfaction only in the

fulfilling His will, whether He lead us by suffering, or by

consolation, for all would be equal to a Soul truly resigned. Prayer

is nothing else but a sense of Godâs presence.âBrother Lawrence

Be sure you look to your secret duty; keep that up whatever you do.

The soul cannot prosper in the neglect of it. Apostasy generally

begins at the closet door. Be much in secret fellowship with God. It

is secret trading that enriches the Christian.

Pray alone. Let prayer be the key of the morning and the bolt at

night. The best way to fight against sin is to fight it on our

knees.âPhilip Henry

The prayer of faith is the only power in the universe to which the

Great Jehovah yields. Prayer is the sovereign remedy.âRobert Hall

An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the

conflict with and conquest over a single passion or subtle bosom sin

will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the

faculty and form the habit of reflection than a yearâs study in the

schools without them.âColeridge

A man may pray night and day and deceive himself, but no man can be

assured of his sincerity who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing

into act. A union of the will and intellect realising in an

intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is

wishing or lip work, a sham or a mummery.

If God should restore me again to health I have determined to study

nothing but the Bible. Literature is inimical to spirituality if it be

not kept under with a firm hand.âRichard Cecil

Our sanctification does not depend upon changing our works, but in

doing that for Godâs. sake which we commonly do for our own. The time

of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer. Prayer is

nothing else but a sense of the presence of God.âBrother Lawrence

Let me burn out for God. After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer

is the great thing. Oh that I may be a man of prayer.âHenry Martyn

The possibilities and necessity of prayer, its power and results are

manifested in arresting and changing the purposes of God and in

relieving the stroke of His power. Abimelech was smitten by God:

So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife,

and his maid-servants; and they bare children.

For the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of

Abimelech, because of Sarah Abrahamâs wife.

Jobâs miserable, mistaken, comforters had so deported themselves in

their controversy with Job that Godâs wrath was kindled against them.

âMy servant Job shall pray for you,â said God, âfor him will I

accept.â

âAnd the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his

friends.â

Jonah was in dire condition when âthe Lord sent out a great wind into

the sea, and there was a mighty tempest.â When lots were cast, âthe

lot fell upon Jonah.â He was cast overboard into the sea, but âthe

Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah ... Then Jonah

prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fishâs belly ... and the Lord

spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.â

When the disobedient prophet lifted up his voice in prayer, God heard

and sent deliverance.

Pharaoh was a firm believer in the possibilities of prayer, and its

ability to relieve. When staggering under the woeful curses of God, he

pleaded with Moses to intercede for him. âIntreat the Lord for me,â

was his pathetic appeal four times repeated when the plagues were

scourging Egypt. Four times were these urgent appeals made to Moses,

and four times did prayer lift the dread curse from the hard king and

his doomed land.

The blasphemy and idolatry of Israel in making the golden calf and

declaring their devotions to it were a fearful crime. The anger of God

waxed hot, and He declared that He would destroy the offending people.

The Lord was very wroth with Aaron also, and to Moses He said, âLet Me

alone that I may destroy themeâBut Moses prayed, and kept on praying;

day and night he prayed forty days. He makes the record of his prayer

struggle. âI fell down,â he says, âbefore the Lord at the first forty

days and nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water because of

your sins which ye sinned in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord

to provoke Him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot

displeasure wherewith the Lord was hot against you to destroy you. But

the Lord hearkened to me at this time also. And the Lord was very

angry with Aaron to have destroyed him. And I prayed for him also at

the same time.â

âYet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. It was the purpose

of God to destroy that great and wicked city. But Nineveh prayed,

covered with sackcloth; sitting in ashes she cried âmightily to God,â

and âGod repented of the evil that He said He would do unto them; and

He did it not.â

The message of God to Hezekiah was: âSet thine house in order; for

thou shalt die and not live.â Hezekiah turned his face toward the

wall, and prayed unto the Lord, and said: âRemember now, O Lord, I

beseech Thee, how I have walked before Thee in truth, and with a

perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight.â And

Hezekiah wept sore. God said to Isaiah, âGo, say to Hezekiah, I have

heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold, I will add unto thy

days fifteen years.â

These men knew how to pray and how to prevail in prayer. Their faith

in prayer was no passing attitude that changed with the wind or with

their own feelings and circumstances; it was a fact that God heard and

answered, that His ear was ever open to the cry of His children, and

that the power to do what was asked of Him was commensurate with His

willingness. And thus these men, strong in faith and in prayer,

âsubdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped

the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of

the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned

to flight the armies of the aliens.â

Everything then, as now, was possible to the men and women who knew

how to pray. Prayer, indeed, opened a limitless storehouse, and Godâs

hand withheld nothing. Prayer introduced those who practised it into a

world of privilege, and brought the strength and wealth of heaven down

to the aid of finite man. What rich and wonderful power was theirs who

had learned the secret of victorious approach to God! With Moses it

saved a nation; with Ezra it saved a church.

And yet, strange as it seems when we contemplate the wonders of which

Godâs people had been witness, there came a slackness in prayer. The

mighty hold upon God, that had so often struck awe and terror into the

hearts of their enemies, lost its grip. The people, backslidden and

apostate, had gone off from their prayingâif the bulk of them had ever

truly prayed. The Phariseeâs cold and lifeless praying was substituted

for any genuine approach to God, and because of that formal method of

praying the whole worship became a parody of its real purpose. A

glorious dispensation, and gloriously executed, was it by Moses, by

Ezra, by Daniel and Elijah, by Hannah and Samuel; but the circle seems

limited and shortlived; the praying ones were few and far between.

They had no survivors, none to imitate their devotion to God, none to

preserve the roll of the elect.

In vain had the decree established the Divine order, the Divine call.

Ask of Me. From the earnest and fruitful crying to God they turned

their faces to pagan gods, and cried in vain for the answers that

could never come. And so they sank into that godless and pitiful state

that has lost its object in life when the link with the Eternal has

been broken. Their favoured dispensation of prayer was forgotten; they

knew not how to pray.

What a contrast to the achievements that brighten up other pages of

holy writ. The power working through Elijah and Elisha in answer to

prayer reached down even to the very grave. In each case a child was

raised from the dead, and the powers of famine were broken. âThe

supplications of a righteous man avail much.â Elijah was a man of like

passions with us. He prayed fervently that it might not rain, and it

rained not on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed

again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her

fruit. Jonah prayed while imprisoned in the great fish, and he came to

dry land, saved from storm and sea and monsters of the deep by the

mighty energy of his praying.

How wide the gracious provision of the grace of praying as

administered in that marvellous dispensation. They prayed wondrously.

Why could not their praying save the dispensation from decay and

death? Was it not because they lost the fire without which all praying

degenerates into a lifeless form? It takes effort and toil and care to

prepare the incense. Prayer is no laggardâs work. When all the rich,

spiced graces from the body of prayer have by labour and beating been

blended and refined and intermixed, the fire is needed to unloose the

incense and make its fragrance rise to the throne of God. The fire

that consumes creates the spirit and life of the incense. Without fire

prayer has no spirit; it is, like dead spices, for corruption and

worms.

The casual, intermittent prayer is never bathed in this Divine fire.

For the man who thus prays is lacking in the earnestness that lays

hold of God, determined not to let Him go until the blessing comes.

âPray without ceasing,â counselled the great Apostle. That is the

habit that drives prayer right into the mortar that holds the building

stones together. âYou can do more than pray after you have prayed,â

said the godly Dr. A. J. Gordon, âbut you cannot do more than pray

until you have prayed.â The story of every great Christian achievement

is the history of answered prayer.

âThe greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman

in this world is the talent of prayer,â writes Principal Alexander

Whyte. âAnd the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God

when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life

of prayer. And those servants best put their Lordâs money âto the

exchangersâ who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this

world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better

methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and

more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer, till they literally âpray

without ceasing,â and till they continually strike out into new

enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments.â

Martin Luther, when once asked what his plans, for the following day

were, answered: âWork, work, from early until late. In fact, I have so

much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.â

Cromwell, too, believed in being much upon his knees. Looking on one

occasion at the statues of famous men, he turned to a friend and said:

âMake mine kneeling, for thus I came to glory.â

It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer

that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets

access to the ear of God.

III

When thou feelest thyself most indisposed to prayer yield not to it,

but strive and endeavor to pray even when thou thinkest thou canst not

pray.âHildersam

It was among the Parthians the custom that none was to give their

children any meat in the morning before they saw the sweat on their

faces, and you shall find this to be Godâs usual course not to give

His children the taste of His delights till they begin to sweat in

seeking after them.âRichard Baxter

Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and

yet more neglected than prayer. Most people consider the exercise a

fatiguing ceremony, which they are justified in abridging as much as

possible. Even those whose profession or fears lead them to pray, pray

with such languor and wanderings of mind that their prayers, far from

drawing down blessings, only increase their condemnation.âFenelon

More praying and better is the secret of the whole matter. More time

for prayer, more relish and preparation to meet God, to commune with

God through Christâthis has in it the whole of the matter. Our manner

and matter of praying ill become us. The attitude and relationship of

God and the Son are the eternal relationship of Father and Son, of

asking and givingâthe Son always asking, the Father always giving:

Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,

And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potterâs vessel.

Jesus is to be always praying through His people. âAnd men shall pray

for Him continually.â âFor My house shall be called a house of prayer

for My peoples.â We must prepare ourselves to pray; to be like Christ,

to pray like Christ.

Manâs access in prayer to God opens everything, and makes his

impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer. The

wealth and the gloryâall things are Christâs. As the light grows

brighter and prophets take in the nature of the restoration, the

Divine record seems to be enlarged. âThus saith the Lord, the Holy One

of Israel and His Maker, ask Me of things that are to come, concerning

My sons, and concerning the work of My hands command ye Me. I have

made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even My hands, have

stretched out the heavens and all their host have I commanded.â

To man is given to command God with all this authority and power in

the demands of Godâs earthly Kingdom. Heaven, with all it has, is

under tribute to carry out the ultimate, final and glorious purposes

of God. Why then is the time so long in carrying out these wise

benedictions for man? Why then does sin so long reign? Why are the

oath-bound covenant promises so long in coming to their gracious end?

Sin reigns, Satan reigns, sighing marks the lives of many; all tears

are fresh and full.

Why is all this so? We have not prayed to bring the evil to an end; we

have not prayed as we must pray. We have not met the conditions of

prayer.

Ask of Me. Ask of God. We have not rested on prayer. We have not made

prayer the sole condition. There has been violation of the primary

condition of prayer. We have not prayed aright. We have not prayed at

all. God is willing to give, but we are slow to ask. The Son, through

His saints, is ever praying and God the Father is ever answering.

Ask of Me. In the invitation is conveyed the assurance of answer; the

shout of victory is there and may be heard by the listening ear. The

Father holds the authority and power in His hands. How easy is the

condition, and yet how long are we in fulfilling the conditions!

Nations are in bondage; the uttermost parts of the earth are still

unpossessed. The earth groans; the world is still in bondage; Satan

and evil hold sway.

The Father holds Himself in the attitude of Giver, Ask of Me, and that

petition to God the Father empowers all agencies, inspires all

movements. The Gospel is Divinely inspired. Back of all its

inspirations is prayer. Ask of Me lies back of all movements. Standing

as the endowment of the enthroned Christ is the oath-bound covenant of

the Father, âAsk of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thine

inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.â

âAnd men shall pray to Him continually.â

Ever are the prayers of holy men streaming up to God as fragrant as

the richest incense. And God in many ways is speaking to us, declaring

his wealth and our impoverishment. âI am the Maker of all things; the

wealth and glory are Mine. Command ye Me.â

We can do all things by Godâs aid, and can have the whole of His aid

by asking. The Gospel, in its success and power, depends on our

ability to pray. The dispensations of God depend on manâs ability to

pray. We can have all that God has. Command ye Me. This is no figment

of the imagination, no idle dream, no vain fancy. The life of the

Church is the highest life. Its office is to pray. Its prayer life is

the highest life, the most odorous, the most conspicuous.

The Book of Revelation says nothing about prayer as a great duty, a

hallowed service, but much about prayer in its aggregated force and

energies. It is the prayer force ever living and ever praying; it is

all saintsâ prayers going out as a mighty, living energy while the

lips that uttered the words are stilled and sealed in death, while the

living church has an energy of faith to inherit the forces of all the

past praying and make it deathless.

The statement by the Baptist philospher, John Foster, contains the

purest philosophy and the simple truth of God, for God has no force

and demands no conditions but prayer. âMore and better praying will

bring the surest and readiest triumph to Godâs cause; feeble, formal,

listless praying brings decay and death. The Church has its

sheet-anchor in the closet; its magazine stores are there.â

âI am convinced,â Foster continues, âthat every man who amidst his

serious projects is apprized of his dependence upon God as completely

as that dependence is a fact, will be impelled to pray and anxious to

induce his serious friends to pray almost every hour. He will not

without it promise himself any noble success any more than a mariner

would expect to reach a distant coast by having his sails spread in a

stagnation of air.

âI have intimated my fear that it is visionary to expect an unusual

success in the human administration of religion unless there are

unusual omens: now a most emphatical spirit of prayer would be such an

omen; and the individual who should determine to try its last possible

efficacy might probably find himself becoming a much more prevailing

agent in his little sphere. And if the whole, or the greater number of

the disciples of Christianity were with an earnest and unalterable

resolution of each to combine that heaven should not withhold one

single influence which the very utmost effort of conspiring and

persevering supplication would obtain, it would be a sign that a

revolution of the world was at hand.â

Edward Payson, one of Godâs own, says of this statement of Foster,

âVery few missionaries since the apostles, probably have tried the

experiment. He who shall make the first trial will, I believe, effect

wonders. Nothing that I could write, nothing that an angel could

write, would be necessary to him who should make this trial.

âOne of the principal results of the little experience which I have

had as a Christian minister is a conviction that religion consists

very much in giving God that place in our views and feelings which He

actually fills in the universe. We know that in the universe He is all

in all. So far as He is constantly all in all to us, so far as we

comply with the Psalmistâs charge to his soul, âMy soul, wait thou

only upon God;â so far, I apprehend, have we advanced towards

perfection. It is comparatively easy to wait upon God; but to wait

upon Him onlyâto feel, so far as our strength, happiness, and

usefulness are concerned, as if all creatures and second causes were

annihilated, and we were alone in the universe with God, is, I

suspect, a difficult and rare attainment. At least, I am sure it is

one which I am very far from having made. In proportion as we make

this attainment we shall find everything easy; for we shall become,

emphatically, men of prayer; and we may say of prayer as Solomon says

of money, that it answereth all things.â

This same John Foster said, when approaching death: âI never prayed

more earnestly nor probably with such faithful frequency. âPray

without ceasingâ has been the sentence repeating itself in the silent

thought, and I am sure it must be my practice till the last conscious

hour of life. Oh, why not throughout that long, indolent, inanimate

half-century past?â

And yet this is the way in which we all act about prayer. Conscious as

we are of its importance, of its vital importance, we yet let the

hours pass away as a blank and can only lament in death the

irremediable loss.

When we calmly reflect upon the fact that the progress of our Lordâs

Kingdom is dependent upon prayer, it is sad to think that we give so

little time to the holy exercise. Everything depends upon prayer, and

yet we neglect it not only to our own spiritual hurt but also to the

delay and injury of our Lordâs cause upon the earth. The forces of

good and evil are contending for the world. If we would, we could add

to the conquering power of the army of righteousness, and yet our lips

are sealed, our hands hang listlessly by our side, and we jeopardise

the very cause in which we profess to be deeply interested by holding

back from the prayer chamber.

Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is

pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays

through His people. Had there been importunate, universal and

continuous prayer by Godâs people, long ere this the earth had been

possessed for Christ. The delay is not to be accounted for by the

inveterate obstacles, but by the lack of the right asking. We do more

of everything else than of praying. As poor as our giving is, our

contributions of money exceed our offerings of prayer. Perhaps in the

average congregation fifty aid in paying, where one saintly, ardent

soul shuts itself up with God and wrestles for the deliverance of the

heathen world. Official praying on set or state occasions counts for

nothing in this estimate. We emphasise other things more than we do

the necessity of prayer.

We are saying prayers after an orderly way, but we have not the world

in the grasp of our faith. We are not praying after the order that

moves God and brings all Divine influences to help us. The world needs

more true praying to save it from the reign and ruin of Satan.

We do not pray as Elijah prayed. John Foster puts the whole matter to

a practical point. âWhen the Church of God,â he says, âis aroused to

its obligation and duties and right faith to claim what Christ has

promisedââall things whatsoeverââa revolution will take place.â

But not all praying is praying. The driving power, the conquering

force in Godâs cause is God Himself. âCall upon Me and I will answer

thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not,â is

Godâs challenge to prayer. Prayer puts God in full force into Godâs

work. âAsk of Me things to come, concerning My sons, and concerning

the work of My hands command ye MeââGodâs carte blanche to prayer.

Faith is only omnipotent when on its knees, and its outstretched hands

take hold of God, then it draws to the utmost of Godâs capacity; for

only a praying faith can get Godâs âall things whatsoever.â Wonderful

lessons are the Syrophenician woman, the importunate widow, and the

friend at midnight, of what dauntless prayer can do in mastering or

defying conditions, in changing defeat into victory and triumphing in

the regions of despair. Oneness with Christ, the acme of spiritual

attainment, is glorious in all things; most glorious in that we can

then âask what we will and it shall be done unto us.â Prayer in Jesusâ

name puts the crowning crown on God, because it glorifies Him through

the Son and pledges the Son to give to men âwhatsoever and anythingâ

they shall ask.

In the New Testament the marvellous prayer of the Old Testament is put

to the front that it may provoke and stimulate our praying, and it is

preceded with a declaration, the dynamic energy of which we can

scarcely translate. âThe supplication of a righteous man availeth

much. Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed

earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by

the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the

heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.â

Our paucity in results, the cause of all leanness, is solved by the

Apostle JamesââYe have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive

not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your pleasures.â

That is the whole truth in a nutshell.

