Prayer

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his
commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

1 John 3:22

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Prayer is vital to a robust Christian life and is something that I personally need to cultivate. Jesus said that whatsoever we ask in His name He will do. I've included the above verse to remind us that there are some conditions for getting what we ask for--we must be doing God's will. James echoes this sentiment when he says, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:3). I pray that the following treatise on the necessity of prayer will stir a longing within us to seriously pray to the Lord in heaven. Love in Christ, Tracy.
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Digitized by Harry Plantinga, 1994.
This text is in the public domain.
From the uncopyrighted 1976 Baker Book House edition,
ISBN 0-8010-0659-7.



                    THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER
                         E.M. BOUNDS

The Necessity of Prayer and other books by E.M. Bounds are 
unfailing wells for a lifetime of spiritual water-drawing. His 
wise counsel on prayer are words that originated on the anvil of 
experience.

His thoughts are inspiring, dynamic, and forthright. Probably no 
one has ever written more convincingly on the subject of prayer 
than E.M. Bounds. The Necessity of Prayer will help today's 
earnest Christians to discover the mystery and the majesty of 
prayer.




                    The Necessity of Prayer
                       Edward M. Bounds



                           FOREWORD

EDWARD McKENDREE BOUNDS did not merely pray well that he might 
write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world 
were upon him. He prayed, for long years, upon subjects which the 
easy-going Christian rarely gives a thought, and for objects which 
men of less thought and faith are always ready to call impossible. 
From his solitary prayer-vigils, year by year, there arose 
teaching equaled by few men in modern Christian history. He wrote 
transcendently about prayer, because he was himself, transcendent 
in its practice.
     As breathing is a physical reality to us so prayer was a 
reality for Bounds. He took the command, "Pray without ceasing" 
almost as literally as animate nature takes the law of the reflex 
nervous system, which controls our breathing.
     Prayer-books -- real text-books, not forms of prayer -- were 
the fruit of this daily spiritual exercise. Not brief articles for 
the religious press came from his pen -- though he had been 
experienced in that field for years -- not pamphlets, but books 
were the product and result. He was hindered by poverty, 
obscurity, loss of prestige, yet his victory was not wholly 
reserved until his death.
     In 1907, he gave to the world two small editions. One of 
these was widely circulated in Great Britain. The years following 
up to his death in 1913 were filled with constant labour and he 
went home to God leaving a collection of manuscripts. His letters 
carry the request that the present editor should publish these 
products of his gifted pen.
     The preservation of the Bounds manuscripts to the present 
time has clearly been providential. The work of preparing them for 
the press has been a labour of love, consuming years of effort.
     These books are unfailing wells for a lifetime of spiritual 
water-drawing. They are hidden treasures, wrought in the darkness 
of the dawn and the heat of the noon, on the anvil of experience, 
and beaten into wondrous form by the mighty stroke of the Divine. 
They are living voices whereby he, being dead, yet speaketh.
                                          -- C.C.

     The above Foreword was written by Claude Chilton, Jr., an 
ardent admirer of Dr. Bounds, and to whom we owe many obligations 
for suggestions in editing the Bounds Spiritual Life Books. We 
buried Claude L. Chilton February 18, 1929. What a meeting of 
these two great saints of God, of shining panoply and knightly 
grace!
                                          Homer W. Hodge.
                                          Wilkes-Barre, Pa.




                    I. PRAYER AND FAITH

     "A dear friend of mine who was quite a lover of the chase, 
told me the following story: 'Rising early one morning,' he said, 
'I heard the baying of a score of deerhounds in pursuit of their 
quarry. Looking away to a broad, open field in front of me, I saw 
a young fawn making its way across, and giving signs, moreover, 
that its race was well-nigh run. Reaching the rails of the 
enclosure, it leaped over and crouched within ten feet from where 
I stood. A moment later two of the hounds came over, when the fawn 
ran in my direction and pushed its head between my legs. I lifted 
the little thing to my breast, and, swinging round and round, 
fought off the dogs. I felt, just then, that all the dogs in the 
West could not, and should not capture that fawn after its 
weakness had appealed to my strength.' So is it, when human 
helplessness appeals to Almighty God. Well do I remember when the 
hounds of sin were after my soul, until, at last, I ran into the 
arms of Almighty God." -- A. C. Dixon.