The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it had

bridled the rage of lions, hushed the anarchy to rest, extinguished

wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of

death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled

frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course,

and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an

all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never

exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the

storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand

blessings.âChrysostom

The prayers of holy men appease Godâs wrath, drive away temptations,

resist and overcome the devil, procure the ministry and service of

angels, rescind the decrees of God. Prayer cures sickness and obtains

pardon; it arrests the sun in its course and stays the wheels of the

chariot of the moon; it rules over all gods and opens and shuts the

storehouses of rain, it unlocks the cabinet of the womb and quenches

the violence of fire; it stops the mouths of lions and reconciles our

suffering and weak faculties with the violence of torment and violence

of persecution; it pleases God and supplies all our need.âJeremy

Taylor

More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.

wherefore,

let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats,

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.âTennyson

Perfect prayer is only another name for love.âFenelon

It was said of the late C. H. Spurgeon, that he glided from laughter

to prayer with the naturalness of one who lived in both elements. With

him the habit of prayer was free and unfettered. His life was not

divided into compartments, the one shut off from the other with a

rigid exclusiveness that barred all intercommunication. He lived in

constant fellowship with his Father in Heaven. He was ever in touch

with God, and thus it was as natural for him to pray as it was for him

to breathe.

âWhat a fine time we have had; let us thank God for it,â he said to a

friend on one occasion, when, out under the blue sky and wrapped in

glorious sunshine, they had enjoyed a holiday with the unfettered

enthusiasm of schoolboys. Prayer sprang as spontaneously to his lips

as did ordinary speech, and never was there the slightest incongruity

in his approach to the Divine throne straight from any scene in which

he might be taking part.

That is the attitude with regard to prayer that ought to mark every

child of God. There are, and there ought to be, stated seasons of

communication with God when, everything else shut out, we come into

His presence to talk to Him and to let Him speak to us; and out of

such seasons springs that beautiful habit of prayer that weaves a

golden bond between earth and heaven. Without such stated seasons the

habit of prayer can never be formed; without them there is no

nourishment for the spiritual life. By means of them the soul is

lifted into a new atmosphereâthe atmosphere of the heavenly city, in

which it is easy to open the heart to God and to speak with Him as

friend speaks with friend.

Thus, in every circumstance of life, prayer is the most natural

out-pouring of the soul, the unhindered turning to God for communion

and direction. Whether in sorrow or in joy, in defeat or in victory,

in health or in weakness, in calamity or in success, the heart leaps

to meet with God just as a child runs to his motherâs arms, ever sure

that with her is the sympathy that meets every need.

Dr. Adam Clarke, in his autobiography, records that when Mr. Wesley

was returning to England by ship, considerable delay was caused by

contrary winds. Wesley was reading, when he became aware of some

confusion on board, and asking what was the matter, he was informed

that the wind was contrary. âThen,â was his reply, âlet us go to

prayer.â

After Dr. Clarke had prayed, Wesley broke out into fervent

supplication which seemed to be more the offering of faith than of

mere desire. âAlmighty and everlasting God,â he prayed. âThou hast

sway everywhere, and all things serve the purpose of Thy will, Thou

holdest the winds in Thy fists and sittest upon the water floods, and

reignest a King for ever. Command these winds and these waves that

they obey Thee, and take us speedily and safely to the haven whither

we would go.â

The power of this petition was felt by all. Wesley rose from his

knees, made no remark, but took up his book and continued reading. Dr.

Clarke went on deck, and to his surprise found the vessel under sail,

standing on her right course. Nor did she change till she was safely

at anchor. On the sudden and favourable change of wind, Wesley made no

remark; so fully did he expect to be heard that he took it for granted

that he was heard.

That was prayer with a purposeâthe definite and direct utterance of

one who knew that he had the ear of God, and that God had the

willingness as well as the power to grant the petition which he asked

of Him.

Major D. W. Whittle, in an introduction to the wonders of prayer, says

of George Muller, of Bristol: âI met Mr. Muller in the express, the

morning of our sailing from Quebec to Liverpool. About half-an-hour

before the tender was to take the passengers to the ship, he asked of

the agent if a deck chair had arrived for him from New York. He was

answered, âNo,â and told that it could not possibly come in time for

the steamer. I had with me a chair I had just purchased, and told Mr.

Muller of the place nearby, and suggested, as but a few moments

remained, that he had better buy one at once. His reply was, âNo, my

brother. Our Heavenly Father will send the chair from New York. It is

one used by Mrs. Muller. I wrote ten days ago to a brother, who

promised to see it forwarded here last week. He has not been prompt,

as I would have desired, but I am sure our Heavenly Father will send

the chair. Mrs. Muller is very sick on the sea, and has particularly

desired to have this same chair, and not finding it here yesterday, we

have made special prayer that our Heavenly Father would be pleased to

provide it for us, and we will trust Him to do so.â As this dear man

of God went peacefully on board, running the risk of Mrs. Muller

making the trip without a chair, when, for a couple of dollars, she

could have been provided for, I confess I feared Mr. Muller was

carrying his faith principles too far and not acting wisely. I was

kept at the express office ten minutes after Mr. Muller left. Just as

I started to hurry to the wharf, a team drove up the street, and on

top of a load just arrived front New York was Mr. Mullerâs chair. It

was sent at once to the tender and placed in my hands to take to Mr.

Muller, just as the boat was leaving the dock (the Lord having a

lesson for me). Mr. Muller took it with the happy, pleased expression

of a child who has just received a kindness deeply appreciated, and

reverently removing his hat and folding his hands over it, he thanked

the Heavenly Father for sending the chair.â

One of Melancthonâs correspondents writes of Lutherâs praying: âI

cannot enough admire the extraordinary, cheerfulness, constancy, faith

and hope of the man in these trying and vexatious times. He constantly

feeds these gracious affections by a very diligent study of the Word

of God. Then not a day passes in which he does not employ in prayer at

least three of his very best hours. Once I happened to hear him at

prayer. Gracious God! What spirit and what faith is there in his

expressions! He petitions God with as much reverence as if he was in

the divine presence, and yet with as firm a hope and confidence as he

would address a father or a friend. âI know,â said he, âThou art our

Father and our God; and therefore I am sure Thou wilt bring to naught

the persecutors of Thy children. For shouldest Thou fail to do this

Thine own cause, being connected with ours, would be endangered. It is

entirely thine own concern. We, by Thy providence, have been compelled

to take a part. Thou therefore wilt be our defence.â Whilst I was

listening to Luther praying in this manner, at a distance, my soul

seemed on fire within me, to hear the man address God so like a

friend, yet with so much gravity and reverence; and also to hear him,

in the course of his prayer, insisting on the promises contained in

the Psalms, as if he were sure his petitions would be granted.â

Of William Bramwell, a noted Methodist preacher in England, wonderful

for his zeal and prayer, the following is related by a sergeant major.

âIn July, 1811, our regiment was ordered for Spain, then the seat of a

protracted and sanguinary war. My mind was painfully exercised with

the thoughts of leaving my dear wife and four helpless children in a

strange country, unprotected and unprovided for. Mr. Bramwell felt a

lively interest in our situation, and his sympathising spirit seemed

to drink in all the agonised feelings of my tender wife. He

supplicated the throne of grace day and night in our behalf. My wife

and I spent the evening previous to our march at a friendâs house, in

company with Mr. Bramwell, who sat in a very pensive mood, and

appeared to be in a spiritual struggle all the time. After supper, he

suddenly pulled his hand out of his bosom, laid it on my knee, and

said: âBrother Riley, mark what I am about to say! You are not to go

to Spain. Remember what I tell you, you are not; for I have been

wrestling with God on your behalf, and when my Heavenly Father

condescends in mercy to bless me with power to lay hold on Himself, I

do not easily let Him go; no, not until I am favoured with an answer.

Therefore you may depend upon it that the next time I hear from you,

you will be settled in quarters.â This came to pass exactly as he

said. The next day the order for going to Spain was countermanded.â

These men prayed with a purpose. To them God was not far away, in some

inaccessible region, but near at hand, ever ready to listen to the

call of His children. There was no barrier between. They were on terms

of perfect intimacy, if one may use such a phrase in relation to man

and his Maker. No cloud obscured the face of the Father from His

trusting child, who could look up into the Divine countenance and pour

out the longings of his heart. And that is the type of prayer which

God never fails to hear. He knows that it comes from a heart at one

with His own; from one who is entirely yielded to the heavenly plan,

and so He bends His ear and gives to the pleading child the assurance

that his petition has been heard and answered.

Have we not all had some such experience when with set and undeviating

purpose we have approached the face of our Father? In an agony of soul

we have sought refuge from the oppression of the world in the anteroom

of heaven; the waves of despair seemed to threaten destruction, and as

no way of escape was visible anywhere, we fell back, like the

disciples of old, upon the power of our Lord, crying to Him to save us

lest we perish. And then in the twinkling of an eye, the thing was

done. The billows sank into a calm; the howling wind died down at the

Divine command; the agony of the soul passed into a restful peace as

over the whole being there crept the consciousness of the Divine

presence, bringing with it the assurance of answered prayer and sweet

deliverance.

âI tell the Lord my troubles and difficulties, and wait for Him to

give me the answers to them,â says one man of God. âAnd it is

wonderful how a matter that looked very dark will in prayer become

clear as crystal by the help of Godâs Spirit. I think Christians fail

so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long

enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump

up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always

reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbourâs door-bell, and

then running away as fast as he can go.â

When we acquire the habit of prayer we enter into a new atmosphere.

âDo you expect to go to heaven?â asked someone of a devout Scotsman.

âWhy, man, I live there,â was the quaint and unexpected reply. It was

a pithy statement of a great truth, for all the way to heaven is

heaven begun to the Christian who walks near enough to God to hear the

secrets He has to impart.

This attitude is beautifully illustrated in a story of Horace

Bushnell, told by Dr. Parkes Cadman. Bushnell was found to be

suffering from an incurable disease. One evening the Rev. Joseph

Twichell visited him, and, as they sat together under the starry sky,

Bushnell said: âOne of us ought to pray.â Twichell asked Bushnell to

do so, and Bushnell began his prayer; burying his face in the earth,

he poured out his heart until, said Twichell, in recalling the

incident, âI was afraid to stretch out my hand in the darkness lest I

should touch God.â

To have God thus near is to enter the holy of holiesâto breathe the

fragrance of the heavenly air, to walk in Edenâs delightful gardens.

Nothing but prayer can bring God and man into this happy communion.

That was the experience of Samuel Rutherford, just as it is the

experience of every one who passes through the same gateway. When this

saint of God was confined in jail at one time for conscience sake, he

enjoyed in a rare degree the Divine companionship, recording in his

diary that Jesus entered his cell, and that at His coming âevery stone

flashed like a ruby.â

Many others have borne witness to the same sweet fellowship, when

prayer had become the one habit of life that meant more than anything

else to them. David Livingstone lived in the realm of prayer and knew

its gracious influence. It was his habit every birthday to write a

prayer, and on the next to the last birthday of all, this was his

prayer: âO Divine one, I have not loved Thee earnestly, deeply,

sincerely enough. Grant, I pray Thee, that before this year is ended I

may have finished my task.â It was just on the threshold of the year

that followed that his faithful men, as they looked into the hut of

Ilala, while the rain dripped from the eaves, saw their master on his

knees beside his bed in an attitude of prayer. He had died on his

knees in prayer.

Stonewall Jackson was a man of prayer. Said he: âI have so fixed the

habit in my mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips

without asking Godâs blessing, never seal a letter without putting a

word of prayer under the seal, never take a letter from the post

without a brief sending of my thoughts heavenward, never change my

classes in the lecture-room without aâminuteâs petition for the cadets

who go out and for those who come in.â

James Gilmour, the pioneer missionary to Mongolia, was a man of

prayer. He had a habit in his writing of never using a blotter. He

made a rule when he got to the bottom of any page to wait until the

ink dried and spend the time in prayer.

In this way their whole being was saturated with the Divine, and they

became the reflection of the heavenly fragrance and glory. Walking

with God down the avenues of prayer we acquire something of His

likeness, and unconsciously we become witnesses to others of His

beauty and His grace. Professor James, in his famous work, âVarieties

of Religious Experience,â tells of a man of forty-nine who said: âGod

is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I feel His

presence positively, and the more as I live in closer harmony with His

laws as written in my body and mind. I feel Him in the sunshine or

rain; and all mingled with a delicious restfulness most nearly

describes my feelings. I talk to Him as to a companion in prayer and

praise, and our communion is delightful. He answers me again and

again, often in words so clearly spoken that it seems my outer ear

must have carried the tone, but generally in strong mental

impressions. Usually a text of Scripture, unfolding some new view of

Him and His love for me, and care for my safety ... That He is mine

and I am His never leaves me; it is an abiding joy. Without it life

would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.â

Equally notable is the testimony of Sir Thomas Browne, the beloved

physician who lived at Norwich in 1605, and was the author of a very

remarkable book of wide circulation, âReligio Medici.â In spite of the

fact that England was passing through a period of national convulsion

and political excitement, he found comfort and strength in prayer. âI

have resolved,â he wrote in a journal found among his private papers

after his death, âto pray more and pray always, to pray in all places

where quietness inviteth, in the house, on the highway and on the

street; and to know no street or passage in this city that may not

witness that I have not forgotten God.â And he adds: âI purpose to

take occasion of praying upon the sight of any church which I may

pass, that God may be worshipped there in spirit, and that souls may

be saved there; to pray daily for my sick patients and for the

patients of other physicians; at my entrance into any home to say,

âMay the peace of God abide hereâ; after hearing a sermon, to pray for

a blessing on Godâs truth, and upon the messenger; upon the sight of a

beautiful person to bless God for His creatures, to pray for the

beauty of such an oneâs soul, that God may enrich her with inward

graces, and that the outward and inward may correspond; upon the sight

of a deformed person, to pray God to give them wholeness of soul, and

by and by to give them the beauty of the resurrection.â

What an illustration of the praying spirit! Such an attitude

represents prayer without ceasing, reveals the habit of prayer in its

unceasing supplication, in its uninterrupted communion, in its

constant intercession. What an illustration, too, of purpose in

prayer! Of how many of us can it be said that as we pass people in the

street we pray for them, or that as we enter a home or a church we

remember the inmates or the congregation in prayer to God?

The explanation of our thoughtlessness or forgetfulness lies in the

fact that prayer with so many of us is simply a form of selfishness;

it means asking for something for ourselves t that and nothing more.

And from such an attitude we need to pray to be delivered.

The prayer of faith is the only power in the universe to which the

great Jehovah yields. Prayer is the sovereign remedy.âRobert Hall

The Church, intent on the acquisition of temporal power, had well nigh

abandoned its spiritual duties, and its empire, which rested on

spiritual foundations, was crumbling with their decay, and threatened

to pass away like an unsubstantial vision.âLeaâs Inquisition

Are we praying as Christ did? Do we abide in Him? Are our pleas and

spirit the overflow of His spirit and pleas? Does love rule the

spiritâperfect love?

These questions must be considered as proper and apposite at a time

like the present. We do fear that we are doing more of other things

than prayer. This is not a praying age; it is an age of great

activity, of great movements, but one in which the tendency is very

strong to stress the seen and the material and to neglect and discount

the unseen and the spiritual. Prayer is the greatest of all forces,

because it honors God and brings Him into active aid.

There can be no substitute, no rival for prayer; it stands alone as

the great spiritual force, and this force must be imminent and acting.

It cannot be dispensed with during one generation, nor held in

abeyance for the advance of any great movementâit must be continuous

and particular, always, everywhere, and in everything. We cannot run

our spiritual operations on the prayers of the past generation. Many

persons believe in the efficacy of prayer, but not many pray. Prayer

is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the

sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside

the range of human possibilitiesâthey are limited only by the

omnipotence of God.

Few Christians have anything but a vague idea of the power of prayer;

fewer still have any experience of that power. The Church seems almost

wholly unaware of the power God puts into her hand; this spiritual

carte blanche on the infinite resources of Godâs wisdom and power is

rarely, if ever, usedânever used to the full measure of honouring God.

It is astounding how poor the use, how little the benefits. Prayer is

our most formidable weapon, but the one in which we are the least

skilled, the most averse to its use. We do everything else for the

heathen save the thing God wants us to do; the only thing which does

any goodâmakes all else we do efficient.

To graduate in the school of prayer is to master the whole course of a

religious life. The first and last stages of holy living are crowned

with praying. It is a life trade. The hindrances of prayer are the

hindrances in a holy life. The conditions of praying are the

conditions of righteousness, holiness and salvation. A cobbler in the

trade of praying is a bungler in the trade of salvation.

Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our

time at it. Painstaking care, much thought, practice and labour are

required to be a skillful tradesman in praying. Practice in this, as

well as in all other trades, makes perfect. Toiling hands and heartsâ

only make proficients in this heavenly trade.

In spite of the benefits and blessings which flow from communion with

God, the sad confession must be made that we are not praying much. A

very small number comparatively lead in prayer at the meetings. Fewer

still pray in their families. Fewer still are in the habit of praying

regularly in their closets. Meetings specially for prayer are as rare

as frost in June. In many churches there is neither the name nor the

semblance of a prayer meeting. In the town and city churches the

prayer meeting in name is not a prayer meeting in fact. A sermon or a

lecture is the main feature. Prayer is the nominal attachment.

Our people are not essentially a praying people. That is evident by

their lives.

Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither

can survive alone. The absence of the one is the absence of the other.

The monk depraved prayer, substituted superstition for praying,

mummeries and routine for a holy life. We are in danger of

substituting churchly work and a ceaseless round of showy activities

for prayer and holy living. A holy life does not live in the closet,

but it cannot live without the closet. If, by any chance, a prayer

chamber should be established without a holy life, it would be a

chamber without the presence of God in it.

Put the saints everywhere to praying, is the burden of the apostolic

effort and the key note of apostolic success. Jesus Christ had striven

to do this in the days of His personal ministry. He was moved by

infinite compassion at the ripened fields of earth perishing for lack

of labourers, and pausing in His own praying, He tries to awaken the

sleeping sensibilities of His disciples to the duty of prayer, as He

charges them: âPray ye the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth

labourers into His harvest.â And He spake a parable to them to this

end, that men ought always to pray.

Only glimpses of this great importance of prayer could the apostles

get before Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling on Pentecost

elevated prayer to its vital and all-commanding position in the Gospel

of Christ. The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spiritâs

loudest and most exigent call. Sainthoodâs piety is made, refined,

perfected, by prayer. The Gospel moves with slow and timid pace when

the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.

Where are the Christlike leaders who can teach the modern saints how

to pray and put them at it? Do our leaders know we are raising up a

prayerless set of saints? Where are the apostolic leaders who can put

Godâs people to praying? Let them come to the front and do the work,

and it will be the greatest work that can be done. An increase of

educational facilities and a great increase of money force will be the

direst curse to religion if they are not sanctified by more and better

praying than we are doing.

More praying will not come as a matter of Course. The campaign for the

twentieth or thirtieth century will not help our praying, but hinder

if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific effort from a praying

leadership will avail. None but praying leaders can have praying

followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying

pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need somebody who can

set the saints to this business of praying. We are a generation of

non-praying saints. Non-praying saints are a beggarly gang of saints,

who have neither the ardour nor the beauty, nor the power of saints.

Who will restore this branch? The greatest will he be of reformers and

apostles, who can set the Church to praying.

Holy men have, in the past, changed the whole force of affairs,

revolutionised character and country by prayer. And such achievements

are still possible to us. The power is only wanting to be used. Prayer

is but the expression of faith.

Time would fail to tell of the mighty things wrought by prayer, for by

it holy ones have âsubdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained

promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire,

escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed

valiant in fight, turned to fight the armies of the aliens, women

received their dead raised to life

Prayer honours God; it dishonours self. It is manâs plea of weakness,

ignorance, want. A plea which heaven cannot disregard. God delights to

have us pray.

Prayer is not the foe to work, it does not paralyse activity. It works

mightily; prayer itself is the greatest work. It springs activity,

stimulates desire and effort. Prayer is not an opiate but a tonic, it

does not lull to sleep but arouses anew for action. The lazy man does

not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy. Paul calls it a

striving, an agony. With Jacob it was a wrestling; with the

Syrophenician women it was a struggle which called into play all the

higher qualities of the soul, and which demanded great force to meet.

The closet is not an asylum for the indolent and worthless Christian.

It is not a nursery where none but babes belong. It is the battlefield

of the Church; its citadel; the scene of heroic and unearthly

conflicts. The closet is the base of supplies for the Christian and

the Church. Cut off from it there is nothing left but retreat and

disaster. The energy for work, the mastery over self, the deliverance

from fear, all spiritual results and graces, are much advanced by

prayer. The difference between the strength, the experience, the

holiness of Christians is found in the contrast in their praying.

Few, short, feeble prayers, always betoken a low spiritual condition.

Men ought to pray much and apply themselves to it with energy and

perseverance. Eminent Christians have been eminent in prayer. The deep

things of God are learned nowhere else. Great things for God are done

by great prayers. He who prays much, studies much, loves much, works

much, does much for God and humanity. The execution of the Gospel, the

vigour of faith, the maturity and excellence of spiritual graces wait

on prayer.

âNothing is impossible to industry, âsaid one of the seven sages of

Greece. Let us change the word industry for persevering prayer, and

the motto will be more Christian and more worthy of universal

adoption. I am persuaded that we are all more deficient in a spirit of

prayer than in any other grace. God loves importunate prayer so much

that He will not give us much blessing without it. And the reason that

He loves such prayer is that He loves us and knows that it is a

necessary preparation for our receiving the richest blessings which He

is waiting and longing to bestow.

I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at

some timeâno matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape,

probably the last I would have devised, it came.âAdoniram Judson

It is good, I find, to persevere in attempts to pray. If I cannot pray

with perseverance or continue long in my address to the Divine Being,

I have found that the more I do in secret prayer the more I have

delight to do, and have enjoyed more of the spirit of prayer; and

frequently I have found the contrary, when by journeying or otherwise,

I have been deprived of retirement.âDavid Brainerd

Christ puts importunity as a distinguishing characteristic of true

praying. We must not only pray, but we must pray with great urgency,

with intentness and with repetition. We must not only pray, but we

must pray again and again. We must not get tired of praying. We must

be thoroughly in earnest, deeply concerned about the things for which

we ask, for Jesus Christ made it very plain that the secret of prayer

and its success lie in its urgency. We must press our prayers upon

God.

In a parable of exquisite pathos and simplicity, our Lord taught not

simply that men ought to pray, but that men ought to pray with full

heartiness, and press the matter with vigorous energy and brave

hearts.

âAnd He spake a parable unto them to the end that they ought always to

pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city, a judge, which

feared not God, and regarded not man: and there was a widow in that

city; and she came oft unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.

And he would not for a while: but afterwards he said within himself,

Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow

troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest she wear me out by her continual

coming. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge saith. And

shall not God avenge His elect, which cry to Him day and night, and He

is longsuffering over them? I say unto you, that He will avenge them

speedily. Howbeit when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on

the earth?â

This poor womanâs case was a most hopeless one, but importunity brings

hope from the realms of despair and creates success where neither

success nor its conditions existed. There could be no stronger case,

to show how unwearied and dauntless importunity gains its ends where

everything else fails. The preface to this parable says: âHe spake a

parable to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.â

He knew that men would soon get faint-hearted in praying, so to

hearten us He gives this picture of the marvellous power of

importunity.

The widow, weak and helpless, is helplessness personified; bereft of

every hope and influence which could move an unjust judge, she yet

wins her case solely by her tireless and offensive importunity. Could

the necessity of importunity, its power and tremendous importance in

prayer, be pictured in deeper or more impressive colouring? It

surmounts or removes all obstacles, overcomes every resisting force

and gains its ends in the face of invincible hindrances. We can do

nothing without prayer. All things can be done by importunate prayer.

That is the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Another parable spoken by Jesus enforces the same great truth. A man

at midnight goes to his friend for a loan of bread. His pleas are

strong, based on friendship and the embarrassing and exacting demands

of necessity, but these all fail. He gets no bread, but he stays and

presses, and waits and gains. Sheer importunity succeeds where all

other pleas and influences had failed.

The case of the Syrophenician woman is a parable in action. She is

arrested in her approaches to Christ by the information that He will

not see anyone. She is denied His presence, and then in His presence

is treated with seeming indifference, with the chill of silence and

unconcern: she presses and approaches, the pressure and approach are

repulsed by the stern and crushing statement that He is not sent to

her kith or kind, that she is reprobated from His mission and power.

She is humiliated by being called a dog. Yet she accepts all,

overcomes all, wins all by her humble, dauntless, invincible

importunity. The Son of God, pleased, surprised, overpowered by her

unconquerable importunity, says to her: âO, woman, great is thy faith;

be it unto thee even as thou wilt.â Jesus Christ surrenders Himself to

the importunity of a great faith. âAnd shall not God avenge His own

elect which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with

them?â

Jesus Christ puts ability to importune as one of the elements of

prayer, one of the main conditions of prayer. The prayer of the

Syrophenician woman is an exhibition of the matchless power of

importunity, of a conflict more real and involving more of vital

energy, endurance, and all the higher elements than was ever

illustrated in the conflicts of Isthmia or Olympia.

The first lessons of importunity are taught in the Sermon on the

MountââAsk, and it shall be given; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and

it shall be opened.â These are steps of advanceââFor every one that

asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that

knocketh, it shall be opened.â

Without continuance the prayer may go unanswered. Importunity is made

up of the ability to hold on, to press on, to wait with unrelaxed and

unrelaxable grasp, restless desire and restful patience. Importunate

prayer is not an incident, but the main thing, not a performance but a

passion, not a need but a necessity.

Prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude

of a wrestler with God. It is the contest, trial and victory of faith;

a victory not secured from an enemy, but from Him who tries our faith

that He may enlarge it: that tests our strength to make us stronger.

Few things give such quickened and permanent vigour to the soul as a

long exhaustive season of importunate prayer. It makes an experience,

an epoch, a new calendar for the spirit, a new life to religion, a

soldierly training. The Bible never wearies in its pressure and

illustration of the fact that the highest spiritual good is secured as

the return of the outgoing of the highest form of spiritual effort.

There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble

desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous,

urgent, ardent. Inflamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence

delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest

and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen

to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls.

Our whole being must be in our praying; like John Knox, we must say

and feel, âGive me Scotland, or I die.â Our experience and revelations

of God are born of our costly sacrifice, our costly conflicts, our

costly praying. The wrestling, all night praying, of Jacob made an era

never to be forgotten in Jacobâs life, brought God to the rescue,

changed Esauâs attitude and conduct, changed Jacobâs character, saved

and affected his life and entered into the habits of a nation.

Our seasons of importunate prayer cut themselves like the print of a

diamond, into our hardest places, and mark with ineffaceable traces

our characters. They are the salient periods of our lives! The

memorial stones which endure and to which we turn.

Importunity, it may be repeated, is a condition of prayer. We are to

press the matter, not with vain repetitions, but with urgent

repetitions. We repeat, not to count the times, but to gain the

prayer. We cannot quit praying because heart and soul are in it. We

pray âwith all perseverance.â We hang to our prayers because by them

we live. We press our pleas because we must have them or die. Christ

gives us two most expressive parables to emphasise the necessity of

importunity in praying. Perhaps Abraham lost Sodom by failing to press

to the utmost his privilege of praying. Joash, we know, lost because

he stayed his smiting.

Perseverance counts much with Cod as well as with man. If Elijah had

ceased at his first petition the heavens would have scarcely yielded

their rain to his feeble praying. If Jacob had quit praying at decent

bedtime he would scarcely have survived the next dayâs meeting with

Esau. If the Syrophenician woman had allowed her faith to faint by

silence, humiliation, repulse, or stop mid-way its struggles, her

grief-stricken home would never have been brightened by the healing of

her daughter.

Pray and never faint, is the motto Christ gives us for praying. It is

the test of our faith, and the severer the trial and the longer the

waiting, the more glorious the results.

The benefits and necessity of importunity are taught by Old Testament

saints. Praying men must be strong in hope, and faith, and prayer.

They must know how to wait and to press, to wait on Cod and be in

earnest in our approaches to Him.

Abraham has left us an example of importunate intercession in his

passionate pleading with Cod on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, and if,

as already indicated, he had not ceased in his asking, perhaps Cod

would not have ceased in His giving.

âAbraham left off asking before Cod left off granting.â Moses taught

the power of importunity when he interceded for Israel forty days and

forty nights, by fasting and prayer. And he succeeded in his

importunity.

Jesus, in His teaching and example, illustrated and perfected this

principle of Old Testament pleading and waiting. How strange that the

only Son of God, who came on a mission direct from His Father, whose

only heaven on earth, whose only life and law were to do His Fatherâs

will in that missionâwhat a mystery that He should be under the law of

prayer, that the blessings which came to Him were impregnated and

purchased by prayer; stranger still that importunity in prayer was the

process by which His wealthiest supplies from Cod were gained. Had He

not prayed with importunity, no transfiguration would have been in His

history, no mighty works had rendered Divine His career. His all-night

praying was that which filled with compassion and power His all-day

work. The importunate praying of His life crowned His death with its

triumph. He learned the high lesson of submission to Godâs will in the

struggles of importunate prayer before He illustrated that submission

so sublimely on the cross.

âWhether we like it or not,â said Mr. Spurgeon, âasking is the rule of

the kingdom.â âAsk, and ye shall receive.â It is a rule that never

will be altered in anybodyâs case. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the. elder

brother of the family, but God has not relaxed the rule for Him.

Remember this text: Jehovah says to His own Son, âAsk of Me, and I

will give Thee the heaven for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost

parts of the earth for Thy possession.â If the Royal and Divine Son of

God cannot be exempted from the rule of asking that He may have, you

and I cannot expect the rule to be relaxed in our favour. Why should

it be? What reason can be pleaded why we should be exempted from

prayer? What argument can there be why we should be deprived of the

privilege and delivered from the necessity of supplication? I can see

none: can you? God will bless Elijah and send rain on Israel, but

Elijah must pray for it. If the chosen nation is to prosper, Samuel

must plead for it. If the Jews are to be delivered, Daniel must

intercede. God will bless Paul, and the nations shall be converted

through him, but Paul must pray. Pray he did without ceasing; his

epistles show that he expected nothing except by asking for it. If you

may have everything by asking, and nothing without asking, I beg you

to see how absolutely vital prayer is, and I beseech you to abound in

it.â

There is not the least doubt that much of our praying fails for lack

of persistency. It is without the fire and strength of perseverance.

Persistence is of the essence of true praying. It may not be always

called into exercise, but it must be there as the reserve force. Jesus

taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must

be in earnest when they kneel at Godâs footstool.

Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we

ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on

strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an

unfailing and resistless will.

God loves the importunate pleader, and sends him answers that would

never have been granted but for the persistency that refuses to let go

until the petition craved for is granted.

VII

I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to

religious exercises as private devotion, religious meditation,

Scripture reading, etc. Hence I am lean and cold and hard. God would

perhaps prosper me more in spiritual things if I were to be more

diligent in using the means of grace. I had better allot more time,

say two hours or an hour and a half, to religious exercises daily, and

try whether by so doing I cannot preserve a frame of spirit more

habitually devotional, a more lively sense of unseen things, a warmer

love to God, and a greater degree of hunger and thirst after

righteousness, a heart less prone to be soiled with worldly cares,

designs, passions, and apprehension and a real undissembled longing

for heaven, its pleasures and its purity.âWilliam Wilberforce

âMen ought always to pray, and not to faint.â The words are the words

of our Lord, who not only ever sought to impress upon His followers

the urgency and the importance of prayer, but set them an example

which they alas{ have been far too slow to copy.

The always speaks for itself. Prayer is not a meaningless function or

duty to be crowded into the busy or the weary ends of the day, and we

are not obeying our Lordâs command when we content ourselves with a

few minutes upon our knees in the morning rush or late at night when

the faculties, tired with the tasks of the day, call out for rest. God

is always within call, it is true; His ear is ever attentive to the

cry of His child, but we can never get to know Him if we use the

vehicle of prayer as we use the telephoneâfor a few words of hurried

conversation. Intimacy requires development. We can never know God as

it is our privilege to know Him, by brief and fragmentary and

unconsidered repetitions of intercessions that are requests for

personal favours and nothing more. That is not the way in which we can

come into communication with heavenâs King. âThe goal of prayer is the

ear of God,â a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued

and continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and

permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know

Him, and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His

presence and find that presence a constant and ever-increasing

delight.

Always does not mean that we are to neglect the ordinary duties of

life; what it means is that the soul which has come into intimate

contact with God in the silence of the prayer-chamber is never out of

conscious touch with the Father, that the heart is always going out to

Him in loving communion, and that the moment the mind is released from

the task upon which it is engaged it returns as naturally to God as

the bird does to its nest. What a beautiful conception of prayer we

get if we regard it in this light, if we view it as a constant

fellowship, an unbroken audience with the King. Prayer then loses

every vestige of dread which it may once have possessed; we regard it

no longer as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege

which is to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some

new beauty.

Thus, when we open our eyes in the morning, our thought instantly

mounts heavenward. To many Christians the morning hours are the most

precious portion of the day, because they provide the opportunity for

the hallowed fellowship that gives the keynote to the dayâs programme.

And what better introduction can there be to the never-ceasing glory

and wonder of a new day than to spend it alone with God? It is said

that Mr. Moody, at a time when no other place was available, kept his

morning watch in the coal-shed, pouring out his heart to God, and

finding in his precious Bible a true âfeast of fat things.â

George Muller also combined Bible study with prayer in the quiet

morning hours. At one time his practice was to give himself to prayer,

after having dressed, in the morning. Then his plan underwent a

change. As he himself put it: âI saw the most important thing I had to

do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to

meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged,

warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of

God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into

experimental communion with the Lord. I began, therefore, to meditate

on the New Testament early in the morning. The first thing I did,

after having asked in a few words for the Lordâs blessing upon his

precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching

as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the

sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching

on what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my

own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably thus, that

after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to

thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though

I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet

it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.â

The study of the Word and prayer go together, and where we find the

one truly practised, the other is sure to be seen in close alliance.

But we do not pray always. That is the trouble with so many of us. We

need to pray much more than we do and much .longer than we do.

Robert Murray McCheyne, gifted and saintly, of whom it was said, that

âWhether viewed as a son, a brother, a friend, or a pastor, he was the

most faultless and attractive exhibition of the true Christian they

had ever seen embodied in a living form,â knew what it was to spend

much time upon his knees, and he never wearied in urging upon others

the joy and the value of holy intercession. âGodâs children should

pray,â he said. âThey should cry day and night to Him, God hears every

one of your cries in the busy hour of the daytime and in the lonely

watches of the night.â In every way, by preaching, by exhortation when

present and by letters when absent, McCheyne emphasised the vital duty

of prayer, importunate and unceasing prayer.

In his diary we find this: âIn the morning was engaged in preparing

the head, then the heart. This has been frequently my error, and I

have always felt the evil of it, especially in prayer. Reform it then,

O Lord.â While on his trip to the Holy Land he wrote: âFor much of our

safety I feel indebted to the prayers of my people. If the veil of the

worldâs machinery were lifted off how much we would find done in

answer to the prayers of Godâs children.â In an ordination sermon he

said to the preacher: âGive yourself to prayers and the ministry of

the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from

your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray. Remember Lutherâs

maxim, âTo have prayed well is to have studied well.â Get your texts

from God, your thoughts, your words. Carry the names of the little

flock upon your breast like the High Priest. Wrestle for the

unconverted. Luther spent his last three hours in prayer; John Welch

prayed seven or eight hours a day. He used to keep a plaid on his bed

that he might wrap himself in when he rose during the night. Sometimes

his wife found him on the ground lying weeping. When she complained,

he would say, âO, woman, I have the souls of three thousand to answer

for, and I know not how it is with many of them.ââ The people he

exhorted and charged: âPray for your pastor. Pray for his body, that

he may be kept strong and spared many years. Pray for his soul, that

he may be kept humble and holy, a burning and shining light. Pray for

his .ministry, that it may be abundantly blessed, that he may be

anointed to preach good tidings. Let there be no secret prayer without

naming him before your God, no family prayer without carrying your

pastor in your hearts to God.â

âTwo things,â says his biographer, âhe seems never to have ceased

fromâthe cultivation of personal holiness and the most anxious efforts

to win souls.â The two are the inseparable attendants on the ministry

of prayer. Prayer fails when the desire and effort for personal

holiness fail. No person is a soul-winner who is not an adept in the

ministry of prayer. âIt is the duty of ministers,â says this holy man,

âto begin the reformation of religion and manner with themselves,

families, etc., with confession of past sin, earnest prayer for

direction, grace and full purpose of heart.â He begins with himself

under the head of âReformation in Secret Prayer,â and he resolves:

âI ought not to omit any of the parts of prayerâconfession, adoration,

thanksgiving, petition and intercession. There is a fearful tendency

to omit confession proceeding from low views of God and His law,

slight views of my heart, and the sin of my past life. This must be

resisted. There is a constant tendency to omit adoration when I forget

to Whom I am speaking, when I rush heedlessly into the presence of

Jehovah without thought of His awful name and character. When I have

little eyesight for his glory, and little admiration of His wonders, I

have the native tendency of the heart to omit giving thanks, and yet

it is specially commanded. Often when the heart is dead to the

salvation of others I omit intercession, and yet it especially is the

spirit of the great Advocate Who has the name of Israel on His heart.