IN any study of the principles, and procedure of prayer, of its 
activities and enterprises, first place, must, of necessity, be 
given to faith. It is the initial quality in the heart of any man 
who essays to talk to the Unseen. He must, out of sheer 
helplessness, stretch forth hands of faith. He must believe, where 
he cannot prove. In the ultimate issue, prayer is simply faith, 
claiming its natural yet marvellous prerogatives -- faith taking 
possession of its illimitable inheritance. True godliness is just 
as true, steady, and persevering in the realm of faith as it is in 
the province of prayer. Moreover: when faith ceases to pray, it 
ceases to live.
     Faith does the impossible because it brings God to undertake 
for us, and nothing is impossible with God. How great -- without 
qualification or limitation -- is the power of faith! If doubt be 
banished from the heart, and unbelief made stranger there, what we 
ask of God shall surely come to pass, and a believer hath 
vouchsafed to him "whatsoever he saith."
     Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God 
can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God. In His cursing 
of the fig-tree our Lord demonstrated His power. Following that, 
He proceeded to declare, that large powers were committed to faith 
and prayer, not in order to kill but to make alive, not to blast 
but to bless.
     At this point in our study, we turn to a saying of our Lord, 
which there is need to emphasize, since it is the very keystone of 
the arch of faith and prayer.
     "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when 
ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
     We should ponder well that statement -- "Believe that ye 
receive them, and ye shall have them." Here is described a faith 
which realizes, which appropriates, which takes. Such faith is a 
consciousness of the Divine, an experienced communion, a realized 
certainty.
     Is faith growing or declining as the years go by? Does faith 
stand strong and four square, these days, as iniquity abounds and 
the love of many grows cold? Does faith maintain its hold, as 
religion tends to become a mere formality and worldliness 
increasingly prevails? The enquiry of our Lord, may, with great 
appropriateness, be ours. "When the Son of Man cometh," He asks, 
"shall He find faith on the earth?" We believe that He will, and 
it is ours, in this our day, to see to it that the lamp of faith 
is trimmed and burning, lest He come who shall come, and that 
right early.
     Faith is the foundation of Christian character and the 
security of the soul. When Jesus was looking forward to Peter's 
denial, and cautioning him against it, He said unto His disciple:
     "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, to 
sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fall 
not."
     Our Lord was declaring a central truth; it was Peter's faith 
He was seeking to guard; for well He knew that when faith is 
broken down, the foundations of spiritual life give way, and the 
entire structure of religious experience falls. It was Peter's 
faith which needed guarding. Hence Christ's solicitude for the 
welfare of His disciple's soul and His determination to fortify 
Peter's faith by His own all-prevailing prayer.
     In his Second Epistle, Peter has this idea in mind when 
speaking of growth in grace as a measure of safety in the 
Christian life, and as implying fruitfulness.
     "And besides this," he declares, "giving diligence, add to 
your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge 
temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience 
godliness."
     Of this additioning process, faith was the starting-point -- 
the basis of the other graces of the Spirit. Faith was the 
foundation on which other things were to be built. Peter does not 
enjoin his readers to add to works or gifts or virtues but to 
faith. Much depends on starting right in this business of growing 
in grace. There is a Divine order, of which Peter was aware; and 
so he goes on to declare that we are to give diligence to making 
our calling and election sure, which election is rendered certain 
adding to faith which, in turn, is done by constant, earnest 
praying. Thus faith is kept alive by prayer, and every step taken, 
in this adding of grace to grace, is accompanied by prayer.
     The faith which creates powerful praying is the
     faith which centres itself on a powerful Person. Faith in 
Christ's ability to do and to do greatly, is the faith which prays 
greatly. Thus the leper lay hold upon the power of Christ. "Lord, 
if Thou wilt," he cried, "Thou canst make me clean." In this 
instance, we are shown how faith centered in Christ's ability to 
do, and how it secured the healing power.
     It was concerning this very point, that Jesus questioned the 
blind men who came to Him for healing:
     "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" He asks. "They said 
unto Him, Yea, Lord. Then touched He their eyes, saying, According 
to your faith be it unto you."
     It was to inspire faith in His ability to do that Jesus left 
behind Him, that last, great statement, which, in the final 
analysis, is a ringing challenge to faith. "All power," He 
declared, "is given unto Me in heaven and in earth."
     Again: faith is obedient; it goes when commanded, as did the 
nobleman, who came to Jesus, in the day of His flesh, and whose 
son was grievously sick.
     Moreover: such faith acts. Like the man who was born blind, 
it goes to wash in the pool of Siloam when told to wash. Like 
Peter on Gennesaret it casts the net where Jesus commands, 
instantly, without question or doubt. Such faith takes away the 
stone from the grave of Lazarus promptly. A praying faith keeps 
the commandments of God and does those things which are well 
pleasing in His sight. It asks, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
do?" and answers quickly, "Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth." 
Obedience helps faith, and faith, in turn, helps obedience. To do 
God's will is essential to true faith, and faith is necessary to 
implicit obedience.
     Yet faith is called upon, and that right often to wait in 
patience before God, and is prepared for God's seeming delays in 
answering prayer. Faith does not grow disheartened because prayer 
is not immediately honoured; it takes God at His Word, and lets 
Him take what time He chooses in fulfilling His purposes, and in 
carrying on His work. There is bound to be much delay and long 
days of waiting for true faith, but faith accepts the conditions 
-- knows there will be delays in answering prayer, and regards 
such delays as times of testing, in the which, it is privileged to 
show its mettle, and the stern stuff of which it is made.
     The case of Lazarus was an instance of where there was delay, 
where the faith of two good women was sorely tried: Lazarus was 
critically ill, and his sisters sent for Jesus. But, without any 
known reason, our Lord delayed His going to the relief of His sick 
friend. The plea was urgent and touching -- "Lord, behold, he whom 
Thou lovest is sick," -- but the Master is not moved by it, and 
the women's earnest request seemed to fall on deaf ears. What a 
trial to faith! Furthermore: our Lord's tardiness appeared to 
bring about hopeless disaster. While Jesus tarried, Lazarus died.
     But the delay of Jesus was exercised in the interests of a 
greater good. Finally, He makes His way to the home in Bethany.
     "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am 
glad for your sakes, that I was not there, to the intent ye may 
believe; nevertheless let us go unto him."
     Fear not, O tempted and tried believer, Jesus will come, if 
patience be exercised, and faith hold fast. His delay will serve 
to make His coming the more richly blessed. Pray on. Wait on. Thou 
canst not fail. If Christ delay, wait for Him. In His own good 
time, He will come, and will not tarry.
     Delay is often the test and the strength of faith. How much 
patience is required when these times of testing come! Yet faith 
gathers strength by waiting and praying. Patience has its perfect 
work in the school of delay. In some instances, delay is of the 
very essence of the prayer. God has to do many things, antecedent 
to giving the final answer -- things which are essential to the 
lasting good of him who is requesting favour at His hands.
     Jacob prayed, with point and ardour, to be delivered from 
Esau. But before that prayer could be answered, there was much to 
be done with, and for Jacob. He must be changed, as well as Esau. 
Jacob had to be made into a new man, before Esau could be. Jacob 
had to be converted to God, before Esau could be converted to 
Jacob.
     Among the large and luminous utterances of Jesus concerning 
prayer, none is more arresting than this:
     "Verily, 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 My 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 anything in My Name, I will do it."
     How wonderful are these statements of what God will do in 
answer to prayer! Of how great importance these ringing words, 
prefaced, as they are, with the most solemn verity! Faith in 
Christ is the basis of all working, and of all praying. All 
wonderful works depend on wonderful praying, and all praying is 
done in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amazing lesson, of wondrous 
simplicity, is this praying in the name of the Lord Jesus! All 
other conditions are depreciated, everything else is renounced, 
save Jesus only. The name of Christ -- the Person of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ -- must be supremely sovereign, in the hour 
and article of prayer.
     If Jesus dwell at the fountain of my life; if the currents of 
His life have displaced and superseded all self-currents; if 
implicit obedience to Him be the inspiration and force of every 
movement of my life, then He can safely commit the praying to my 
will, and pledge Himself, by an obligation as profound as His own 
nature, that whatsoever is asked shall be granted. Nothing can be 
clearer, more distinct, more unlimited both in application and 
extent, than the exhortation and urgency of Christ, "Have faith in 
God."
     Faith covers temporal as well as spiritual needs. Faith 
dispels all undue anxiety and needless care about what shall be 
eaten, what shall he drunk, what shall be worn. Faith lives in the 
present, and regards the day as being sufficient unto the evil 
thereof. It lives day by day, and dispels all fears for the 
morrow. Faith brings great ease of mind and perfect peace of 
heart.
     "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on 
Thee: because he trusted in Thee."
     When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are, in 
a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in 
tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or 
tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who 
live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's 
needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers 
unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all!
     True prayers are born of present trials and present needs. 
Bread, for today, is bread enough. Bread given for today is the 
strongest sort of pledge that there will be bread tomorrow. 
Victory today, is the assurance of victory tomorrow. Our prayers 
need to be focussed upon the present, We must trust God today, and 
leave the morrow entirely with Him. The present is ours; the 
future belongs to God. Prayer is the task and duty of each 
recurring day -- daily prayer for daily needs.
     As every day demands its bread, so every day demands its 
prayer. No amount of praying, done today, will suffice for 
tomorrow's praying. On the other hand, no praying for tomorrow is 
of any great value to us today. To-day's manna is what we need; 
tomorrow God will see that our needs are supplied. This is the 
faith which God seeks to inspire. So leave tomorrow, with its 
cares, its needs, its troubles, in God's hands. There is no 
storing tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's praying; neither is there 
any laying-up of today's grace, to meet tomorrow's necessities. We 
cannot have tomorrow's grace, we cannot eat tomorrow's bread, we 
cannot do tomorrow's praying. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof;" and, most assuredly, if we possess faith, sufficient 
also, will be the good.