I ought to pray before seeing anyone. Often when I sleep long, or meet

with others early, and then have family prayer and breakfast and

forenoon callers, it is eleven or twelve oâclock before I begin secret

prayer. This is a wretched system; it is unscriptural. Christ rose

before day and went into a solitary place. David says, âEarly will I

seek Thee; Thou shalt early hear my voice.â Mary Magdalene came to the

sepulchre while it was yet dark. Family prayer loses much of its power

and sweetness; and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me.

The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed. I

feel it is far better to begin with God, to see His face first, to get

my soul near Him before it is near another. âWhen I awake I am still

with Thee.â If I have slept too long, or I am going an early journey,

or my time is in any way shortened, it is best to dress hurriedly and

to have a few minutes alone with God than to give up all for lost. But

in general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before

engaging in anything else. I ought to spend the best hours of the day

in communion with God. When I awake in the night, I ought to rise and

pray as David and John Welch.â

McCheyne believed in being always in prayer, and his fruitful life,

short though that life was, affords an illustration of the power that

comes from long and frequent visits to the secret place where we keep

tryst with our Lord.

Men of McCheyneâs stamp are needed todayâpraying men, who know how to

give themselves to the greatest task demanding their time and their

attention; men who can give their whole heart to the holy task of

intercession, men who can pray through. Godâs cause is committed to

men; God commits Himself to men. Praying men are the vicegerents of

God; they do His work and carry out His plans.

We are obliged to pray if we be citizens of Godâs Kingdom.

Prayerlessness is expatriation, or worse, from Godâs Kingdom. It is

outlawry, a high crime, a constitutional breach. The Christian who

relegates prayer to a subordinate place in his life soon loses

whatever spiritual zeal he may have once possessed, and the Church

that makes little of prayer cannot maintain vital piety, and is

powerless to advance the Gospel. The Gospel cannot live, fight,

conquer without prayerâprayer unceasing, instant and ardent.

Little prayer is the characteristic of a backslidden age and of a

backslidden Church. Whenever there is little praying in the pulpit or

in the pew, spiritual bankruptcy is imminent and inevitable.

The cause of God has no commercial age, no cultured age, no age of

education, no age of money. But it has one golden age, and that is the

age of prayer. When its leaders are men of prayer, when prayer is the

prevailing element of worship, like the incense giving continual

fragrance to its service, then the cause of God will be triumphant.

Better praying and more of it, that is what we need. We need holier

men, and more of them, holier women, and more of them to prayâwomen

like Hannah, who, out of their greatest griefs and temptations brewed

their greatest prayers. Through prayer Hannah found her relief.

Everywhere the Church was backslidden and apostate, her foes were

victorious. Hannah gave herself to prayer, and in sorrow she

multiplied her praying. She saw a great revival born of her praying.

When the whole nation was oppressed, prophet and priest, Samuel was

born to establish a new line of priesthood, and her praying warmed

into. life a new life for God. Everywhere religion revived and

flourished. God, true to His promise, âAsk of Me,â though the praying

came from a womanâs broken heart, heard and answered, sending a new

day of holy gladness to revive His people.

So once more, let us apply the emphasis and repeat that the great need

of the Church in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of

such unsullied holiness, of such marked spiritual vigour and consuming

zeal, that they will work spiritual revolutions through their mighty

praying. âNatural ability and educational advantages do not figure as

factors in this matter; but a capacity for faith, the ability to pray,

the power of a thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness,

an absolute losing of oneâs self in Godâs glory and an ever present

and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fulness of God. Men

who can set the Church ablaze for God, not in a noisy, showy way, but

with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves every thing for

God.â

And, to return to the vital point, secret praying is the test, the

gauge, the conserver of manâs relation to God. The prayer-chamber,

while it is the test of the sincerity of our devotion to God, becomes

also the measure of the devotion. The self-denial, the sacrifices

which we make for our prayer-chambers, the frequency of our visits to

that hallowed place of meeting with the Lord, the lingering to stay,

the loathness to leave, are values which we put on communion alone

with God, the price we pay for the Spiritâs trysting hours of heavenly

love.

The prayer-chamber conserves our relation to God. It hems every raw

edge; it tucks up every flowing and entangling garment; girds up every

fainting loin. The sheet-anchor holds not the ship more surely and

safely than the prayer-chamber holds to God. Satan has to break our

hold on, and close up our way to the prayer-chambers, ere he can break

our hold on God or close up our way to heaven.

âBe not afraid to pray; to pray is right;

Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray,

Though hope be weak or sick with long delay;

Pray in the darkness if there be no light;

And if for any wish thou dare not pray

Then pray to God to cast that wish away.â

VIII

In Godâs name I beseech you let prayer nourish your soul as your meals

nourish your body. Let your fixed seasons of prayer keep you in Godâs

presence through the day, and His presence frequently remembered

through it be an ever-fresh spring of prayer. Such a brief, loving

recollection of God renews a manâs whole being, quiets his passions,

supplies light and counsel in difficulty, gradually subdues the

temper, and causes him to possess his soul in patience, or rather

gives it up to the possession of God.âFenelon

Devoted too much time and attention to outward and public duties of

the ministry. But this has a mistaken conduct, for I have learned that

neglect of much and fervent communion with God in meditation and

prayer is not the way to redeem the time nor to fit me for public

ministrations.

I rightly attribute my present deadness to want of sufficient time and

tranquillity for private devotion. Want of more reading, retirement

and private devotion, I have little mastery over my own tempers. An

unhappy day to me for want of more solitude and prayer. If there be

anything I do, if there be anything I leave undone, let me be perfect

in prayer.

After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing. Oh

that I may be a man of prayer.âHenry Martyn

That the men had quit praying in Paulâs time we cannot certainly

affirm. They have, in the main, quit praying now. They are too busy to

pray. Time and strength and every faculty are laid under tribute to

money, to business, to the affairs of the world. Few men lay

themselves out in great praying. The great business of praying is a

hurried, petty, starved, beggarly business with most men.

St. Paul calls a halt, and lays a levy on men for prayer. Put the men

to praying is Paulâs unfailing remedy for great evils in Church, in

State, in politics, in business, in home. Put the men to praying, then

politics will be cleansed, business will be thriftier, the Church will

be holier, the home will be sweeter.

âI exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers,

intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings and all

that are in high place; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in

all godliness and gravity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of

God our Saviour ... I desire, therefore, that the men pray in every

place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing (I Timothy

ii. 1-3, 8).

Praying women and children are invaluable to God, but if their praying

is not supplemented by praying men, there will be a great loss in the

power of prayerâa great breach and depreciation in the value of

prayer, great paralysis in the energy of the Gospel. Jesus Christ

spake a parable unto the people, telling them that men ought always to

pray and not faint. Men who are strong in everything else ought to be

strong in prayer, and never yield to discouragement, weakness or

depression. Men who are brave, persistent, redoubtable in other

pursuits ought to be full of courage, unfainting, strong-hearted in

prayer.

Men are to pray; all men are to pray. Men, as distinguished from

women, men in their strength in their wisdom. There is an absolute,

specific command that the men pray; there is an absolute imperative

necessity that men pray. The first of beings, man, should also be

first in prayer.

The men are to pray for men. The direction is specific and classified.

Just underneath we have a specific direction with regard to women.

About prayer, its importance, wideness and practice the Bible here

deals with the men in contrast to, and distinct from, the women. The

men are definitely commanded, seriously charged, and warmly exhorted

to pray. Perhaps it was that men were averse to prayer, or indifferent

to it; it may be that they deemed it a small thing, and gave to it

neither time nor value nor significance. But God would have all men

pray, and so the great Apostle lifts the subject into prominence and

emphases its importance.

For prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest

agent to advance Godâs work. Praying hearts and hands only can do

Godâs work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails. Prayer has won great

victories, and rescued, with notable triumph, Godâs saints when every

other hope was gone. Men who know how to pray are the greatest boon

God can give to earthâthey are the richest gift earth can offer

heaven. Men who know how to use this weapon of prayer are Godâs best

soldiers. His mightiest leaders.

Praying men are Godâs chosen leaders. The distinction between the

leaders that God brings to the front to lead and bless His people, and

those leaders who owe their position of leadership to a worldly,

selfish, unsanctified selection, is this, Godâs leaders are

pre-eminently men of prayer. This distinguishes them as the simple,

Divine attestation of their call, the seal of their separation by God.

Whatever of other graces or gifts they may have, the gift and grace of

prayer towers above them all. In whatever else they may share or

differ, in the gift of prayer, they are one.

What would Godâs leaders be without prayer? Strip Moses of his power

in prayer, a gift that made him eminent in pagan estimate, and the

crown is taken from his head, the food and fire of his faith are gone.

Elijah, without his praying, would have neither record nor place in

the Divine legation, his life insipid, cowardly, its energy, defiance

and fire gone. Without Elijahâs praying the Jordan would never have

yielded to the stroke of his mantle, nor would the stem angel of death

have honored him with the chariot and horses of fire. The argument

that God used to quiet the fears and convince Ananias of Paulâs

condition and sincerity is the epitome of his history, the solution of

his life and workââBehold he prayeth.â

Paul, Luther, Wesleyâwhat would these chosen ones of God be without

the distinguishing and controlling element of prayer? They were

leaders for God because mighty in prayer. They were not leaders

because of brilliancy in thought, because exhaustless in resources,

because of their magnificent culture or native endowment, but leaders

because by the power of prayer they could command the power of God.

Praying men means much more than men who say prayers; much more than

men who pray by habit. It means men with whom prayer is a mighty

force, an energy that moves heaven and pours untold treasures of good

on earth.

Praying men are the safety of the Church from the materialism that is

affecting all its plans and polity, and which is hardening the

life-blood. The insinuation circulates as a secret, deadly poison that

the Church is not so dependent on purely spiritual forces as it used

to beâthat changed times and changed conditions have brought it out of

its spiritual straits and dependencies and put it where other forces

can bear it to its climax. A fatal snare of this kind has allured the

Church into worldly embraces, dazzled her leaders, weakened her

foundations, and shorn her of much of her beauty and strength. Praying

men are the saviours of the Church from this material tendency. They

pour into it the original spiritual forces, lift it off the sand-bars

of materialism, and press it out into the ocean depths of spiritual

power. Praying men keep God in the Church in full force; keep His hand

on the helm, and train the Church in its lessons of strength and

trust.

The number and efficiency of the labourers in Godâs vineyard in all

lands is dependent on the men of prayer. The mightiness of these men

of prayer increases, by the divinely arranged process, the number and

success of the consecrated labours. Prayer opens wide their doors of

access, gives holy aptness to enter, and holy boldness, firmness, and

fruitage. Praying men are needed in all fields of spiritual labour.

There is no position in the Church of God, high or low, which can be

well filled without instant prayer. No position where Christians are

found that does not demand the full play of a faith that always prays

and never faints. Praying men are needed in the house of business, as

well as in the house of God, that they may order and direct trade, not

according to the maxims of this world, but according to Bible precepts

and the maxims of the heavenly world.

Men of prayer are needed especially in the positions of Church

influence, honour, and power. These leaders of Church thought, of

Church work, and of Church life should be men of signal power in

prayer. It is the praying heart that sanctifies the toil and skill of

the hands, and the toil and wisdom of the head. Prayer keeps work in

the line of Godâs will, and keeps thought in the line of Godâs Word.

The solemn responsibilities of leadership, in a large or limited

sphere, in Godâs Church should be so hedged about with prayer that

between it and the world there should be an impassable gulf, so

elevated and purified by prayer that neither cloud nor night should

stain the radiance nor dim the sight of a constant meridian view of

God. Many Church leaders seem to think if they can be prominent as men

of business, of money, influence, of thought, of plans, of scholarly

attainments, of eloquent gifts, of taking, conspicuous activities,

that these are enough, and will atone for the absence of the higher

spiritual power which much praying only can give. But how vain and

paltry are these in the serious work of bringing glory to God,

controlling the Church for Him, and bringing it into full accord with

its Divine mission.

Praying men are the men that have done so much for God in the past.

They are the ones who have won the victories for God, and spoiled His

foes. They are the ones who have set up His Kingdom in the very camps

of His enemies. There are no other conditions of success in this day.

The twentieth century has no relief statute to suspend the necessity

or force of prayerâno substitute by which its gracious ends can be

secured. We are shut up to this, praying hands only can build for God.

They are Godâs mighty ones on earth, His master-builders. They may be

destitute of all else, but with the wrestlings and prevailings of a

simple-hearted faith they are mighty, the mightiest for God. Church

leaders may be gifted in all else, but without this greatest of gifts

they are as Samson shorn of his locks, or as the Temple without the

Divine presence or the Divine glory, and on whose altars the heavenly

flame has died.

The only protection and rescue from worldliness lie in our intense and radical

spirituality; and our only hope for the existence and

maintenance of this high, saving spirituality, under God, is in the

purest and most aggressive leadershipâa leadership that knows the

secret power of prayer, the sign by which the Church has conquered,

and that has conscience, conviction, and courage to hold true to her

symbols, true to her traditions, and true to the hidings of her power.

We need this prayerful leadership; we must have it, that by the

perfection and beauty of its holiness, by the strength and elevation

of its faith, by the potency and pressure of its prayers, by the

authority and spotlessness of its example, by the fire and contagion

of its zeal, by the singularity, sublimity, and unworldliness of its

piety, it may influence God and hold and mould the Church to its

heavenly pattern.

Such leaders, how mightily they are felt. How their flame arouses the

Church! How they stir it by the force of their Pentecostal presence!

How they embattle and give victory by the conflicts and triumphs of

their own faith! How they fashion it by the impress and importunity of

their prayers! How they inoculate it by the contagion and fire of

their holiness! How they lead the march in great spiritual

revolutions! How the Church is raised from the dead by the

resurrection call of their sermons! Holiness springs up in their wake

as flowers at the voice of spring, and where they tread the desert

blooms as the garden of the Lord. Godâs cause demands such leaders

along the whole line of official position from subaltern to superior.

How feeble, aimless, or worldly are our efforts, how demoralised and

vain for Godâs work without them!

The gift of these leaders is not in the range of ecclesiastical power.

They are Godâs sifts. Their being, their presence, their number, and

their ability are the tokens of His favour; their lack the sure sign

of His disfavour, the presage of His withdrawal. Let the Church of God

be on her knees before the Lord of hosts, that He may more mightily

endow the leaders we already have, and put others in rank, and lead

all along the line of our embattled front.

The world is coming into the Church at many points and in many ways.

It oozes in; it pours in; it comes in with brazen front or soft,

insinuating disguise; it comes in at the top and comes in at the

bottom; and percolates through many a hidden way.

For praying men and holy men we are lookingâmen whose presence in the

Church will make it like a censer of holiest incense flaming up to

God. With God the man counts for everything. Rites, forms,

organisations are of small moment; unless they are backed by the

holiness of the man they are offensive in His sight. âIncense is an

abomination unto Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of

assemblies I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn

meeting.â

Why does God speak so strongly against His own ordinances? Personal

purity had failed. The impure man tainted all the sacred institutions

of God and defiled them. God regards the man in so important a way as

to put a kind of discount on all else. Men have built Him glorious

temples and have striven and exhausted themselves to please God by all

manner of gifts; but in lofty strains He has rebuked these proud

worshippers and rejected their princely gifts.

âHeaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool: where is the house

that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all

those things hath Mine hand made, and all those things hath been,

saith the Lord. He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that

sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dogâs neck; he that offereth an

oblation, as if he offered swineâs blood; he that burneth incense, as

if he blessed an idol.â Turning away in disgust from these costly and

profane offerings, He declares: âBut to this man will I look, even to

him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.â

This truth that God regards the personal purity of the man is

fundamental. This truth suffers when ordinances are made much of and

forms of worship multiply. The man and his spiritual character

depreciate as Church ceremonials increase. The simplicity of worship

is lost in religious aesthetics, or in the gaudiness of religious

forms.

This truth that the personal purity of the individual is the only

thing God cares for is lost sight of when the Church begins to

estimate men for what they have. When the Church eyes a manâs money,

social standing, his belongings in any way, then spiritual values are

at a fearful discount, and the tear of penitence, the heaviness of

guilt are never seen at her portals. Worldly bribes have opened and

stained its pearly gates by the entrance of the impure.

This truth that God is looking after personal purity is swallowed up

when the Church has a greed for numbers. âNot numbers, but personal

purity is our aim,â said the fathers of Methodism. The parading of

Church statistics is mightily against the grain of spiritual religion.

Eyeing numbers greatly hinders the looking after personal purity. The

increase of quantity is generally at a loss of quality. Bulk abates

preciousness.

The age of Church organisation and Church machinery is not an age

noted for elevated and strong personal piety. Machinery looks for

engineers and organisations for generals, and not for saints, to run

them. The simplist organisation may aid purity as well as strength;

but beyond that narrow limit organisation swallows up the individual

and is careless of personal purity; push, activity, enthusiasm, zeal

for an organisation, come in as the vicious substitutes for spiritual

character. Holiness and all the spiritual graces of hardy culture and

slow growth are discarded as too slow and too costly for the progress

and rush of the age. By dint of machinery, new organisations, and

spiritual weakness, results are vainly expected to be secured which

can only be secured by faith, prayer, and waiting on God.

The man and his spiritual character is what God is looking after. If

men, holy men, can be turned out by the easy process of Church

machinery readier and better than by the old-time processes, we would

gladly invest in every new and improved patent; but we do not believe

it. We adhere to the old wayâthe way the holy prophets went, the

kingâs highway of holiness.

An example of this is afforded by the case of William Wilberforce.

High in social position, a member of Parliament, the friend of Pitt

the famous statesman, he was not called of God to forsake his high

social position nor to quit Parliament, but he was called to order his

life according to the pattern set by Jesus Christ and to give himself

to prayer. To read the story of his life is to be impressed with its

holiness and its devotion to the claims of the quiet hours alone with

God. His conversion was announced to his friendsâto Pitt and othersâby

letter.