             II. PRAYER AND FAITH (Continued)

     "The guests at a certain hotel were being rendered 
uncomfortable by repeated strumming on a piano, done by a little 
girl who possessed no knowledge of music. They complained to the 
proprietor with a view to having the annoyance stopped. 'I am 
sorry you are annoyed,' he said. 'But the girl is the child of one 
of my very best guests. I can scarcely ask her not to touch the 
piano. But her father, who is away for a day or so, will return 
tomorrow. You can then approach him, and have the matter set 
right.' When the father returned, he found his daughter in the 
reception-room and, as usual, thumping on the piano. He walked up 
behind the child and, putting his arms over her shoulders, took 
her hands in his, and produced some most beautiful music. Thus it 
may be with us, and thus it will be, some coming day. Just now, we 
can produce little but clamour and disharmony; but, one day, the 
Lord Jesus will take hold of our hands of faith and prayer, and 
use them to bring forth the music of the skies." -- Anon


GENUINE, authentic faith must be definite and free of doubt. Not 
simply general in character; not a mere belief in the being, 
goodness and power of God, but a faith which believes that the 
things which "he saith, shall come to pass." As the faith is 
specific, so the answer likewise will be definite: "He shall have 
whatsoever he saith." Faith and prayer select the things, and God 
commits Himself to do the very things which faith and persevering 
prayer nominate, and petition Him to accomplish.
     The American Revised Version renders the twenty-fourth verse 
of the eleventh chapter of Mark, thus: "Therefore I say unto you, 
All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive 
them, and ye shall have them." Perfect faith has always in its 
keeping what perfect prayer asks for. How large and unqualified is 
the area of operation -- the "All things whatsoever!" How definite 
and specific the promise -- "Ye shall have them!"
     Our chief concern is with our faith, -- the problems of its 
growth, and the activities of its vigorous maturity. A faith which 
grasps and holds in its keeping the very things it asks for, 
without wavering, doubt or fear -- that is the faith we need -- 
faith, such as is a pearl of great price, in the process and 
practise of prayer.
     The statement of our Lord about faith and prayer quoted above 
is of supreme importance. Faith must be definite, specific; an 
unqualified, unmistakable request for the things asked for. It is 
not to be a vague, indefinite, shadowy thing; it must be something 
more than an abstract belief in God's willingness and ability to 
do for us. It is to be a definite, specific, asking for, and 
expecting the things for which we ask. Note the reading of Mark 
11:23:
     "And shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that 
those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have 
whatever he saith."
     Just so far as the faith and the asking is definite, so also 
will the answer be. The giving is not to be something other than 
the things prayed for, but the actual things sought and named. "He 
shall have whatsoever he saith." It is all imperative, "He shall 
have." The granting is to be unlimited, both in quality and in 
quantity.
     Faith and prayer select the subjects for petition, thereby 
determining what God is to do. "He shall have whatsoever he 
saith." Christ holds Himself ready to supply exactly, and fully, 
all the demands of faith and prayer. If the order on God be made 
clear, specific and definite, God will fill it, exactly in 
accordance with the presented terms.
     Faith is not an abstract belief in the Word of God, nor a 
mere mental credence, nor a simple assent of the understanding and 
will; nor is it a passive acceptance of facts, however sacred or 
thorough. Faith is an operation of God, a Divine illumination, a 
holy energy implanted by the Word of God and the Spirit in the 
human soul -- a spiritual, Divine principle which takes of the 
Supernatural and makes it a thing apprehendable by the faculties 
of time and sense.
     Faith deals with God, and is conscious of God. It deals with 
the Lord Jesus Christ and sees in Him a Saviour; it deals with 
God's Word, and lays hold of the truth; it deals with the Spirit 
of God, and is energized and inspired by its holy fire. God is the 
great objective of faith; for faith rests its whole weight on His 
Word. Faith is not an aimless act of the soul, but a looking to 
God and a resting upon His promises. Just as love and hope have 
always an objective so, also, has faith. Faith is not believing 
just anything; it is believing God, resting in Him, trusting His 
Word.
     Faith gives birth to prayer, and grows stronger, strikes 
deeper, rises higher, in the struggles and wrestlings of mighty 
petitioning. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
assurance and realization of the inheritance of the saints. Faith, 
too, is humble and persevering. It can wait and pray; it can stay 
on its knees, or lie in the dust. It is the one great condition of 
prayer; the lack of it lies at the root of all poor praying, 
feeble praying, little praying, unanswered praying.
     The nature and meaning of faith is more demonstrable in what 
it does, than it is by reason of any definition given it. Thus, if 
we turn to the record of faith given us in that great honour roll, 
which constitutes the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we see 
something of the wonderful results of faith. What a glorious list 
it is -- that of these men and women of faith! What marvellous 
achievements are there recorded, and set to the credit of faith! 
The inspired writer, exhausting his resources in cataloguing the 
Old Testament saints, who were such notable examples of wonderful 
faith, finally exclaims:
     "And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to 
tell of Gideon and Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David 
also, and Samuel, and of the prophets."
     And then the writer of Hebrews goes on again, in a wonderful 
strain, telling of the unrecorded exploits wrought through the 
faith of the men of old, "of whom the world was not worthy." "All 
these," he says, "obtained a good report through faith."
     What an era of glorious achievements would dawn for the 
Church and the world, if only there could be reproduced a race of 
saints of like mighty faith, of like wonderful praying! It is not 
the intellectually great that the Church needs; nor is it men of 
wealth that the times demand. It is not people of great social 
influence that this day requires. Above everybody and everything 
else, it is men of faith, men of mighty prayer, men and women 
after the fashion of the saints and heroes enumerated in Hebrews, 
who "obtained a good report through faith," that the Church and 
the whole wide world of humanity needs.
     Many men, of this day, obtain a good report because of their 
money-giving, their great mental gifts and talents, but few there 
be who obtain a "good report" because of their great faith in God, 
or because of the wonderful things which are being wrought through 
their great praying. Today, as much as at any time, we need men of 
great faith and men who are great in prayer. These are the two 
cardinal virtues which make men great in the eyes of God, the two 
things which create conditions of real spiritual success in the 
life and work of the Church. It is our chief concern to see that 
we maintain a faith of such quality and texture, as counts before 
God; which grasps, and holds in its keeping, the things for which 
it asks, without doubt and without fear.
     Doubt and fear are the twin foes of faith. Sometimes, they 
actually usurp the place of faith, and although we pray, it is a 
restless, disquieted prayer that we offer, uneasy and often 
complaining. Peter failed to walk on Gennesaret because he 
permitted the waves to break over him and swamp the power of his 
faith. Taking his eyes from the Lord and regarding the water all 
about him, he began to sink and had to cry for succour -- "Lord, 
save, or I perish!"
     Doubts should never be cherished, nor fears harboured. Let 
none cherish the delusion that he is a martyr to fear and doubt. 
It is no credit to any man's mental capacity to cherish doubt of 
God, and no comfort can possibly derive from such a thought. Our 
eyes should be taken off self, removed from our own weakness and 
allowed to rest implicitly upon God's strength. "Cast not away 
therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward." 
A simple, confiding faith, living day by day, and casting its 
burden on the Lord, each hour of the day, will dissipate fear, 
drive away misgiving and deliver from doubt:
     "Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by supplication 
and prayer, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
unto God."