In the beginning of his religious career he records: âMy chief reasons

for a day of secret prayer are, (1) That the state of public affairs

is very critical and calls for earnest deprecation of the Divine

displeasure. (2) My station in life is a very difficult one, wherein I

am at a loss to know how to act. Direction, therefore, should be

specially sought from time to time. (3) I have been graciously

supported in difficult situations of a public nature. I have gone out

and returned home in safety, and found a kind reception has attended

me. I would humbly hope, too, that what I am now doing is a proof that

God has not withdrawn His Holy Spirit from me. I am covered with

mercies.â

The recurrence of his birthday led him again to review his situation

and employment. âI find,â he wrote, âthat books alienate my heart from

God as much as anything. I have been framing a plan of study for

myself, but let me remember but one thing is needful, that if my heart

cannot be kept in a spiritual state without so much prayer,

meditation, Scripture reading, etc., as are incompatible with study, I

must seek first the righteousness of God.â All were to be surrendered

for spiritual advance. âI fear,â we find him saying, âthat I have not

studied the Scriptures enough. Surely in the summer recess I ought to

read the Scriptures and hour or two every day, besides prayer,

devotional reading and meditation. Cod will prosper me better if I

wait on Him. The experience of all good men shows that without

constant prayer and watchfulness the life of Cod in the soul

stagnates. Doddridgeâs morning and evening devotions were serious

matters. Colonel Gardiner always spent hours in prayer in the morning

before he went forth. Bonnell practised private devotions largely

morning and evening, and repeated Psalms dressing and undressing to

raise his mind to heavenly things. âI would look up to God to make the

means effectual. I fear that my devotions are too much hurried, that I

do not read Scripture enough. I must grow in grace; I must love God

more; I must feel the power of Divine things more. Whether I am more

or less learned signifies not. Whether even I execute the work which I

deem useful is comparatively unimportant. But beware my soul of

lukewarmness.â

The New Year began with the Holy Communion and new vows. âI will press

forward,â he wrote, âand labour to know God better and love Him more.

Assuredly I may, because God will give His Holy Spirit to them that

ask Him, and the Holy Spirit will shed abroad the love of God in the

heart. O, then, pray, pray; be earnest, press forward and follow on to

know the Lord. Without watchfulness, humiliation and prayer, the sense

of Divine things must languish.â To prepare for the future he said he

found nothing more effectual than private prayer and the serious

perusal of the New Testament.

And again: âI must put down that I have lately too little time for

private devotions. I can sadly confirm Doddridgeâs remark that when we

go on ill in the closet we commonly do so everywhere else. I must mend

here. I am afraid of getting into what Owen calls the trade of sinning

and repenting ... Lord help me, the shortening of private devotions

starves the soul; it grows lean and faint. This must not be. I must

redeem more time. I see how lean in spirit I become without full

allowance of time for private devotions; I must be careful to be

watching unto prayer.â

At another tune he puts on record: âI must try what I long ago heard

was the rule of Eâthe great upholsterer, who, when he came from Bond

Street to his little villa, always first retired to his Closet. I have

been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half

hour to myself. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the

proposition, that without due measure of private devotions, the soul

will grow lean.â

To his son he wrote: âLet me conjure you not to be seduced into

neglecting, curtailing or hurrying over your morning prayers. Of all

things, guard against neglecting God in the closet. There is nothing

more fatal to the life and power of religion. More solitude and

earlier hoursâprayer three times a day at least. How much better might

I serve if I cultivated a closer communication with God.â

Wilberforce knew the secret of a holy life. Is that not where most of

us fail? We are so busy with other things, so immersed even in doing

good and in carrying on the Lordâs work, that we neglect the quiet

seasons of prayer with God, and before we are aware of it our soul is

lean and impoverished.

âOne night alone in prayer,â says Spurgeon, âmight make us new men,

changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth, from trembling to

triumphing. We have an example of it in the life of Jacob. A foretime

the crafty shuffler, always bargaining and calculating, unlovely in

almost every respect, yet one night in prayer turned the supplanter

into a prevailing prince, and robed âhim with celestial grandeur. From

that night he lives on the sacred page as one of the nobility of

heaven. Could not we, at least now and then, in these weary earthbound

years, hedge abot a single night for such enriching traffic with the

skies? What, have we no sacred ambition? Are we deaf to the yearnings

of Divine love? Yet, my brethren, for wealth and for science men will

cheerfully quit their warm couches, and cannot we do it now and again

for the love of God, and the good of souls? Where is our zeal, our

gratitude, our sincerity? I am ashamed while I thus upbraid both

myself and you. May we often tarry at Jabbok, and cry with Jacob, as

he grasped the angelâ

âWith thee all night I mean to stay,

And wrestle till the break of day.â

Surely, brethren, if we have given whole days to folly, we can afford

a space for heavenly wisdom. Time was when we gave whole nights to

chambering and wantonness, to dancing and the worldâs revelry; we did

not tire then; we were chiding the sun that he rose so soon, and

wishing the hours would lag awhile that we might delight in wilder

merriment and perhaps deeper sin. Oh, wherefore, should we weary in

heavenly employments? Why grow we weary when asked to watch with our

Lord? Up sluggish heart, Jesus calls thee! Rise and go forth to meet

the Heavenly Friend in the place where He manifests Himself.â

We can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord unless we

follow His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A

revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.

Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the

tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the

throne of. grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.âJohn

Wesley

We must remember that the goal of prayer is the ear of God. Unless

that is gained the prayer has utterly failed. The utterings of it may

have kindled devotional feeling in our minds, the hearing of it may

have comforted and strengthened the hearts of those with whom we have

prayed, but (f the prayer has not gained the heart of God, it has

failed in its essential purpose.

A mere formalist can always pray so as to please himself. What has he

to do but to open his book and read the prescribed words, or bow his

knee and repeat such phrases as suggest themselves to his memory or

his fancy? Like the Tartarian Praying Machine, give but the wind and

the wheel, and the business is full arranged. So much knee-bending and

talking, and the prayer is done. The formalistâs prayers are always

good, or, rather, always bad, alike. But the living child of God never

offers a prayer which pleases himself; his standard is above his

attainments; he wonders that God listens to him, and though he knows

he will be heard for Christâs sake, yet he accounts it a wonderful

instance of condescending mercy that such poor prayers as his should

ever reach the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.âC. H. Spurgeon

It may be said with emphasis that no lazy saint prays. Can there be a

lazy saint? Can there be a prayerless saint? Does not slack praying

cut short sainthoodâs crown and kingdom? Can there be a cowardly

soldier? Can there be a saintly hypocrite? Can there be virtuous vice?

It is only when these possibilities are brought into being that we

then can find a prayerless saint.

To go through the motion of praying is a dull business, though not a

hard one. To say prayers in a decent, delicate way is not heavy work.

But to pray really, to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke, to

pray till the iron gates of difficulty are opened, till the mountains

of obstacles are removed, till the mists are exhaled and the clouds

are lifted, and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightensâthis is hard

work, but it is Godâs work and manâs best labour. Never was the toil

of hand, head and heart less spent in vain than when praying. It is

hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God

answers. The joy of answered prayer is the joy of a travailing mother

when a man child is born in to the world, the joy of a slave whose

chains have been burst asunder and to whom new life and liberty have

just come.

A birdâs-eye view of what has been accomplished by prayer shows what

we lost when the dispensation of real prayer was substituted by

Pharisaical pretence and sham; it shows, too, how imperative is the

need for holy men and women who will give themselves to earnest,

Christlike praying.

It is not an easy thing to pray. Back of the praying there must lie

all the conditions of prayer. These conditions are possible, but they

are not to be seized on in a moment by the prayerless. Present they

always may be to the faithful and holy, but cannot exist in nor be met

by a frivolous, negligent, laggard spirit. Prayer does not stand

alone. It is not an isolated performance. Prayer stands in closet

connection with all the duties of an ardent piety. It is the issuance

of a character which is made up of the elements of a vigorous and

commanding faith. Prayer honours God, acknowledges His being, exalts

His power, adores His providence, secures His aid. A sneering

half-rationalism cries out against devotion, that it does nothing but

pray. But to pray well is to do all things well. If it be true that

devotion does nothing but pray, then it does nothing at all. To do

nothing but pray fails to do the praying, for the antecedent,

coincident, and subsequent conditions of prayer are but the sum of all

the energised forces of a practical, working piety.

The possibilities of prayer run parallel with the promises of God.

Prayer opens an outlet for the promises, removes the hindrances in the

way of their execution, puts them into working order, and secures

their gracious ends. More than this, prayer like faith, obtains

promises, enlarges their operation, and adds to the measure of their

results. Godâs promises were to Abraham and to his seed, but many a

barren womb, and many a minor obstacle stood in the way of the

fulfillment of these promises; but prayer removed them all, made a

highway for the promises, added to the facility and speediness of

their realisation, and by prayer the promise shone bright and perfect

in its execution.

The possibilities of prayer are found in its allying itself with the

purposes of God, for Godâs purposes and manâs praying are the

combination of all potent and omnipotent forces. More than this, the

possibilities of prayer are seen in the fact that it changes the

purposes of God. It is in the very nature of prayer to plead and give

directions. Prayer is not a negation. It is a positive force. It never

rebels against the will of God, never comes into conflict with that

will, but that it does seek to change Godâs purpose is evident. Christ

said, âThe cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?â

and yet He had prayed that very night, âIf it be possible let this cup

pass from Me.â Paul sought to change the purposes of God about the

thorn in his flesh. Godâs purposes were fixed to destroy Israel, and

the prayer of Moses changed the purposes of God and saved Israel. In

the time of the Judges Israel were apostate and greatly oppressed.

They repented and cried unto God and He said: âYe have forsaken Me and

served other gods, wherefore I will deliver you no more:â but they

humbled themselves, put away their strange gods, and Godâs âsoul was

grieved for the misery of Israel,â and he sent them deliverance by

Jephthah.

God sent Isaiah to say to Hezekiah, âSet thine house in order: for

thou shalt die, and not live.â and Hezekiah prayed, and God sent

Isaiah back to say, âI have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears;

behold I will add unto thy days fifteen years.â âYet forty days and

Nineveh shall be overthrown,â was Godâs message by Jonah. But Nineveh

cried mightily to God, and âGod repented of the evil that He had said

He would do unto them; and He did it not.â

The possibilities of prayer are seen from the diverseâ conditions it

reaches and the diverseâ ends it secures. Elijah prayed over a dead

child, and it came to life; Elisha did the same thing; Christ prayed

at Lazarusâs grave, and Lazarus came forth. Peter kneeled down and

prayed beside dead Dorcas, and she opened her eyes and sat up, and

Peter presented her alive to the distressed company. Paul prayed for

Publius, and healed him. Jacobâs praying changed Esauâs murderous hate

into the kisses of the tenderest brotherly embrace. God gave to

Rebecca Jacob and Esau because Isaac prayed for her. Joseph was the

child of Rachelâs prayers. Hannahâs praying gave Samuel to Israel.

John the Baptist was given to Elizabeth, barren and past age as she

was, in answer to the prayer of Zacharias. Elishaâs praying brought

famine or harvest to Israel; as he prayed so it was. Ezraâs praying

carried the Spirit of God in heartbreaking conviction to the entire

city of Jerusalem, and brought them in tears of repentance back to

God. Isaiahâs praying carried the shadow of the sun back ten degrees

on the dial of Ahaz.

In answer to Hezekiahâs praying an angel slew one hundred and

eighty-five thousand of Sennacheribâs army in one night. Danielâs

praying opened to him the vision of prophecy, helped him to administer

the affairs of a mighty kingdom, and sent an angel to shut the lionsâ

mouths. The angel was sent to Cornelius, and the Gospel opened through

him to the Gentile world, because his âprayers and alms had come up as

a memorial before God.â âAnd what shall I more say? for the time would

fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of

Jephthah; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets;â of Paul and

Peter, and John and the Apostles, and the holy company of saints,

reformers, and martyrs, who, through praying, âsubdued kingdoms,

wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of

weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight

the armies of the aliens.â

Prayer puts God in the matter with commanding force: âAsk of Me things

to come concerning My sons,â says God, âand concerning the work of My

hands command ye Me.â We are charged in Godâs Word âalways to pray,â

âin everything by prayer,â âcontinuing instant in prayer,â to âpray

everywhere,â âpraying always.â The promise is as illimitable as the

command is comprehensive. âAll things whatsoever ye shall ask in

prayer, believing, ye shall receive,â âwhatever ye shall ask,â âif ye

shall ask anything.â âYe shall ask what ye will and it shall be done

unto you.â âWhatsoever ye ask the Father He will give it to you.â If

there is anything not involved in âAll things whatsoever,â or not

found in the phrase âAsk anything,â then these things may be left out

of prayer. Language could not cover a wider range, nor involve more

fully all minutia. These statements are but samples of the

all-comprehending possibilities of prayer under the promises of God to

those who meet the conditions of right praying.

These passages, though, give but a general outline of the immense

regions over which prayer extends its sway. Beyond these the effects

of prayer reach and secure good from regions which cannot be traversed

by language or thought. Paul exhausted language and thought in

praying, but conscious of necessities not covered and realms of good

not reached he covers these impenetrable and undiscovered regions by

this general plea, âunto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly

above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in

us.â The promise is, âCall upon Me, and I will answer thee, and show

thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.â

James declares that âthe effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man

availeth much.â How much he could not tell, but illustrates it by the

power of Old Testament praying to stir up New Testament saints to

imitate by the fervour and influence of their praying the holy men of

old, and duplicate and surpass the power of their praying. Elijah, he

says, was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed

earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by

the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the

heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

In the Revelation of John the whole lower order of Godâs creation and

His providential government, the Church and the angelic world, are in

the attitude of waiting on the efficiency of the prayers of the

saintly ones on earth to carry on the various interests of earth and

heaven. The angel takes the fire kindled by prayer and casts it

earthward, âand there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings,

and an earthquake.â Prayer is the force which creates all these

alarms, stirs, and throes. âAsk of Me,â says God to His Son, and to

the Church of His Son, âand I shall give Thee the nations for Thine

inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thine

possessions.â

The men who have done mighty things for God have always been mighty in

prayer, have well understood the possibilities of prayer, and made

most of the possibilities. The Son of God, the first of all and the

mightiest of all, has shown us the all-potent and far-reaching

possibilities of prayer. Paul was might for God because he knew how to

use, and how to get others to use, the mighty spiritual forces of

prayer.

The seraphim, burning, sleepless, adoring, is the figure of prayer. It

is resistless in its ardour, devoted and tireless. There are

hindrances to prayer that nothing but pure, intense flame can

surmount. There are toils and outlays and endurance which nothing but

the strongest, most ardent flame can abide. Prayer may be low-tongued,

but it cannot be cold-tongued. Its words may be few, but they must be

on fire. Its feelings may not be impetuous, but they must be white

with heat. It is the effectual, fervent prayer that influences God.

Godâs house is the house of prayer; Godâs work is the work of prayer.

It is the zeal for Godâs house and the zeal for Godâs work that makes

Godâs house glorious and His work abide.

When the prayer-chambers of saints are closed or are entered casually

or coldly, then Church rulers are secular, fleshly, materialised;

spiritual character sinks to a low level, and the ministry becomes

restrained and enfeebled.

When prayer falls, the world prevails. When prayer fails the Church

loses its Divine characteristics, its Divine power; the Church is

swallowed up by a proud ecclesiasticism, and the world scoffs at its

obvious impotence.

I look upon all the four Gospels as thoroughly genuine, for there is

in them the reflection of a greatness which emanated from the person

of Jesus and which was of as Divine a kind as ever was seen on

earth.âGoethe

There are no possibilities, no necessity for prayerless praying, a

heartless performance, a senseless routine, a dead habit, a hasty,

careless performanceâit justifies nothing. Prayerless praying has no

life, gives no life, is dead, breathes out death. Not a battle-axe but

a childâs toy, for play not for service. Prayerless praying does not

come up to the importance and aims of a recreation. Prayerless praying

is only a weight, an impediment in the hour of struggle, of intense

conflict, a call to retreat in the moment of battle and victory.

Why do we not pray? What are the hindrances to prayer? This is not a

curious nor trivial question. It goes not only to the whole matter of

our praying, but to the whole matter of our religion. Religion is

bound to decline when praying is hindered. That which hinders praying,

hinders religion. He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live

a holy life.

Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd out prayer.

Choked to death, would be the coronerâs verdict in many cases of dead

praying, if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual

calamity. This way of hindering prayer becomes so natural, so easy, so

innocent that it comes on us all unawares. If we will allow our

praying to be crowded out, it will always be done. Satan had rather we

let the grass grow on the path to our prayer-chamber than anything

else. A dosed chamber of prayer means gone out of business religiously

or what is worse, made an assignment and carrying on our religion in

some other name than Godâs and to somebody elseâs glory. Godâs glory

is only secured in the business of religion by carrying that religion

on with a large capital of prayer. The apostles understood this when

they declared that their time must not be employed in even the sacred

duties of alms-giving; they must give themselves, they said,

âcontinually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word,â prayer being

put first with them and the ministry of the Word having its efficiency

and life from prayer.

The process of hindering prayer by crowding out is simple and goes by

advancing stages. First, prayer is hurried through. Unrest and

agitation, fatal to all devout exercises, come in. Then the time is

shortened, relish for the exercise palls. Then it is crowded into a

corner and depends on the fragments of time for its exercise. Its

value depreciates. The duty has lots its importance. It no longer

commands respect nor brings benefit. It has fallen out of estimate,

out of heart, out of the habits, out of the life. We cease to pray and

cease to live spiritually.

There is no stay to the desolating floods of worldliness and business

and cares, but prayer. Christ meant this when He charged us to watch

and pray. There is no pioneering corps for the Gospel but prayer. Paul

knew that when he declared that ânight and day he prayed exceedingly

that we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in

your faith.â There is no arriving at a high state of grace without

much praying and no staying in those high altitudes without great

praying. Epaphras knew this when he âlaboured fervently in prayersâ

for the Colossian Church, âthat they might stand perfect and complete

in all the will of God.â

The only way to preserve our praying from being hindered is to

estimate prayer at its true and great value. Estimate it as Daniel

did, who, when he âknew that the writing was signed he went into his

house, and his windows being opened to Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his

knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as

he did aforetime.â Put praying into the high values as Daniel did,

above place, honour, ease, wealth, life. Put praying into the habits

as Daniel did. âAs he did aforetime,â has much in it to give firmness

and fidelity in the hour of trial; much in it to remove hindrances and

master opposing circumstances.

One of Satanâs wiliest tricks is to destroy the best by the good.

Business and other duties are good, but we are so filled with these

that they crowd out and destroy the best. Prayer holds the citadel for

God, and if Satan can by any means weaken prayer he is a gainer so

far, and when prayer is dead the citadel is taken. We must keep prayer

as the faithful sentinel keeps guard, with sleepless vigilance. We

must not keep it half-starved and feeble as a baby, but we must keep

it in giant strength. Our prayer-chamber should have our freshest

strength, our calmest time, its hours unfettered, without obtrusion,

without haste. Private place and plenty of time are the life of

prayer. âTo kneel upon our knees three times a day and pray and give

thanks before God as we did aforetime,â is the very heart and soul of

religion, and makes men, like Daniel, of âan excellent spirit,â

âgreatly beloved in heaven.â

The greatness of prayer, involving as it does the whole man, in the

intensest form, is not realised without spiritual discipline. This

makes it hard work, and before this exacting and consuming effort our

spiritual sloth or feebleness stands abashed.