     That is the Divine cure for all fear, anxiety, and undue 
concern of soul, all of which are closely akin to doubt and 
unbelief. This is the Divine prescription for securing the peace 
which passeth all understanding, and keeps the heart and mind in 
quietness and peace.
     All of us need to mark well and heed the caution given in 
Hebrews: "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil 
heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God."
     We need, also, to guard against unbelief as we would against 
an enemy. Faith needs to be cultivated. We need to keep on 
praying, "Lord, increase our faith," for faith is susceptible of 
increase. Paul's tribute to the Thessalonians was, that their 
faith grew exceedingly. Faith is increased by exercise, by being 
put into use. It is nourished by sore trials.
     "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than 
of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be 
found unto praise and honour and glow at the appearing of Jesus 
Christ."
     Faith grows by reading and meditating upon the Word of God. 
Most, and best of all, faith thrives in an atmosphere of prayer.
     It would be well, if all of us were to stop, and inquire 
personally of ourselves: "Have I faith in God? Have I real faith, 
-- faith which keeps me in perfect peace, about the things of 
earth and the things of heaven?" This is the most important 
question a man can propound and expect to be answered. And there 
is another question, closely akin to it in significance and 
importance -- "Do I really pray to God so that He hears me and 
answers my prayers? And do I truly pray unto God so that I get 
direct from God the things I ask of Him?"
     It was claimed for Augustus Caesar that he found Rome a city 
of wood, and left it a city of marble. The pastor who succeeds in 
changing his people from a prayerless to a prayerful people, has 
done a greater work than did Augustus in changing a city from wood 
to marble. And after all, this is the prime work of the preacher. 
Primarily, he is dealing with prayerless people -- with people of 
whom it is said, "God is not in all their thoughts." Such people 
he meets everywhere, and all the time. His main business is to 
turn them from being forgetful of God, from being devoid of faith, 
from being prayerless, so that they become people who habitually 
pray, who believe in God, remember Him and do His will. The 
preacher is not sent to merely induce men to join the Church, nor 
merely to get them to do better. It is to get them to pray, to 
trust God, and to keep God ever before their eyes, that they may 
not sin against Him.
     The work of the ministry is to change unbelieving sinners 
into praying and believing saints. The call goes forth by Divine 
authority, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved." We catch a glimpse of the tremendous importance of faith 
and of the great value God has set upon it, when we remember that 
He has made it the one indispensable condition of being saved. "By 
grace are ye saved, through faith." Thus, when we contemplate the 
great importance of prayer, we find faith standing immediately by 
its side. By faith are we saved, and by faith we stay saved. 
Prayer introduces us to a life of faith. Paul declared that the 
life he lived, he lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved him 
and gave Himself for him -- that he walked by faith and not by 
sight.
     Prayer is absolutely dependent upon faith. Virtually, it has 
no existence apart from it, and accomplishes nothing unless it be 
its inseparable companion. Faith makes prayer effectual, and in a 
certain important sense, must precede it.
     "For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that 
He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."
     Before prayer ever starts toward God; before its petition is 
preferred, before its requests are made known -- faith must have 
gone on ahead; must have asserted its belief in the existence of 
God; must have given its assent to the gracious truth that "God is 
a rewarder of those that diligently seek His face." This is the 
primary step in praying. In this regard, while faith does not 
bring the blessing, yet it puts prayer in a position to ask for 
it, and leads to another step toward realization, by aiding the 
petitioner to believe that God is able and willing to bless.
     Faith starts prayer to work -- clears the way to the mercy-
seat. It gives assurance, first of all, that there is a mercy-
seat, and that there the High Priest awaits the pray-ers and the 
prayers. Faith opens the way for prayer to approach God. But it 
does more. It accompanies prayer at every step she takes. It is 
her inseparable companion and when requests are made unto God, it 
is faith which turns the asking into obtaining. And faith follows 
prayer, since the spiritual life into which a believer is led by 
prayer, is a life of faith. The one prominent characteristic of 
the experience into which believers are brought through prayer, is 
not a life of works, but of faith.
     Faith makes prayer strong, and gives it patience to wait on 
God. Faith believes that God is a rewarder. No truth is more 
clearly revealed in the Scriptures than this, while none is more 
encouraging. Even the closet has its promised reward, "He that 
seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly," while the most 
insignificant service rendered to a disciple in the name of the 
Lord, surely receives its reward. And to this precious truth faith 
gives its hearty assent.
     Yet faith is narrowed down to one particular thing -- it does 
not believe that God will reward everybody, nor that He is a 
rewarder of all who pray, but that He is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him. Faith rests its care on diligence in prayer, 
and gives assurance and encouragement to diligent seekers after 
God, for it is they, alone, who are richly rewarded when they 
pray.
     We need constantly to be reminded that faith is the one 
inseparable condition of successful praying. There are other 
considerations entering into the exercise, but faith is the final, 
the one indispensable condition of true praying. As it is written 
in a familiar, primary declaration: "Without faith, it is 
impossible to please Him."
     James puts this truth very plainly.
     "If any of you lack wisdom," he says, "let him ask of God, 
that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall 
be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he 
that wavereth (or doubteth) is like a wave of the sea, driven with 
the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall 
receive any thing of the Lord."
     Doubting is always put under the ban, because it stands as a 
foe to faith and hinders effectual praying. In the First Epistle 
to Timothy Paul gives us an invaluable truth relative to the 
conditions of successful praying, which he thus lays down: "I will 
therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without 
wrath and doubting."
     All questioning must be watched against and eschewed. Fear 
and peradventure have no place in true praying. Faith must assert 
itself and bid these foes to prayer depart.
     Too much authority cannot be attributed to faith; but prayer 
is the sceptre by which it signalizes its power. How much of 
spiritual wisdom there is in the following advice written by an 
eminent old divine.
     "Would you be freed from the bondage to corruption?" he asks. 
"Would you grow in grace in general and grow in grace in 
particular? If you would, your way is plain. Ask of God more 
faith. Beg of Him morning, and noon and night, while you walk by 
the way, while you sit in the house, when you lie down and when 
you rise up; beg of Him simply to impress Divine things more 
deeply on your heart, to give you more and more of the substance 
of things hoped for and of the evidence of things not seen."
     Great incentives to pray are furnished in Holy Scriptures, 
and our Lord closes His teaching about prayer, with the assurance 
and promise of heaven. The presence of Jesus Christ in heaven, the 
preparation for His saints which He is making there, and the 
assurance that He will come again to receive them -- how all this 
helps the weariness of praying, strengthens its conflicts, 
sweetens its arduous toil! These things are the star of hope to 
prayer, the wiping away of its tears, the putting of the odour of 
heaven into the bitterness of its cry. The spirit of a pilgrim 
greatly facilitates praying. An earth-bound, earth-satisfied 
spirit cannot pray. In such a heart, the flame of spiritual desire 
is either gone out or smouldering in faintest glow. The wings of 
its faith are clipped, its eyes are filmed, its tongue silenced. 
But they, who in unswerving faith and unceasing prayer, wait 
continually upon the Lord, do renew their strength, do mount up 
with wings as eagles, do run, and are not weary, do walk, and not 
faint.



                    III. PRAYER AND TRUST

     "One evening I left my office in New York, with a bitterly 
cold wind in my face. I had with me, (as I thought) my thick, warm 
muffler, but when I proceeded to button-up against the storm, I 
found that it was gone. I turned back, looked along the streets, 
searched my office, but in vain. I realized, then, that I must 
have dropped it, and prayed God that I might find it; for such was 
the state of the weather, that it would be running a great risk to 
proceed without it. I looked, again, up and down the surrounding 
streets, but without success. Sudden]y, I saw a man on the 
opposite side of the road holding out something in his hand. I 
crossed over and asked him if that were my muffler? He handed it 
to me saying, 'It was blown to me by the wind.' He who rides upon 
the storm, had used the wind as a means of answering prayer." -- 
William Horst.


PRAYER does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty and 
independent principle. It lives in association with other 
Christian duties, is wedded to other principles, is a partner with 
other graces. But to faith, prayer is indissolubly joined. Faith 
gives it colour and tone, shapes its character, and secures its 
results.
     Trust is faith become absolute, ratified, consummated. There 
is, when all is said and done, a sort of venture in faith and its 
exercise. But trust is firm belief, it is faith in full flower. 
Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are sensible. 
According to the Scriptural concept it is the eye of the new-born 
soul, and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the 
soul, the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling -- these 
one and all have to do with trust. How luminous, how distinct, how 
conscious, how powerful, and more than all, how Scriptural is such 
a trust! How different from many forms of modern belief, so 
feeble, dry, and cold! These new phases of belief bring no 
consciousness of their presence, no "Joy unspeakable and full of 
glory" results from their exercise. They are, for the most part, 
adventures in the peradventures of the soul. There is no safe, 
sure trust in anything. The whole transaction takes place in the 
realm of Maybe and Perhaps.
     Trust like life, is feeling, though much more than feeling. 
An unfelt life is a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, 
a delusion, a contradiction. Trust is the most felt of all 
attributes. It is all feeling, and it works only by love. An 
unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of 
which we are now speaking is a conviction. An unfelt conviction? 
How absurd!
     Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yea, more. It rises 
to a lofty eminence, and looking into the invisible and the 
eternal, realizes that God has done things, and regards them as 
being already done. Trust brings eternity into the annals and 
happenings of time, transmutes the substance of hope into the 
reality of fruition, and changes promise into present possession. 
We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are 
conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, holds. 
Trust is its own witness.
     Yet, quite often, faith is too weak to obtain God's greatest 
good, immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, 
pressing obedience, until it grows in strength, and is able to 
bring down the eternal, into the realms of experience and time.
     To this point, trust masses all its forces. Here it holds. 
And in the struggle, trust's grasp becomes mightier, and grasps, 
for itself, all that God has done for it in His eternal wisdom and 
plenitude of grace.
     In the matter of waiting in prayer, mightiest prayer, faith 
rises to its highest plane and becomes indeed the gift of God. It 
becomes the blessed disposition and expression of the soul which 
is secured by a constant intercourse with, and unwearied 
application to God.
     Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on 
which prayer was answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig-tree, 
the disciples were much surprised that its withering had actually 
taken place, and their remarks indicated their in credulity. It 
was then that Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God."
     "For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto 
this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and 
shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things 
which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he 
saith. Therefore, I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, 
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have 
them."
     Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer-
chamber. Its unfolding and development are rapid and wholesome 
when they are regularly and well kept. When these engagements are 
hearty and full and free, trust flourishes exceedingly. The eye 
and presence of God give vigorous life to trust, just as the eye 
and the presence of the sun make fruit and flower to grow, and all 
things glad and bright with fuller life.
     "Have faith in God," "Trust in the Lord" form the keynote and 
foundation of prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of 
God, but rather trust in the Person of God. For trust in the 
Person of God must precede trust in the Word of God. "Ye believe 
in God, believe also in Me," is the demand our Lord makes on the 
personal trust of His disciples. The person of Jesus Christ must 
be central, to the eye of trust. This great truth Jesus sought to 
impress upon Martha, when her brother lay dead, in the home at 
Bethany. Martha asserted her belief in the fact of the 
resurrection of her brother:
     "Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in 
the resurrection at the last day."
     Jesus lifts her trust clear above the mere fact of the 
resurrection, to His own Person, by saying:
     "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in Me, shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith 
unto Him, Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of God, which should come into the world."
     Trust, in an historical fact or in a mere record may be a 
very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, 
fructifies it, informs it with love. The trust which informs 
prayer centres in a Person.
     Trust goes even further than this. The trust which inspires 
our prayer must be not only trust in the Person of God, and of 
Christ, but in their ability and willingness to grant the thing 
prayed for. It is not only, "Trust, ye, in the Lord," but, also, 
"for in the Lord Jehovah, is everlasting strength."
     The trust which our Lord taught as a condition of effectual 
prayer, is not of the head but of the heart. It is trust which 
"doubteth not in his heart." Such trust has the Divine assurance 
that it shall be honoured with large and satisfying answers. The 
strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the present, and 
counts on a present answer.
     Do we believe, without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe, 
not that we shall receive the things for which we ask on a future 
day, but that we receive them, then and there? Such is the 
teaching of this inspiring Scripture. How we need to pray, "Lord, 
increase our faith," until doubt be gone, and implicit trust 
claims the promised blessings, as its very own.
     This is no easy condition. It is reached only after many a 
failure, after much praying, after many waitings, after much trial 
of faith. May our faith so increase until we realize and receive 
all the fulness there is in that Name which guarantees to do so 
much.
     Our Lord puts trust as the very foundation of praying. The 
background of prayer is trust. The whole issuance of Christ's 
ministry and work was dependent on implicit trust in His Father. 
The centre of trust is God. Mountains of difficulties, and all 
other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and 
his virile henchman, faith. When trust is perfect and without 
doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand, ready to receive. 
Trust perfected, is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the 
thing asked for -- and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can 
bless, that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. 
Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the 
future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. 
Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at 
all times, is abiding and abundant trust.
     Their lamentable lack of trust and resultant failure of the 
disciples to do what they were sent out to do, is seen in the case 
of the lunatic son, who was brought by his father to nine of them 
while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. A boy, 
sadly afflicted, was brought to these men to be cured of his 
malady. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. 
This was a part of their mission. They attempted to cast out the 
devil from the boy, but had signally failed. The devil was too 
much for them. They were humiliated at their failure, and filled 
with shame, while their enemies were in triumph. Amid the 
confusion incident to failure Jesus draws near. He is informed of 
the circumstances, and told of the conditions connected therewith. 
Here is the succeeding account:
     "Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse 
generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer 
you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he 
departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. 
And when He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him 
privately, Why could not we cast him out? And He said unto them, 
This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting."
     Wherein lay the difficulty with these men? They had been lax 
in cultivating their faith by prayer and, as a consequence, their 
trust utterly failed. They trusted not God, nor Christ, nor the 
authenticity of His mission, or their own. So has it been many a 
time since, in many a crisis in the Church of God. Failure has 
resulted from a lack of trust, or from a weakness of faith, and 
this, in turn, from a lack of prayerfulness. Many a failure in 
revival efforts has been traceable to the same cause. Faith had 
not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Neglect of the 
inner chamber is the solution of most spiritual failure. And this 
is as true of our personal struggles with the devil as was the 
case when we went forth to attempt to cast out devils. To be much 
on our knees in private communion with God is the only surety that 
we shall have Him with us either in our personal struggles, or in 
our efforts to convert sinners.
     Everywhere, in the approaches of the people to Him, our Lord 
put trust in Him, and the divinity of His mission, in the 
forefront. He gave no definition of trust, and He furnishes no 
theological discussion of, or analysis of it; for He knew that men 
would see what faith was by what faith did; and from its free 
exercise trust grew up, spontaneously, in His presence. It was the 
product of His work, His power and His Person. These furnished and 
created an atmosphere most favourable for its exercise and 
development. Trust is altogether too splendidly simple for verbal 
definition; too hearty and spontaneous for theological 
terminology. The very simplicity of trust is that which staggers 
many people. They look away for some great thing to come to pass, 
while all the time "the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and 
in thy heart."
     When the saddening news of his daughter's death was brought 
to Jairus our Lord interposed: "Be not afraid," He said calmly, 
"only believe." To the woman with the issue of blood, who stood 
tremblingly before Him, He said:
     "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and 
be whole of thy plague."
     As the two blind men followed Him, pressing their way into 
the house, He said:
     "According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were 
opened."
     When the paralytic was let down through the roof of the 
house, where Jesus was teaching, and placed before Him by four of 
his friends, it is recorded after this fashion:
     "And Jesus seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the 
palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee."
     When Jesus dismissed the centurion whose servant was 
seriously ill, and who had come to Jesus with the prayer that He 
speak the healing word, without even going to his house, He did it 
in the manner following:
     "And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou 
hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed 
in the selfsame hour."
     When the poor leper fell at the feet of Jesus and cried out 
for relief, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," Jesus 
immediately granted his request, and the man glorified Him with a 
loud voice. Then Jesus said unto him, "Arise, go thy way; thy 
faith hath made thee whole."
     The Syrophenician woman came to Jesus with the case of her 
afflicted daughter, making the case her own, with the prayer, 
"Lord, help me," making a fearful and heroic struggle. Jesus 
honours her faith and prayer, saying:
     "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou 
wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour."
     After the disciples had utterly failed to cast the devil out 
of the epileptic boy, the father of the stricken lad came to Jesus 
with the plaintive and almost despairing cry, "If Thou canst do 
anything, have compassion on us and help us." But Jesus replied, 
"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that 
believeth."
     Blind Bartimaeus sitting by the wayside, hears our Lord as He 
passes by, and cries out pitifully and almost despairingly, 
"Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me." The keen ears of our 
Lord immediately catch the sound of prayer, and He says to the 
beggar:
     "Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately 
he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way."
     To the weeping, penitent woman, washing His feet with her 
tears and wiping them with the hair of her head, Jesus speaks 
cheering, soul-comforting words: "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in 
peace."
     One day Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, in answer to 
their united prayer, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us," and He 
told them to go and show themselves to the priests. "And it came 
to pass as they went, they were cleansed."