The simplicity of prayer, its child-like elements form a great

obstacle to true praying. Intellect gets in the way of the heart. The

child spirit only is the spirit of prayer. It is no holiday occupation

to make the man a child again. In song, in poetry, in memory he may

wish himself a child again, but in prayer he must be a child again in

reality. At his motherâs knee, artless, sweet, intense, direct,

trustful. With no shade of doubt, no temper to be denied. A desire

which burns and consumes which can only be voiced by a cry. It is no

easy work to have this child-life spirit of prayer.

If praying were but an hour in the closet, difficulties would face and

hinder even that hour, but praying is the whole life preparing for the

closet. How difficult it is to cover home and business, all the sweets

and all the bitters of life, with the holy atmosphere of the closet! A

holy life is the only preparation for prayer. It is just as difficult

to pray, as it is to live a holy life. In this we find a wall of

exclusion built around our closets; men do not love holy praying,

because they do not love and will not do holy living. Montgomery sets

forth the difficulties of true praying when he declares the sublimity

and simplicity of prayer.

Prayer is the simplest form of speech

That infant lips can try.

Prayer is the sublimest strains that reach

The Majesty on high.

This is not only good poetry, but a profound truth as to the loftiness

and simplicity of prayer. There are great difficulties in reaching the

exalted, angelic strains of prayer. The difficulty of coming down to

the simplicity of infant lips is not much less.

Prayer in the Old Testament is called wrestling. Conflict and skill,

strenuous, exhaustive effort are involved. In the New Testament we

have the terms striving, labouring fervently, fervent, effectual,

agony, all indicating intense effort put forth, difficulties overcome.

We, in our praises sing outâ

âWhat various hindrances we meet

In coming to a mercy seat.â

We also have learned that the gracious results secured by prayer are

generally proportioned to the outlay in removing the hindrances which

obstruct our soulâs high communion with God.

Christ spake a parable to this end, that men ought always to pray and

not faint. The parable of the importunate widow teaches the

difficulties in praying, how they are to be surmounted, and the happy

results which follow from valorous praying. Difficulties will always

obstruct the way to the closet as long as it remains true,

âThat Satan trembles when he sees

The weakest saint upon his knees.â

Courageous faith is made stronger and purer by mastering difficulties.

These difficulties but couch the eye of faith to the glorious prize

which is to be won by the successful wrestler in prayer. Men must not

faint in the contest of prayer, but to this high and holy work they

must give themselves, defying the difficulties in the way, and

experience more than an angelâs happiness in the results. Luther said:

âTo have prayed well is to have studied well.â More than that, to have

prayed well is to have fought well. To have prayed well is to have

lived well. To pray well is to die well.

Prayer is a rare gift, not a popular, ready gift. Prayer is not the

fruit of natural talents; it is the product of faith, of holiness, of

deeply spiritual character. Men learn to. pray as they learn to love.

Perfection in simplicity, in humility in faithâthese form its chief

ingredients. Novices in these graces are not adepts in prayer. It

cannot be seized upon by untrained hands; graduates in heavenâs

highest school of art can alone touch its finest keys, raise its

sweetest, highest notes. Fine material, free finish are requisite.

Master workmen are required, for mere journeymen cannot execute the

work of prayer.

The spirit of prayer should rule our spirits and our conduct. The

spirit of the prayer-chamber must control our lives or the closet hour

will be dull and sapless. Always praying in spirit; always acting in

the spirit of praying; these make our praying strong. The spirit of

every moment is that which imparts strength to the closet communion.

It is what we are out of the closet gives victory or brings defeat to

the closet. If the spirit of the world prevails in our non-closet

hours, the spirit of the world will prevail in our closet hours, and

that will be a vain and idle farce.

We must live for God out of the closet if we would meet God in the

closet. We must bless God by praying lives if we would have Godâs

blessing in the closet. We must do Godâs will in our lives if we would

have Godâs ear in the closet. We must listen to Godâs voice in public

if we would have God listen to our voice in private. God must have our

hearts out of the closet, if we would have Godâs presence in the

closet. If we would have God in the closet, God must have us out of

the closet. There is no way of praying to God, but by living to God.

The closet is not a confessional, simply, but the hour of holy

communion and high and sweet intercourse and of intense intercession..

Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from

God if they lived more obedient and well pleasing to God. We would

have more strength and time for the Divine work of intercession if we

did not have to expend so much strength and time settling up old

scores and paying our delinquent taxes. Our spiritual liabilities are

so greatly in excess of our spiritual assets that our closet time is

spent in taking out a decree of bankruptcy instead of being the time

of great spiritual wealth for us and for others. Our closets are too

much like the sign, âClosed for Repairs.â

John said of primitive Christian praying, âWhatsoever we ask we

receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things

which are pleasing in His sight.â We should note what illimitable

grounds were covered, what illimitable gifts were received by their

strong praying: âWhatsoeverââhow comprehensive the range and reception

of mighty praying; how suggestive the reasons for the ability to pray

and to have prayers answered. Obedience, but more than mere obedience,

doing the things which please God well. They went to their closets

made strong by their strict obedience and loving fidelity to God in

their conduct. Their lives were not only true and obedient, but they

were thinking about things above obedience, searching for and doing

things to make God glad. These can come with eager step and radiant

countenance to meet their Father in the closet, not simply to be

forgiven, but to be approved and to receive.

It makes much difference whether we come to God as a criminal or a

child; to be pardoned or to be approved; to settle scores or to be

embraced; for punishment or for favour. Our praying to be strong must

be buttressed by holy living. The name of Christ must be honoured by

our lives before it will honour our intercessions. The life of faith

perfects the prayer of faith.

Our lives not only give colour to our praying, but they give body to

it as well. Bad living makes bad praying. We pray feebly because we

live feebly. The stream of praying cannot rise higher than the

fountain of living. the closet force is made up of the energy which

flows from the confluent streams of living. The feebleness of living

throws its faintness into closet homes. We cannot talk to God strongly

when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made

holy to God when the life has not been holy to God. The Word of God

emphasises our conduct as giving value to our praying. âThen shalt

thou call and the Lord shalt answer, Thou shalt cry and He shall say,

Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the

putting forth the finger, and speaking vanity.â

Men are to pray âlifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.â We

are to pass the time of our sojourning here in fear if we would call

on the Father. We cannot divorce praying from conduct. âWhatsoever we

ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those

things that are pleasing in His sight.â âYe ask and receive not

because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lusts.â the

injunction of Christ, âWatch and pray,â is to cover and guard conduct

that we may come to our closets with all the force secured by a

vigilant guard over our lives.

Our religion breaks down oftenest and most sadly in our conduct.

Beautiful theories are marred by ugly lives. The most difficult as

well as the most impressive point in piety is to live it. Our praying

suffers as much as our religion from bad living. Preachers were

charged in primitive times to preach by their lives or preach not at

all. So Christians everywhere ought to be charged to pray by their

lives or pray not at all. Of course, the prayer ofâ repentance is

acceptable. But repentance means to quit doing wrong and learn to do

well. A repentance which does not produce a change in conduct is a

sham. Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We

have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not

rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit

praying or quit bad conduct. Cold, dead praying may exist with bad

conduct, but cold, dead praying is no praying in Godâs esteem. Our

praying advances in power as it rectifies the life. A life growing in

its purity and devotion will be a more prayerful life.

The pity is that so much of our praying is without object or aim. It

is without purpose. How much praying there is by men and women who

never abide in Christâhasty praying, sweet praying full of sentiment,

pleasing. praying, but not backed by a life wedded to Christ. Popular

praying! How much of this praying is from unsanctified hearts and

unhallowed lips! Prayers spring into life under the influence of some

great excitement, by some pressing emergency, through some popular

clamour, some great peril. But the conditions of prayer are not there.

We rush into Godâs presence and try to link Himâto our cause, inflame

Him with our passions, move Himâby our peril. All things are to be

prayed forâbut with clean hands, with absolute deference to Godâs will

and abiding in Christ. Prayerless praying by lips and hearts untrained

to prayer, by lives out of harmony with Jesus Christ; prayerless

praying, which has the form and motion of prayer but is without the

true heart of prayer, never moves God to an answer. It is of such

praying that James says: âYe have not because ye ask not; ye ask and

receive not, because ye ask amiss.â

The two great evilsânot asking, and asking in a wrong way. Perhaps the

greater evil is wrong asking, for it has in it the show of duty done,

of praying when there has been no prayingâa deceit, a fraud, a sham.

The times of the most praying are not really the times of the best

praying. The Pharisees prayed much, but they were actuated by vanity;

their praying was the symbol of their hypocrisy by which they made

Godâs house of prayer a den of robbers. Theirs was praying on state

occasionsâmechanical, perfunctory, professional, beautiful in words,

fragrant in sentiment, well ordered, well received by the ears that

heard, but utterly devoid of every element of real prayer.

The conditions of prayer are well ordered and clearâabiding in Christ;

in His name. One of the first necessities, if we are to grasp the

infinite possibilities of prayer, is to get rid of prayerless praying.

It is often beautiful in words and in execution; it has the drapery of

prayer in rich and costly form, but it lacks the soul of praying. We

fall so easily into the habit of prayerless service, of merely filling

a programme.

If men only prayed on all occasions and in every place where they go

through the motion! If there were only holy inflamed hearts back of

all these beautiful words and gracious forms! If there were always

uplifted hearts in these erect men who are uttering flawless but vain

words before God! If there were always reverent bended hearts when

bended knees are uttering words before God to please menâs ears!

There is nothing that will preserve the life of prayer; its vigour,

sweetness, obligations, seriousness and value, so much as a deep

conviction that prayer is an approach to God, a pleading with God, an

asking of God. Reality will then be in it; reverence will then be in

the attitude, in the place, and in the air. Faith will draw, kindle

and open. Formality and deadness cannot live in this high and

all-serious home of the soul.

Prayerless praying lacks the essential element of true praying; it is

not based on desire, and is devoid of earnestness and faith. Desire

burdens the chariot of prayer, and faith drives its wheels. Prayerless

praying has no burden, because no sense of need; no ardency, because

none of the vision, strength, or glow of faith. No mighty pressure to

prayer, no holding on to God with the deathless, despairing grasp, âI

will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.â No utter self-abandon,

lost in the throes of a desperate, pertinacious, and consuming plea:

âYet now if Thou wilt forgive their sinâif not, blot me, I pray Thee,

out of Thy book;â or âGive me Scotland, or I die.â Prayerless praying

stakes nothing on the issue, for it has nothing to stake. It comes

with empty hands, indeed, but they are listless hands as well as

empty. They have never learned the lesson of empty hands clinging to

the cross; this lesson to them has no form nor comeliness.

Prayerless praying has no heart in its praying. The lack of heart

deprives praying of its reality, and makes it an empty and unfit

vessel. Heart, soul, life must be in our praying; the heavens must

feel the force of our crying, and must be brought into oppressed

sympathy for our bitter and needy state, A need that oppresses us, and

has no relief but in our crying to God, must voice our praying.

Prayerless praying is insincere. It has no honesty at heart. We name

in words what we do not want in heart. Our prayers give formal

utterance to the things for which our hearts are not only not hungry,

but for which they really have no taste. We once heard an eminent and

saintly preacher, now in heaven, come abruptly and sharply on a

congregation that had just risen from prayer, with the question and

statement, âWhat did you pray for? If God should take hold of you and

shake you, and demand what you prayed for, you could not tell Him to

save your life what the prayer was that has just died from your lips.â

So it always is, prayerless praying has neither memory nor heart. A

mere form, a heterogeneous mass, an insipid compound, a mixture thrown

together for sound and to fill up, but with neither heart nor aim, is

prayerless praying. A dry routine, a dreary drudge, a dull and heavy

task is this prayerless praying.

But prayerless praying is much worse than either task or drudge, it

divorces praying from living; it utters its words against the world,

but with heart and life runs into the world; it prays for humility,

but nurtures pride; prays for self-denial, while indulging the flesh.

Nothing exceeds in gracious results true praying, but better not to

pray at all than to pray prayerless prayers, for they are but sinning,

and the worst of sinning is to sin on our knees.

The prayer habit is a good habit, but praying by dint of habit only is

a very bad habit. This kind of praying is not conditioned after Godâs

order, nor generated by Godâs power. It is not only a waste, a

perversion, and a delusion, but it is a prolific source of unbelief.

Prayerless praying gets no results. God is not reached, self is not

helped. It is better not to pray at all than to secure no results from

praying. Better for the one who prays, better for others. Men hear of

the prodigious results which are to be secured by prayer: the

matchless good promised in Godâs Word to prayer. These keen-eyed

worldlings or timid little faith ones mark the great discrepancy

between the results promised and results realised, and are led

necessarily to doubt the truth and worth of that which is so big in

promise and so beggarly in results. Religion and God are dishonoured,

doubt and unbelief are strengthened by much asking and no getting.

In contrast with this, what a mighty force prayerful praying is. Real

prayer helps God and man. Godâs Kingdom is advanced by it. The

greatest good comes to man by it. Prayer can do anything that God can

do. The pity is that we do not believe this as we ought, and we do not

put it to the test.

The deepest need of the Church today is not for any material or

external thing, but the deepest need is spiritual. Prayerless work

will never bring in the kingdom. We neglect to pray in the prescribed

way. We seldom enter the closet and shut the door for a season of

prayer. Kingdom interests are pressing on us thick and fast and we

must pray. Prayerless giving will never evangelise the world.âDr. A.

J. Gordon

The great subject of prayer, that comprehensive need of the

Christianâs life, is intimately bound up in the personal fulness of

the Holy Spirit. It is âby the One Spirit we have access unto the

Fatherâ (Eph. 2:18), and by the same Spirit, having entered the

audience chamber through the ânew and living way,â we are enabled to

pray in the will of God (Rom. 8:15, 26-27; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 6:18; Jude

20-21).

Here is the secret of prevailing prayer, to pray under a direct

inspiration of the Holy Spirit, whose petitions for us and through us

are always according to the Divine purpose, and hence certain of

answer. âPraying in the Holy Ghostâ is but co-operating with the will

of God, and such prayer is always victorious. How many Christians

there are who cannot pray, and who seek by effort, resolve, joining

prayer circles, etc., to cultivate in themselves the âholy art of

intercession,â and all to no purpose. Here for them and for all is the

only secret of a real prayer lifeââBe filled with the Spirit,â who is

âthe Spirit of grace and supplication.ââRev. J. Stuart Holden, M.A.

The preceding chapter closed with the statement that prayer can do

anything that God can do. It is a tremendous statement to make, but it

is a statement borne out by history and experience. If we are abiding

in Christâand if we abide in Him we are living in obedience to His

holy willâand approach God in His name, then there lie open before us

the infinite resources of the Divine treasurehouse.

The man who truly prays gets from God many things denied to the

prayerless man. The aim of all real praying is to get the thing prayed

for, as the childâs cry for bread has for its end the getting of

bread. This view removes prayer clean out of the sphere of religious

performances. Prayer is not acting a part or going through religious

motions. Prayer is neither official nor formal nor ceremonial, but

direct, hearty, intense. Prayer is not religious work which must be

gone through, and avails because well done. Prayer is the helpless and

needy child crying to the compassion of the Fatherâs heart and the

bounty and power of a Fatherâs hand. The answer is as sure to come as

the Fatherâs heart can be touched and the Fatherâs hand moved.

The object of asking is to receive. The aim of seeking is to find. The

purpose of knocking is to arouse attention and get in, and this is

Christâs iterated and reiterated asseveration that the prayer without

doubt will be answered, its end without doubt secured. Not by some

round-about way, but by getting the very thing asked for.

The value of prayer does not lie in the number of prayers, or the

length of prayers, but its value is found in the great truth that we

are privileged by our relations to God to unburden our desires and

make our requests known to God, and He will relieve by granting our

petitions. The child asks because the parent is in the habit of

granting the childâs requests. As the children of God we need

something and we need it badly, and we go to God for it. Neither the

Bible nor the child of God knows anything of that half-infidel

declaration, that we are to answer our own prayers. God answers

prayer. The true Christian does not pray to stir himself up, but his

prayer is the stirring up of himself to take hold of God. The heart of

faith knows nothing of that specious scepticism which stays the steps

of prayer and chills its ardour by whispering that prayer does not

affect God.

D. L. Moody used to tell a story of a little child whose father and

mother had died, and who was taken into another family. The first

night she asked whether she could pray as she used to do. They said:

âOh, yes!â So she knelt down and prayed as her mother had taught her;

and when that was ended, she added a little prayer of her own: âO God,

make these people as kind to me as father and mother were.â Then she

paused and looked up, as if expecting the answer, and then added: âOf

course you will.â How sweetly simple was that little oneâs faith! She

expected God to answer and âdo,â and âof courseâ she got her request,

and that is the spirit in which God invites us to approach Him.

In contrast to that incident is the story told of the quaint Yorkshire

class leader, Daniel Quorm, who was visiting a friend. One forenoon he

came to the friend and said, âI am sorry you have met with such a

great disappointment.â

âWhy, no,â said the man, âI have not met with any disappointment.â

âYes,â said Daniel, âyou were expecting something remarkable today.â

âWhat do you mean?â said the friend.

âWhy you prayed that you might be kept sweet and gentle all day long.

And, by the way things have been going, I see you have been greatly

disappointed.â

âOh,â said the man, âI thought you meant something particular.â

Prayer is mighty in its operations, and God never disappoints those

who put their trust and confidence in Him. They may have to wait long

for the answer, and they may not live to see it, but the prayer of

faith never misses its object.

âA friend of mine in Cincinnati had preached his sermon and sank back

in his chair, when he felt impelled to make another. appeal,â says Dr.

J. Wilbur Chapman. âA boy at the back of the church lifted his hand.

My friend left the pulpit and went down to him, and said, âTell me

about yourself.â The boy said, âI live in New York. I am a prodigal. I

have disgraced my fatherâs name and broken my motherâs heart. I ran

away and told them I would never come back until I became a Christian

or they brought me home dead.â That night there went from Cincinnati a

letter telling his father and mother that their boy had turned to God.