                    IV. PRAYER AND DESIRE

     "There are those who will mock me, and tell me to stick to my 
trade as a cobbler, and not trouble my mind with philosophy and 
theology. But the truth of God did so burn in my bones, that I 
took my pen in hand and began to set down what I had seen." -- 
Jacob Behmen.


DESIRE is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep seated craving; 
an intense longing, for attainment. In the realm of spiritual 
affairs, it is an important adjunct to prayer. So important is it, 
that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential 
of prayer. Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by 
it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, created and intensified. 
Prayer is the oral expression of desire. If prayer is asking God 
for something, then prayer must be expressed. Prayer comes out 
into the open. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire, unheard. 
The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, 
prayer is a meaningless mumble of words. Such perfunctory, formal 
praying, with no heart, no feeling, no real desire accompanying 
it, is to be shunned like a pestilence. Its exercise is a waste of 
precious time, and from it, no real blessing accrues.
     And yet even if it be discovered that desire is honestly 
absent, we should pray, anyway. We ought to pray. The "ought" 
comes in, in order that both desire and expression be cultivated. 
God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray -- 
to pray whether we feel like it or not -- and not to allow our 
feelings to determine our habits of prayer. In such circumstance, 
we ought to pray for the desire to pray; for such a desire is God-
given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire; then, when 
desire has been given, we should pray according to its dictates. 
Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us, and lead us to lament 
its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our 
praying, henceforth, should be an expression of "the soul's 
sincere desire."
     A sense of need creates or should create, earnest desire. The 
stronger the sense of need, before God, the greater should be the 
desire, the more earnest the praying. The "poor in spirit" are 
eminently competent to pray.
     Hunger is an active sense of physical need. It prompts the 
request for bread. In like manner, the inward consciousness of 
spiritual need creates desire, and desire breaks forth in prayer. 
Desire is an inward longing for something of which we are not 
possessed, of which we stand in need -- something which God has 
promised, and which may be secured by an earnest supplication of 
His throne of grace.
     Spiritual desire, carried to a higher degree, is the evidence 
of the new birth. It is born in the renewed soul:
     "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that 
ye may grow thereby."
     The absence of this holy desire in the heart is presumptive 
proof, either of a decline in spiritual ecstasy, or, that the new 
birth has never taken place.
     "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness: for they shall be filled."
     These heaven-given appetites are the proof of a renewed 
heart, the evidence of a stirring spiritual life. Physical 
appetites are the attributes of a living body, not of a corpse, 
and spiritual desires belong to a soul made alive to God. And as 
the renewed soul hungers and thirsts after righteousness, these 
holy inward desires break out into earnest, supplicating prayer.
     In prayer, we are shut up to the Name, merit and intercessory 
virtue of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. Probing down, below 
the accompanying conditions and forces in prayer, we come to its 
vital basis, which is seated in the human heart. It is not simply 
our need; it is the heart's yearning for what we need, and for 
which we feel impelled to pray. Desire is the will in action; a 
strong, conscious longing, excited in the inner nature, for some 
great good. Desire exalts the object of its longing, and fixes the 
mind on it. It has choice, and fixedness, and flame in it, and 
prayer, based thereon, is explicit and specific. It knows its 
need, feels and sees the thing that will meet it, and hastens to 
acquire it.
     Holy desire is much helped by devout contemplation. 
Meditation on our spiritual need, and on God's readiness and 
ability to correct it, aids desire to grow. Serious thought 
engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more 
insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer 
-- wandering thought. We fail much more in desire, than in its 
outward expression. We retain the form, while the inner life fades 
and almost dies.
     One might well ask, whether the feebleness of our desires for 
God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fulness of Christ, is not 
the cause of our so little praying, and of our languishing in the 
exercise of prayer? Do we really feel these inward pantings of 
desire after heavenly treasures? Do the inbred groanings of desire 
stir our souls to mighty wrestlings? Alas for us! The fire burns 
altogether too low. The flaming heat of soul has been tempered 
down to a tepid lukewarmness. This, it should be remembered, was 
the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the 
Laodicean Christians, of whom the awful condemnation is written 
that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of 
nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, 
and poor, and blind."
     Again: we might well inquire -- have we that desire which 
presses us to close communion with God, which is filled with 
unutterable burnings, and holds us there through the agony of an 
intense and soul-stirred supplication? Our hearts need much to be 
worked over, not only to get the evil out of them, but to get the 
good into them. And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming 
good, is strong, propelling desire. This holy and fervid flame in 
the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of 
God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the 
exhaustless riches of Divine grace.
     The dampening of the flame of holy desire, is destructive of 
the vital and aggressive forces in church life. God requires to be 
represented by a fiery Church, or He is not in any proper sense, 
represented at all. God, Himself, is all on fire, and His Church, 
if it is to be like Him, must also be at white heat. The great and 
eternal interests of heaven-born, God-given religion are the only 
things about which His Church can afford to be on fire. Yet holy 
zeal need not to be fussy in order to be consuming. Our Lord was 
the incarnate antithesis of nervous excitability, the absolute 
opposite of intolerant or clamorous declamation, yet the zeal of 
God's house consumed Him; and the world is still feeling the glow 
of His fierce, consuming flame and responding to it, with an ever-
increasing readiness and an ever-enlarging response.
     A lack of ardour in prayer, is the sure sign of a lack of 
depth and of intensity of desire; and the absence of intense 
desire is a sure sign of God's absence from the heart! To abate 
fervour is to retire from God. He can, and does, tolerate many 
things in the way of infirmity and error in His children. He can, 
and will pardon sin when the penitent prays, but two things are 
intolerable to Him -- insincerity and lukewarmness. Lack of heart 
and lack of heat are two things He loathes, and to the Laodiceans 
He said, in terms of unmistakable severity and condemnation:
     "I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art 
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My 
mouth."
     This was God's expressed judgment on the lack of fire in one 
of the Seven Churches, and it is His indictment against individual 