âSeven days later, in a black-bordered envelope, a reply came which

read: âMy dear boy, when I got the news that you had received Jesus

Christ the sky was overcast; your father was dead.â Then the letter

went on to tell how the father had prayed for his prodigal boy with

his last breath, and concluded, âYou are a Christian tonight because

your old father would not let you go.ââ

A fourteen-year-old boy was given a task by his father. It so happened

that a group of boys came along just then and wiled the boy away with

them, and so the work went undone. But the father came home that

evening and said, âFrank, did you do the work that I gave you?â âYes,

sir,â said Frank. He told an untruth, and his father knew it, but said

nothing. It troubled the boy, but he went to bed as usual. Next

morning his mother said to him, âYour father did not sleep all last

night.â

âWhy didnât he sleep?â asked Frank.

His mother said, âHe spent the whole night praying for you.â

This sent the arrow into his heart. He was deeply convicted of his

sin, and knew no rest until he had got right with God. Long afterward,

when the boy became Bishop Warne, he said that his decision for Christ

came from his fatherâs prayer that night. He saw his father keeping

his lonely and sorrowful vigil praying for his boy, and it broke his

heart. Said he, âI can never be sufficiently grateful to him for that

prayer.â

An evangelist, much used of God, has put on record that he commenced a

series of meetings in a little church of about twenty members who were

very cold and dead, and much divided. A little prayer-meeting was kept

up by two or three women. âI preached, and closed at eight oâclock,â

he says. âThere was no one to speak or pray. The next evening one man

spoke.

âThe next morning I rode six miles to a ministerâs study, and kneeled

in prayer. I went back, and said to the little church:

ââIf you can make out enough to board me, I will stay until God opens

the windows of heaven. God has promised to bless these means, and I

believe He will.â

âWithin ten days there were so many anxious souls that I met one

hundred and fifty of them at a time in an inquiry meeting, while

Christians were praying in another house of worship. Several hundred,

I think, were converted. It is safe to believe God.â

A mother asked the late John B. Gough to visit her son to win him to

Christ. Gough found the young manâs mind full of sceptical notions,

and impervious to argument. Finally, the young man was asked to pray,

just once, for light. He replied: âI do not know anything perfect to

whom or to which I could pray.â âHow about your motherâs love?â said

the orator. âIsnât that perfect? Hasnât she always stood by you, and

been ready to take you in, and care for you, when even your father had

really kicked you out?â The young man choked with emotion, and said,

âY-e-s, sir; that is so.â âThen pray to Loveâit will help you. Will

you promise?â He promised. That night the young man prayed in the

privacy of his room. He kneeled down, closed his eyes, and struggling

a moment uttered the words: âO Love.â Instantly as by a flash of

lightning, the old Bible text came to him: âGod is love,â and he said,

brokenly, âO God!â Then another flash of Divine truth, and a voice

said, âGod so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten

Son,ââand there, instantly, he exclaimed, âO Christ, Thou incarnation

of Divinest love, show me light and truth.â It was all over. He was in

the light of the most perfect peace. He ran downstairs, adds the

narrator of this incident, and told his mother that he was saved. That

young man is today an eloquent minister of Jesus Christ.

A water famine was threatened in Hakodate, Japan. Miss Dickerson, of

the Methodist Episcopal Girlsâ School, saw the water supply growing

less daily, and in one of the fall months appealed to the Board in New

York for help. There was no money on hand, and nothing was done. Miss

Dickerson inquired the cost of putting down an artesian well, but

found the expense too great to be undertaken. On the evening of

December 31st, when the water was almost exhausted, the teachers and

the older pupils met to pray for water, though they had no idea how

their prayer was to be answered. A couple of days later a letter was

received in the New York office which ran something like this:

âPhiladelphia, January 1st. It is six oâclock in the morning of New

Yearâs Day. All the other members of the family are asleep, but I was

awakened with a strange impression that some one, somewhere, is in

need of money which the Lord wants me to supply.â Enclosed was a

cheque for an amount which just covered the cost of the artesian well

and the piping of the water into the school buildings.

âI have seen Godâs hand stretched out to heal among the heathen in as

mighty wonder-working power as in apostolic times,â once said a

well-known minister to the writer. âI was preaching to two thousand

famine orphaned girls, at Kedgaum, India, at Ramabaiâs Mukti

(salvation) Mission. A swarm of serpents as venomous and deadly as the

reptile that smote Paul, suddenly raided the walled grounds, âsent of

Satan,â Ramabai said, and several of her most beautiful and faithful

Christian girls were smitten by them, two of them bitten twice. I saw

four of the very flower of her flock in convulsions at once,

unconscious and apparently in the agonies of death.

âRamabai believes the Bible with an implicit and obedient faith. There

were three of us missionaries there. She said: âWe will do just what

the Bible says, I want you to minister for their healing according to

James 1:14-18.â She led the way into the dormitory where her girls

were lying in spasms, and we laid our hands upon their heads and

prayed, and anointed them with oil in the name of the Lord. Each of

them was healed as soon as anointed and sat up and sang with faces

shining. That miracle and marvel among the heathen mightily confirmed

the word of the Lord, and was a profound and overpowering proclamation

of God.â

Some years ago, the record of a wonderful work of grace in connection

with one of the stations of the China Inland Mission attracted a good

deal of attention. Both the number and spiritual character of the

converts had been far greater than at other stations where the

consecration of the missionaries had been just as great at the more

fruitful place.

This rich harvest of souls remained a mystery until Hudson Taylor on a

visit to England discovered the secret. At the close of one of his

addresses a gentleman came forward to make his acquaintance. In the

conversation which followed, Mr. Taylor was surprised at the accurate

knowledge the man possessed concerning this inland China station. âBut

how is it,â Mr. Taylor asked, âthat you are so conversant with the

conditions of that work?â âOh!â he replied, âthe missionary there and

I are old college-mates; for years we have regularly corresponded; he

has sent me names of enquirers and converts, and these I have daily

taken to God in prayer.â

At last the secret was found! A praying man at home, praying

definitely, praying daily, for specific cases among the heathen. That

is the real intercessory missionary.

Hudson Taylor himself, as all the world knows, was a man who knew how

to pray and whose praying was blessed with fruitful answers. In the

story of his life, told by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, we find page

after page aglow with answered prayer. On his way out to China for the

first time, in 1853, when he was only twenty-one years of age, he had

a definite answer to prayer that was a great encouragement to his

faith. âThey .had just come through the Dampier Strait, but were not

yet out of sight of the islands. Usually a breeze would spring up

after sunset and last until about dawn. The utmost use was made of it,

but during the day they lay still with flapping sails, often drifting

back and losing a good deal of the advantage gained at night.â The

story continues in Hudson Taylorâs own words:

âThis happened notably on one occasion when we were in dangerous

proximity to the north of New Guinea. Saturday night had brought us to

a point some thirty miles off the land, and during the Sunday morning

service, which was held on deck, I could not fail to see that the

Captain looked troubled and frequently went over to the side of the

ship. When the service was ended I learnt from him the cause. A

four-knot current was carrying us toward some sunken reefs, and we

were already so near that it seemed improbable that we should get

through the afternoon in safety. After dinner, the long boat was put

out and all hands endeavored, without success, to turn the shipâs head

from the shore.

âAfter standing together on the deck for some time in silence, the

Captain said to me:

ââWell, we have done everything that can be done. We can only await

the result.â

âA thought occurred to me, and I replied: âNo, there is one thing we

have not done yet.â

ââWhat is that?â he queried.

ââFour of us on board are Christians. Let us each retire to his own

cabin, and in agreed prayer ask the Lord to give us immediately a

breeze. He can as easily send it now as at sunset.â

âThe Captain complied with this proposal. I went and spoke to the

other two men, and after prayer with the carpenter, we all four

retired to wait upon God. I had a good but very brief season in

prayer, and then felt so satisfied that our request was granted that I

could not continue asking, and very soon went up again on deck. The

first officer, a godless man, was in charge. I went over and asked him

to let down the clews or corners of the mainsail, which had been drawn

up in order to lessen the useless flapping of the sail against the

rigging.

ââWhat would be the good of that?â he answered roughly.

âI told him we had been asking a wind from God; that it was coming

immediately; and we were so near the reef by this time that there was

not a minute to lose.

âWith an oath and a look of contempt, he said he would rather see a

wind than hear of it.

âBut while he was speaking I watched his eye, following it up to the

royal, and there, sure enough, the corner of the topmost sail was

beginning to tremble in the breeze.

ââDonât you see the wind is coming? Look at the royal!â I exclaimed.

ââNo, it is only a catâs paw,â he rejoined (a mere puff of wind).

ââCatâs paw or not,â I cried, âpray let down the mainsail and give us

the benefit.â

âThis he was not slow to do. In another minute the heavy tread of the

men on deck brought up the Captain from his cabin to see what was the

matter. The breeze had indeed come! In a few minutes we were ploughing

our way at six or seven knots an hour through the water ... and though

the wind was sometimes unsteady, we did not altogether lose it until

after passing the Pelew Islands.

âThus God encouraged me,â adds this praying saint, âere landing on

Chinaâs shores to bring every variety of need to Him in prayer, and to

expect that He would honour the name of the Lord Jesus and give the

help each emergency required.â

In an address at Cambridge some time ago (reported in âThe Life of

Faith,â April 3rd, 1912), Mr. S. D. Gordon told in his own inimitable

way the story of a man in his own country, to illustrate from real

life the fact of the reality of prayer, and that it is not mere

talking.

âThis man,â said Mr. Gordon, âcame of an old New England family, a bit

farther back an English family. He was a giant in size, and a keen man

mentally, and a university-trained man. He had gone out West to live,

and represented a prominent district in our House of Congress,

answering to your House of Commons. He was a prominent leader there.

He was reared in a Christian family, but he was a sceptic, and used to

lecture against Christianity. He told me he was fond, in his lectures,

of proving, as he thought, conclusively, that there was no God. That

was the type of his infidelity.

âOne day he told me he was sitting in the Lower House of Congress. It

was at the time of a Presidential Election, and when party feeling ran

high. One would have thought that was the last place where a man would

be likely to think about spiritual things. He said: âI was sitting in

my seat in that crowded House and that heated atmosphere, when a

feeling came to me that the God, whose existence I thought I could

successfully disprove, was just there above me, looking down on me,

and that He was displeased with me, and with the way I was doing. I

said to myself, âThis is ridiculous, I guess Iâve been working too

hard. Iâll go and get a good meal and take a long walk and shake

myself, and see if that will take this feeling away.ââ He got his

extra meal, took a walk, and came back to his seat, but the impression

would not be shaken off that God was there and was displeased with

him. He went for a walk, day after day, but could never shake the

feeling off. Then he went back to his constituency in his State, he

said, to arrange matters there. He had the ambition to be the Governor

of his State, and his party was the dominant party in the State, and,

as far as such things could be judged, he was in the line to become

Governor there, in one of the most dominant States our Central West.

He said: âI went home to fix that thing up as far as I could, and to

get ready for it. But I had hardly reached home and exchanged

greetings, when my wife, who was an earnest Christian woman, said to

me that a few of them had made a little covenant of prayer that I

might become a Christian.â He did not want her to know the experience

that he had just been going through, and so he said as carelessly as

he could, âWhen did this thing begin, this praying of yours?â She

named the date. Then he did some very quick thinking, and he knew, as

he thought back, that it was the day on the calendar when that strange

impression came to him for the first time.

âHe said to me: âI was tremendously shaken. I wanted to be honest. I

was perfectly honest in not believing in God, and I thought I was

right. But if what she said was true, then merely as a lawyer sifting

his evidence in a case, it would be good evidence that there was

really something in their prayer. I was terrifically shaken, and

wanted to be honest, and did not know what to do. That same night I

went to a little Methodist chapel, and if somebody had known how to

talk with me, I think I should have accepted Christ that night.â Then

he said that the next night he went back again to that chapel, where

meetings were being held each night, and there he kneeled at the

altar, and yielded his great strong will to the will of God. Then he

said,â âI knew I was to preach,â and he is preaching still in a

Western State. That is half of the story. I also talked with his

wifeâI wanted to put the two halves together, so as to get the bit of

teaching in it allâand she told me this. She had been a Christianâwhat

you call a nominal Christianâa strange confusion of terms. Then there

came a time when she was led into a full surrender of her life to the

Lord Jesus Christ. Then she said, âAt once there came a great

intensifying of desire that my husband might be a Christian, and we

made that little compact to pray for himâeach day until he became a

Christian. That night I was kneeling at my bedside before going to

rest, praying for my husband, praying very earnestly and then a voice

said to me, âAre you willing for the results that will come if your

husband is converted?ââ The little message was so very distinct that

she said she was frightened; she had never had such an experience. But

she went on praying still more earnestly, and again there came the

quiet voice, âAre you willing for the consequences?â And again there

was a sense of being startled, frightened. But she still went on

praying, and wondering what this meant, and a third time the quiet

voice came more quietly than ever as she described it, âAre you

willing for the consequences?â

âThen she told me she said with great earnestness, âO God, I am

willing for anything Thou dost think good, if only my husband may know

Thee, and become a true Christian man.â She said that instantly, when

that prayer came from her lips, there came into her heart a wonderful

sense of peace, a great peace that she could not explain, a âpeace

that passeth understanding,â and from that momentâit was the very

night of the covenant, the night when her husband had that first

strange experienceâthe assurance never left her that he would accept

Christ. But all those weeks she prayed with the firm assurance that

the result was coming. What were the consequences? They were of a kind

that I think no one would think small. She was the wife of a man in a

very prominent political position; she was the wife of a man who was

in the line of becoming the first official of his State, and she

officially the first lady sociallyâ of that State, with all the honour

that that social standing would imply. Now she is the wife of a

Methodist preacher, with her home changed every two or three years,

she going from this place to that, a very different social position,

and having a very different income that she would otherwise have had.

Yet I never met a woman who had more of the wonderful peace of God in

her heart and of the light of God in her face, that that woman.â

And Mr. Gordonâs comment on that incident is this: âNow, you can see

at once that there was no change in the purpose of God through that

prayer. The prayer worked out His purpose; it did not change it. But

the womanâs surrender gave the opportunity of working out the will

that God wanted to work out. If we might give ourselves to Him and

learn His will, and use all our strength in learning His will and

bending to His will, then we would begin to pray, and there is simply

nothing that could resist the tremendous power of the prayer. Oh for

more men who will be simple enough to get in touch with God, and give

Him the mastery of the whole life, and learn His will, and then give

themselves, as Jesus gave Himself, to the sacred service of

intercession!â

To the man or woman who is acquainted with God and who knows how to

pray, there is nothing remarkable in the answers that come. They are

sure of being heard, since they ask in accordance with what they know

to be the mind and the will of God. Dr. William Burr, Bishop of Europe

in the Methodist Episcopal Church, tells that a few years ago, when he

visited their Boysâ School in Vienna, he found that although the year

was not up, all available funds had been spent. He hesitated to make a

special appeal to his friends in America. He counselled with the

teachers. They took the matter to God in earnest and continued prayer,

believing that He would grant their request. Ten days later Bishop

Burt was in Rome, and there came to him a letter from a friend in New

York, which read substantially thus: âAs I went to my office on

Broadway one morning (and the date was the very one on which the

teachers were praying), a voice seemed to tell me that you were in

need of funds for the Boysâ School in Vienna. I very gladly enclose a

cheque for the work.â The cheque was for the amount needed. There had

been no human communication between Vienna and New York. But while

they were yet speaking God answered them.

Some time ago there appeared in an English religious weekly the report

of an incident narrated by a well-known preacher in the course of an

address to children. For the truth of the story he was able to vouch.

A child lay sick in a country cottage, and her younger sister heard

the doctor say, as he left the house, âNothing but a miracle can save

her.â The little girl went to her money-box, took out the few coins it

contained, and in perfect simplicity of heart went to shop after shop

in the village street, asking, âPlease, I want to buy a miracle.â

From each she came away disappointed. Even the local chemist had to

say, âMy dear, we donât sell miracles here.â But outside his door two

men were talking, and had overheard the childâs request. One was a

great doctor from a London hospital, and he asked her to explain what

she wanted. When he understood the need, he hurried with her to the

cottage, examined the sick girl and said to the mother: âIt is

trueâonly a miracle can save her, and it must be performed at once.â

He got his instruments, performed the operation, and the patientâs

life was saved.

D. L. Moody gives this illustration of the power of prayer: âWhile in

Edinburgh, a man was pointed out to me by a friend, who said: âThat

man is chairman of the Edinburgh Infidel Club.â I went and sat beside

him and said, âMy friend, I am glad to see you in our meeting. Are you

concerned about your welfare?â

ââI do not believe in any hereafter.â

ââWell, just get down on your knees and let me pray for you.â

ââNo, I do not believe in prayer.â

âI knelt beside him as he sat, and prayed. He made a great deal of

sport of it. A year after I met him again. I took him by the hand and

said: âHasnât God answered my prayer yet?â

ââThere is no God. If you believe in one who answers prayers, try your

hand on me.â

ââWell, a great many are now praying for you, and Godâs time will.

come, and I believe you will be saved yet.â

âSome time afterwards I got a letter from a leading barrister in

Edinburgh telling me that my infidel friend had come to Christ, and

that seventeen of his club men had followed his example.

âI did not know how God would answer prayer, but I knew He would

answer. Let us come boldly to God.â

Robert Louis Stevenson tells a vivid story of a storm at sea. The

passengers below were greatly alarmed, as the waves dashed over the

vessel. At last one of them, against orders, crept to the deck, and

came to the pilot, who was lashed to the wheel which he was turning

without flinching. The pilot caught sight of the terror-stricken man,

and gave him a reassuring smile. Below went the passenger, and

comforted the others by saying, âI have seen the face of the pilot,

and he smiled. All is well.â

That is how we feel when through the gateway of prayer we find our way

into the Fatherâs presence. We see His face, and we know that all is

well, since His hand is on the helm of events, and âeven the winds and

the waves obey Him.â When we live in fellowship with Him, we come with

confidence into His presence, asking in the full confidence of

receiving and meeting with the justification of our faith.

XII

Let your hearts be much set on revivals of religion. Never forget that

the churches have hitherto existed and prospered by revivals; and that

if they are to exist and prosper in time to come, it must be by the

same cause which has from the first been their glory and defence.âJoel

Hawes

If any minister can be satisfied without conversions, he shall have no

conversions.âC. H. Spurgeon

I do not believe that my desires for a revival were ever half so

strong as they ought to be; nor do I see how a minister can help being

in a âconstant feverâ when his Master is dishonoured and souls are

destroyed in so many ways.âEdward Payson

An aged saint once came to the pastor at night and said: âWe are about

to have a revival.â He was asked why he knew so. His answer was, âI

went into the stable to take care of my cattle two hours ago, and

there the Lord has kept me in prayer until just now. And I feel that

we are going to be revived.â It was the commencement of a revival.âH.