Christians for the fatal want of sacred zeal. In prayer, fire is 
the motive power. Religious principles which do not emerge in 
flame, have neither force nor effect. Flame is the wing on which 
faith ascends; fervency is the soul of prayer. It was the 
"fervent, effectual prayer" which availed much. Love is kindled in 
a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true 
Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand 
anything, rather than a feeble flame; and it dies, chilled and 
starved to its vitals, when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid 
or lukewarm.
     True prayer, must be aflame. Christian life and character 
need to be all on fire. Lack of spiritual heat creates more 
infidelity than lack of faith. Not to be consumingly interested 
about the things of heaven, is not to be interested in them at 
all. The fiery souls are those who conquer in the day of battle, 
from whom the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and who take 
it by force. The citadel of God is taken only by those, who storm 
it in dreadful earnestness, who besiege it, with fiery, unabated 
zeal.
     Nothing short of being red hot for God, can keep the glow of 
heaven in our hearts, these chilly days. The early Methodists had 
no heating apparatus in their churches. They declared that the 
flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must suffice to keep 
them warm. And we, of this hour, have need to have the live coal 
from God's altar and the consuming flame from heaven glowing in 
our hearts. This flame is not mental vehemence nor fleshy energy. 
It is Divine fire in the soul, intense, dross-consuming -- the 
very essence of the Spirit of God.
     No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental 
outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person, can atone 
for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer 
access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no 
incense without fire; no prayer without flame.
     Ardent desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a 
shallow, fickle inclination, but a strong yearning, an 
unquenchable ardour, which impregnates, glows, burns and fixes the 
heart. It is the flame of a present and active principle mounting 
up to God. It is ardour propelled by desire, that burns its way to 
the Throne of mercy, and gains its plea. It is the pertinacity of 
desire that gives triumph to the conflict, in a great struggle of 
prayer. It is the burden of a weighty desire that sobers, makes 
restless, and reduces to quietness the soul just emerged from its 
mighty wrestlings. It is the embracing character of desire which 
arms prayer with a thousand pleas, and robes it with an invincible 
courage and an all-conquering power.
     The Syrophenician woman is an object lesson of desire, 
settled to its consistency, but invulnerable in its intensity and 
pertinacious boldness. The importunate widow represents desire 
gaining its end, through obstacles insuperable to feebler 
impulses.
     Prayer is not the rehearsal of a mere performance; nor is it 
an indefinite, widespread clamour. Desire, while it kindles the 
soul, holds it to the object sought. Prayer is an indispensable 
phase of spiritual habit, but it ceases to be prayer when carried 
on by habit alone. It is depth and intensity of spiritual desire 
which give intensity and depth to prayer. The soul cannot be 
listless when some great desire fires and inflames it. The urgency 
of our desire holds us to the thing desired with a tenacity which 
refuses to be lessened or loosened; it stays and pleads and 
persists, and refuses to let go until the blessing has been 
vouchsafed.

     "Lord, I cannot let Thee go,
     Till a blessing Thou bestow;
     Do not turn away Thy face;
     Mine's an urgent, pressing case."

     The secret of faint heartedness, lack of importunity, want of 
courage and strength in prayer, lies in the weakness of spiritual 
desire, while the non-observance of prayer is the fearful token of 
that desire having ceased to live. That soul has turned from God 
whose desire after Him no longer presses it to the inner chamber. 
There can be no successful praying without consuming desire. Of 
course there can be much seeming to pray, without desire of any 
kind.
     Many things may be catalogued and much ground covered. But 
does desire compile the catalogue? Does desire map out the region 
to be covered? On the answer, hangs the issue of whether our 
petitioning be prating or prayer. Desire is intense, but narrow; 
it cannot spread itself over a wide area. It wants a few things, 
and wants them badly, so badly, that nothing but God's willingness 
to answer, can bring it easement or content.
     Desire single-shots at its objective. There may be many 
things desired, but they are specifically and individually felt 
and expressed. David did not yearn for everything; nor did he 
allow his desires to spread out everywhere and hit nothing. Here 
is the way his desires ran and found expression:
     "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek 
after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of 
my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His 
temple."
     It is this singleness of desire, this definiteness of 
yearning, which counts in praying, and which drives prayer 
directly to core and centre of supply.
     In the Beatitudes Jesus voiced the words which directly bear 
upon the innate desires of a renewed soul, and the promise that 
they will be granted: "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, for they shall be filled."
     This, then, is the basis of prayer which compels an answer -- 
that strong inward desire has entered into the spiritual appetite, 
and clamours to be satisfied. Alas for us! It is altogether too 
true and frequent, that our prayers operate in the arid region of 
a mere wish, or in the leafless area of a memorized prayer. 
Sometimes, indeed, our prayers are merely stereotyped expressions 
of set phrases, and conventional proportions, the freshness and 
life of which have departed long years ago.
     Without desire, there is no burden of soul, no sense of need, 
no ardency, no vision, no strength, no glow of faith. There is no 
mighty pressure, no holding on to God, with a deathless, 
despairing grasp -- "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless 
me." There is no utter self-abandonment, as there was with Moses, 
when, lost in the throes of a desperate, pertinacious, and all-
consuming plea he cried: "Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin; 
if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book." Or, as there was 
with John Knox when he pleaded: "Give me Scotland, or I die!"
     God draws mightily near to the praying soul. To see God, to 
know God, and to live for God -- these form the objective of all 
true praying. Thus praying is, after all, inspired to seek after 
God. Prayer-desire is inflamed to see God, to have clearer, 
fuller, sweeter and richer revelation of God. So to those who thus 
pray, the Bible becomes a new Bible, and Christ a new Saviour, by 
the light and revelation of the inner chamber.
     We iterate and reiterate that burning desire -- enlarged and 
ever enlarging -- for the best, and most powerful gifts and graces 
of the Spirit of God, is the legitimate heritage of true and 
effectual praying. Self and service cannot be divorced -- cannot, 
possibly, be separated. More than that: desire must be made 
intensely personal, must be centered on God with an insatiable 
hungering and thirsting after Him and His righteousness. "My soul 
thirsteth for God, the living God." The indispensable requisite 
for all true praying is a deeply seated desire which seeks after 
God Himself, and remains unappeased, until the choicest gifts in 
heaven's bestowal, have been richly and abundantly vouchsafed.