C. Fish

It has been said that the history of revivals is the history of

religion, and no one can study their history without being impressed

with their mighty influence upon the destiny of the race. To look back

over the progress of the Divine Kingdom upon earth is to review

revival periods which have come like refreshing showers upon dry and

thirsty ground, making the desert to blossom as the rose, and bringing

new eras of spiritual life and activity just when the Church had

fallen under the influence of the apathy of the times, and needed to

be aroused to a new sense of her duty and responsibility. âFrom one

point of view, and that not the least important,â writes Principal

Lindsay, in âThe Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries,â âthe

history of the Church flows on from one time of revival to another,

and whether we take the awakenings in the old Catholic, the mediaeval,

or the modern Church, these have always been the work of men specially

gifted with the power of seeing and declaring the secrets of the

deepest Christian life, and the effect of their work has always been

proportionate to the spiritual receptivity of the generation they have

spoken to.â

As God, from the beginning, has wrought prominently through revivals,

there can be no denial of the fact that revivals are a part of the

Divine plan. The Kingdom of our Lord has been advanced in large

measure by special seasons of gracious and rapid accomplishment of the

work of conversion, and it may be inferred, therefore, that the means

through which God has worked in other times will be employed in our

time to produce similar results. âThe quiet conversion of one sinner

after another, under the ordinary ministry of the Gospel,â says one

writer on the subject, âmust always be regarded with feelings of

satisfaction and gratitude by the ministers and disciples of Christ;

but a periodical manifestation of the simultaneous conversion of

thousands is also to be desired, because of its adaptation to afford a

visible and impressive demonstration that God has made that same

Jesus, Who was rejected and crucified, both Lord and Christ; and that,

in virtue of His Divine Mediatorship, He has assumed the royal sceptre

of universal supremacy, and âmust reign till all His enemies be made

His footstool.â It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that, from time

to time, He will repeat that which on the day of Pentecost formed the

con-elusive and crowning evidence of His Messiahship and Sovereignty;

and, by so doing, startle the slumbering souls of careless worldlings,

gain the attentive ear of the unconverted, and, in a remarkable way,

break in upon those brilliant dreams of earthly glory, grandeur,

wealth, power and happiness, which the rebellious and God-forgetting

multitude so fondly cherish. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit

forms at once a demonstrative proof of the completeness and acceptance

of His once offering of Himself as a sacrifice for sin, and a

prophetic âearnestâ of the certainty that He âshall appear the second

time without sin unto salvation,â to judge the world in

righteousness.â

And that revivals are to be expected, proceeding, as they do, from the

right use of the appropriate means, is a fact which needs not a little

emphasis in these days, when the material is exalted at the expense of

the spiritual, and when ethical standards are supposed to be supreme.

That a revival is not a miracle was powerfully taught by Charles G.

Finney. There might, he said, be a miracle among its antecedent

causes, or there might not. The Apostles employed miracles simply as a

means by which they arrested attention to their message, and

established its Divine authority. âBut the miracle was not the

revival. The miracle was one thing; the revival that followed it was

quite another thing. The revivals in the Apostlesâ days were connected

with miracles, but they were not miracles.â All revivals are dependent

upon God, but in revivals, as in other things, He invites and requires

the assistance of man, and the full result is obtained when there is

co-operation between the Divine and the human. In other words, to

employ a familiar phrase, God alone can save the world, but Cod cannot

save the world alone. God and man unite for the task, the response of

the Divine being invariably in proportion to the desire and the effort

of the human.

This co-operation, then, being necessary, what is the duty which we,

as co-workers with God, require to undertake? First of all, and most

important of allâthe point which we desire particularly to

emphasiseâwe must give ourselves to prayer. âRevivals,â as Dr. J.

Wilbur Chapman reminds us, âare born in prayer. When Wesley prayed

England was revived; when Knox prayed, Scotland was refreshed; when

the Sunday School teachers of Tannybrook prayed, 11,000 young people

were added to the Church in a year. Whole nights of prayer have always

been succeeded by whole days of soul-winning.â

When D. L. Moodyâs Church in Chicago lay in ashes, he went over to

England, in 1872, not to preach, but to listen to others preach while

his new church was being built. One Sunday morning he was prevailed

upon to preach in a London pulpit. But somehow the spiritual

atmosphere was lacking. He confessed afterwards that he never had such

a hard time preaching in his life. Everything was perfectly dead, and,

as he vainly tried to preach, he said to himself, âWhat a fool I was

to consent to preach! I came here to listen, and here I am preaching.â

Then the awful thought came to him that he had to preach again at

night, and only the fact that he had given the promise to do so kept

him faithful to the engagement. But when Mr. Moody entered the pulpit

at night, and faced the crowded congregation, he was conscious of a

new atmosphere. âThe powers of an unseen world seemed to have fallen

upon the audience.â As he drew towards the close of his sermon he

became emboldened to give out an invitation, and as he concluded he

said, âIf there is a man or woman here who will tonight accept Jesus

Christ, please stand up.â At once about 500 people rose to their feet.

Thinking that there must be some mistake, he asked the people to be

seated, and then, in order that there might be no possible

misunderstanding, he repeated the invitation, couching it in even more

definite and difficult terms. Again the same number rose. Still

thinking that something must be wrong, Mr. Moody, for the second time,

asked the standing men an women to be seated, and then he invited all

who really meant to accept Christ to pass into the vestry. Fully 500

people did as requested, and that was the beginning of a revival in

that church and neighbourhood, which brought Mr. Moody back from

Dublin, a few days later, that he might assist the wonderful work of

God.

The sequel, however, must be given, or our purpose in relating the

incident will be defeated. When Mr. Moody preached at the morning

service there was a woman in the congregation who had an invalid

sister. On her return home she told the invalid that the preacher had

been a Mr. Moody from Chicago, and on hearing this she turned pale.

âWhat,â she said, âMr. Moody from Chicago l I read about him some time

ago in an American paper, and I have been praying God to send him to

London, and to our church. If I had known he was going to preach this

morning I would have eaten no breakfast. I would have spent the whole

time in prayer. Now, sister, go out of the room, lock the door, send

me no dinner; no matter who comes, donât let them see me. I am going

to spend the whole afternoon in prayer.â And so while Mr. Moody stood

in the pulpit that had been like an ice-chamber in the morning, the

bedridden saint was holding him up before God, and God, who ever

delights to answer prayer, poured out His Spirit in mighty power.

The God of revivals who answered the prayer of His child for Mr.

Moody, is willing to hear and to answer the faithful, believing

prayers of His people today. Wherever Godâs conditions are met there

the revival is sure to fall. Professor Thos. Nicholson, of Cornell

College, U.S.A., relates an experience on his first circuit that

impresses anew the old lesson of the place of prayer in the work of

God.

There had not been a revival on that circuit in years, and things were

not spiritually hopeful. During more than four weeks the pastor had

preached faithfully, visited from house to house, in stores, shops,

and out-of-the-way places, and had done everything he could. The fifth

Monday night saw many of the official members at lodges, but only a

corporalâs guard at the church.

From that meeting the pastor went home, cast down, but not in despair.

He resolved to spend that night in prayer. âLocking the door, he took

Bible and hymn book and began to inquire more diligently of the Lord,

though the meetings had been the subject of hours of earnest prayer.

Only God knows the anxiety and the faithful, prayerful study of that

night. Near the dawn a great peace and a full assurance came that God

would surely bless the plan which had been decided upon, and a text

was chosen which he felt sure was of the Lord. Dropping upon the bed,

the pastor slept about two hours, then rose, hastily breakfasted, and

went nine miles to the far side of the circuit to visit some sick

people. All day the assurance increased.

âToward night a pouring rain set in, the roads were heavy and we

reached home, wet, supperless, and a little late, only to find no fire

in the church, the lights unlit, and no signs of service. The janitor

had concluded that the rain would prevent the service. We changed the

order, rang the bell, and prepared for war. Three young men formed the

congregation, but in that âfull assuranceâ the pastor delivered the

message which had been prayed out on the preceding night, as earnestly

and as fully as if the house had been crowded, then made a personal

appeal to each young man in turn. Two yielded, and testified before

the meeting closed.

âThe tired pastor went to a sweet rest, and next morning, rising a

little later than usual, learned that one of the young men was going

from store to store throughout the town telling of his wonderful

deliverance, and exhorting the people to salvation. Night after night

conversions occurred, until in two weeks we heard 144 people testify

in forty-five minutes. All three points of that circuit saw a blaze of

revival that winter, and family after family came into the church,

unto the membership was more than trebled.

âOut of that meeting one convert is a successful pastor in the

Michigan Conference, another is the wife of one of the choicest of our

pastors, and a third was in the ministry for a number of years, and

then went to another denomination, where he is faithful unto this day.

Probably none of the members ever knew of the pastorâs night of

prayer, but he verily believes that God somehow does for the man who

thus prays, what He does not do for the man who does not pray, and he

is certain that âmore things are wrought by prayer than this world

dreams of.ââ

All the true revivals have been born in prayer. When Godâs people

become so concerned about the state of religion that they lie on their

faces day and night in earnest supplication, the blessing will be sure

to fail.

It is the same all down the ages. Every revival of which we have any

record has been bathed in prayer. Take, for example, the wonderful

revival in Shotts (Scotland) in 1630. The fact that several of the

then persecuted ministers would take a part in solemn convocation

having become generally known, a vast concourse of godly persons

assembled on this occasion from all quarters of the country, and

several days were spent in social prayer, preparatory to the service.

In the evening, instead of retiring to rest, the multitude divided

themselves into little bands and spent the whole night in supplication

and praise. The Monday was consecrated to thanksgiving, a practice not

then common, and proved the great days of the feast. After much

entreaty, John Livingston, chaplain to the Countess of Wigtown, a

young man and not ordained, agreed to preach. He had spent the night

in prayer and conferenceâbut as the hour of assembling approached his

heart quailed at the thought of addressing so many aged and

experienced saints, and he actually fled from the duty he had

undertaken. But just as the kirk of Shotts was vanishing from his

view, those words, âWas I ever a barren wilderness or a land of

darkness?â were borne in upon his mind with such force as compelled

him to return to the work.

He took for his text Ezekiel 36:25, 26, and discoursed with great

power for about two hours. Five hundred conversions were believed to

have occurred under that one sermon, thus prefaced by prayer. âIt was

the sowing of a seed through Clydesdale, so that many of the most

eminent Christians of that country could date their conversion, or

some remarkable confirmation of their case, from that day.â

Of Richard Baxter it has been said that, âhe stained his study walls

with praying breath; and after becoming thus anointed with the unction

of the Holy Ghost he sent a river of living water over Kidderminster.â

Whitfield once thus prayed, âO Lord, give me souls or take my soul.â

After much closet pleading, âhe once went to the Devilâs fair and took

more than a thousand souls out of the paw of the lion in a single

day.â

Mr. Finney says: âI once knew a minister who had a revival fourteen

winters in succession. I did not know how to account for it till I saw

one of his members get up in a prayer meeting and make a confession.

âBrethren,â he said, âI have been long in the habit of praying every

Saturday night till after midnight for the descent of the Holy Ghost

among us. And now, brethren (and he began to weep), I confess that I

have neglected it for two or three weeks.â The secret was out. That

minister had a praying church.â

And so we might go on multiplying illustration upon illustration to

show the place of prayer in revival and to demonstrate that every

mighty movement of the Spirit of God had its source in the

prayer-chamber. The lesson of it all is this, that as workers together

with God we must regard ourselves as in not a little measure

responsible for the conditions which prevail around us today. Are we

concerned about the coldness of the Church? Do we grieve over the lack

of conversions? Does our soul go out to God in midnight cries for the

outpouring of His Spirit?

If not, part of the blame lies at our door. If we do our part, God

will do His. Around us is a world lost in sin, above us is a God

willing and able to save; it is ours to build the bridge that links

heaven and earth, and prayer is the mighty instrument that does the

work.

And so the old cry comes to us with insistent voice, âPray, brethren,

pray.â

XIII

Lord Jesus, cause me to know in my daily experience the glory and

sweetness of Thy name, and then teach me how to use it in my prayer,

so that I may be even like Israel, a prince prevailing with God. Thy

name is my passport, and secures me access; Thy name is my plea, and

secures me answer; Thy name is my honour and secures me glory. Blessed

Name, Thou art honey in my mouth, music in my ear, heaven in my heart,

and all in all to my being!âC. H. Spurgeon

I do not mean that every prayer we offer is answered exactly as we

desire it to be. Were this the case, it would mean that we would be

dictating to God, and prayer would degenerate into a mere system of

begging. Just as an earthly father knows what is best for his

childrenâs welfare, so does God take into consideration the particular

needs of His human family, and meets them out of His wonderful

storehouse. If our petitions are in accordance with His will, and if

we seek His glory in the asking, the answers will come in ways that

will astonish us and fill our hearts with songs of thanksgiving. God

is a rich and bountiful Father, and He does not forget His children,

nor withhold from them anything which it would be to their advantage

to receive.âJ. Kennedy Maclean

The example of our Lord in the matter of prayer is one which His

followers might well copy. Christ prayed much and He taught much about

prayer. His life and His works, as well as His teaching, are

illustrations of the nature and necessity of prayer. He lived and

laboured to answer prayer. But the necessity of importunity in prayer

was the emphasised point in His teaching about prayer. He taught not

only that men must pray, but that they must persevere in prayer.

He taught in command and precept the idea of energy and earnestness in

praying. He gives to our efforts graduation and climax. We are to ask,

but to the asking we must add seeking, and seeking must pass into the

full force of effort in knocking. The pleading soul must be aroused to

effort by Godâs silence. Denial, instead of abating or abashing, must

arouse its latent energies and kindle anew its highest ardor.

In the Sermon on the Mount, in which He lays down the cardinal duties

of His religion, He not only gives prominence to prayer in general and

secret prayer in particular, but He sets apart a distinct and

different section to give weight to importunate prayer. To prevent any

discouragement in praying He lays as a basic principle the fact of

Godâs great fatherly willingnessâthat Godâs willingness to answer our

prayers exceeds our willingness to give good and necessary things to

our children, just as far as Godâs ability, goodness and perfection

exceed our infirmities and evil. As a further assurance and stimulant

to prayer Christ gives the most positive and iterated assurance of

answer to prayers. He declares: âAsk and it shah be given to you; seek

and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.â And to make

assurance doubly sure, He adds: âFor every one that asketh, receiveth;

and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shah be

opened.â

Why does He unfold to us the Fatherâs loving readiness to answer the

prayers of His children? Why does He asseverate so strongly that

prayer will be answered? Why does He repeat that positive asseveration

six times? Why does Christ on two distinct occasions go over the same

strong promises, iterations, and reiterations in regard to the

certainty of prayer being answered? Because He knew that there would

be delay in many an answer which would call for importunate pressing,

and that if our faith did not have the strongest assurance of Godâs

willingness to answer, delay would break it down. And that our

spiritual sloth would come in, under the guise of submission, and say

it is not Godâs will to give what we ask, and so cease praying and

lose our case. After Christ had put Godâs willingness to answer prayer

in a very clear and strong light, He then urges to importunity, and

that every unanswered prayer, instead of abating our pressure should

only increase intensity and energy. If asking does not get, let asking

pass into the settled attitude and spirit of seeking. If seeking does

not secure the answer, let seeking pass on to the more energetic and

clamorous plea of knocking. We must persevere till we get it. No

failure here if our faith does not break down.

As our great example in prayer, our Lord puts love as a primary

conditionâa love that has purified the heart from all the elements of

hate, revenge, and ill will. Love is the supreme condition of prayer,

a life inspired by love. The 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians is the

law of prayer as well as the law of love. The law of love is the law

of prayer, and to master this chapter from the epistle of St. Patti is

to learn the first and fullest condition of prayer.

Christ taught us also to approach the Father in His name. That is our

passport. It is in His name that we are to make our petitions known.

âVerily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works

that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;

because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name,

that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye

shall ask Me anything in My name, that will I do.â

How wide and comprehensive is that âwhatsoever.â There is no limit to

the power of that name. âWhatsoever ye shall ask.â That is the Divine

declaration, and it opens up to every praying child a vista of

infinite resource and possibility.

And that is our heritage. All that Christ has may become ours if we

obey the conditions. The one secret is prayer. The place of revealing

and of equipment, of grace and of power, is the prayer-chamber, and as

we meet there with God we shall not only win our triumphs but we shall

also grow in the likeness of our Lord and become His living witnesses

to men.

Without prayer the Christian life, robbed of its sweetness and its

beauty, becomes cold and formal and dead; but rooted in the secret

place where God meets and walks and talks with His own, it grows into

such a testimony of Divine power that all men will feel its influence

and be touched by the warmth of its love. Thus, resembling our Lord

and Master, we shall be used for the glory of God and the salvation of

our fellow men.

And that, surely is the purpose of all real prayer and the end of all

true service.

Indexes

Index of Scripture References

Index of Names

Livros Grátis
( http://www.livrosgratis.com.br )
 
Milhares de Livros para Download:
 
Baixar livros de Administração
Baixar livros de Agronomia
Baixar livros de Arquitetura
Baixar livros de Artes
Baixar livros de Astronomia
Baixar livros de Biologia Geral
Baixar livros de Ciência da Computação
Baixar livros de Ciência da Informação
Baixar livros de Ciência Política
Baixar livros de Ciências da Saúde
Baixar livros de Comunicação
Baixar livros do Conselho Nacional de Educação - CNE
Baixar livros de Defesa civil
Baixar livros de Direito
Baixar livros de Direitos humanos
Baixar livros de Economia
Baixar livros de Economia Doméstica
Baixar livros de Educação
Baixar livros de Educação - Trânsito
Baixar livros de Educação Física
Baixar livros de Engenharia Aeroespacial
Baixar livros de Farmácia
Baixar livros de Filosofia
Baixar livros de Física
Baixar livros de Geociências
Baixar livros de Geografia
Baixar livros de História
Baixar livros de Línguas

Baixar livros de Literatura
Baixar livros de Literatura de Cordel
Baixar livros de Literatura Infantil
Baixar livros de Matemática
Baixar livros de Medicina
Baixar livros de Medicina Veterinária
Baixar livros de Meio Ambiente
Baixar livros de Meteorologia
Baixar Monografias e TCC
Baixar livros Multidisciplinar
Baixar livros de Música
Baixar livros de Psicologia
Baixar livros de Química
Baixar livros de Saúde Coletiva
Baixar livros de Serviço Social
Baixar livros de Sociologia
Baixar livros de Teologia
Baixar livros de Trabalho
Baixar livros de Turismo
 
 