                   V. PRAYER AND FERVENCY

     "St. Teresa rose off her deathbed to finish her work. She 
inspected, with all her quickness of eye and love of order the 
whole of the house in which she had been carried to die. She saw 
everything put into its proper place, and every one answering to 
their proper order, after which she attended the divine offices of 
the day. She then went back to her bed, summoned her daughters 
around her . . . and, with the most penitential of David's 
penitential prayers upon her tongue, Teresa of Jesus went forth to 
meet her Bridegroom." -- Alexander Whyte.


PRAYER, without fervour, stakes nothing on the issue, because it 
has nothing to stake. It comes with empty hands. Hands, too, which 
are listless, as well as empty, which have never learned the 
lesson of clinging to the Cross.
     Fervourless prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, 
an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life, must find place in all 
real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying 
unto God.
     Paul was a notable example of the man who possessed a fervent 
spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all-consuming, centered 
immovably upon the object of his desire, and the God who was able 
to meet it.
     Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is 
effectual and that availeth. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; 
prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings 
freeze out petitioning; and dry up the springs of supplication. It 
takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of soul creates an 
atmosphere favourable to prayer, because it is favourable to 
fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not 
fuss, nor heat, noise. Heat is intensity -- something that glows 
and burns. Heaven is a mighty poor market for ice.
     God wants warm-hearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a 
fire, to dwell in us; we are to be baptized, with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A phlegmatic 
temperament is abhorrent to vital experience. If our religion does 
not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God 
dwells in a flame; the Holy Ghost descends in fire. To be absorbed 
in God's will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our 
whole being takes fire, is the qualifying condition of the man who 
would engage in effectual prayer.
     Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. "Men ought always 
to pray," He declares, "and not to faint." That means, that we are 
to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and 
long periods of pleading prayer. Fire makes one alert and 
vigilant, and brings him off, more than conqueror. The atmosphere 
about us is too heavily charged with resisting forces for limp or 
languid prayers to make headway. It takes heat, and fervency and 
meteoric fire, to push through, to the upper heavens, where God 
dwells with His saints, in light.
     Many of the great Bible characters were notable examples of 
fervency of spirit when seeking God. The Psalmist declares with 
great earnestness:
     "My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto Thy 
judgments at all times."
     What strong desires of heart are here! What earnest soul 
longings for the Word of the living God!
     An even greater fervency is expressed by him in another 
place:
     "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 
soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living 
God: when shall I come and appear before God?"
     That is the word of a man who lived in a state of grace, 
which had been deeply and supernaturally wrought in his soul.
     Fervency before God counts in the hour of prayer, and finds a 
speedy and rich reward at His hands. The Psalmist gives us this 
statement of what God had done for the king, as his heart turned 
toward his Lord:
     "Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not 
withholden the request of his lips."
     At another time, he thus expresses himself directly to God in 
preferring his request:
     "Lord, all my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not 
hid from Thee."
     What a cheering thought! Our inward groanings, our secret 
desires, our heart-longings, are not hidden from the eyes of Him 
with whom we have to deal in prayer.
     The incentive to fervency of spirit before God, is precisely 
the same as it is for continued and earnest prayer. While fervency 
is not prayer, yet it derives from an earnest soul, and is 
precious in the sight of God. Fervency in prayer is the precursor 
of what God will do by way of answer. God stands pledged to give 
us the desire of our hearts in proportion to the fervency of 
spirit we exhibit, when seeking His face in prayer.
     Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in 
the intellectual faculties of the mind. Fervency therefore, is not 
an expression of the intellect. Fervency of spirit is something 
far transcending poetical fancy or sentimental imagery. It is 
something else besides mere preference, the contrasting of like 
with dislike. Fervency is the throb and gesture of the emotional 
nature.
     It is not in our power, perhaps, to create fervency of spirit 
at will, but we can pray God to implant it. It is ours, then, to 
nourish and cherish it, to guard it against extinction, to prevent 
its abatement or decline. The process of personal salvation is not 
only to pray, to express our desires to God, but to acquire a 
fervent spirit and seek, by all proper means, to cultivate it. It 
is never out of place to pray God to beget within us, and to keep 
alive the spirit of fervent prayer.
     Fervency has to do with God, just as prayer has to do with 
Him. Desire has always an objective. If we desire at all, we 
desire something. The degree of fervency with which we fashion our 
spiritual desires, will always serve to determine the earnestness 
of our praying. In this relation, Adoniram Judson says:
     "A travailing spirit, the throes of a great burdened desire, 
belongs to prayer. A fervency strong enough to drive away sleep, 
which devotes and inflames the spirit, and which retires all 
earthly ties, all this belongs to wrestling, prevailing prayer. 
The Spirit, the power, the air, and food of prayer is in such a 
spirit."
     Prayer must be clothed with fervency, strength and power. It 
is the force which, centered on God, determines the outlay of 
Himself for earthly good. Men who are fervent in spirit are bent 
on attaining to righteousness, truth, grace, and all other sublime 
and powerful graces which adorn the character of the authentic, 
unquestioned child of God.
     God once declared, by the mouth of a brave prophet, to a king 
who, at one time, had been true to God, but, by the incoming of 
success and material prosperity, had lost his faith, the following 
message:
     "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole 
earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is 
perfect toward Him. Herein hast thou done foolishly; therefore, 
from henceforth thou shalt have wars."
     God had heard Asa's prayer in early life, but disaster came 
and trouble was sent, because he had given up the life of prayer 
and simple faith.
     In Romans 15:30, we have the word, "strive," occurring, in 
the request which Paul made for prayerful cooperation.
     In Colossians 4:12, we have the same word, but translated 
differently: "Epaphras always labouring fervently for you in 
prayer." Paul charged the Romans to "strive together with him in 
prayer," that is, to help him in his struggle of prayer. The word 
means to enter into a contest, to fight against adversaries. It 
means, moreover, to engage with fervent zeal to endeavour to 
obtain.
     These recorded instances of the exercise and reward of faith, 
give us easily to see that, in almost every instance, faith was 
blended with trust until it is not too much to say that the former 
was swallowed up in the latter. It is hard to properly distinguish 
the specific activities of these two qualities, faith and trust. 
But there is a point, beyond all peradventure, at which faith is 
relieved of its burden, so to speak; where trust comes along and 
says: "You have done your part, the rest is mine!"
     In the incident of the barren fig tree, our Lord transfers 
the marvellous power of faith to His disciples. To their 
exclamation, "How soon is the fig tree withered alway!" He said:
     "If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this 
which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this 
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall 
be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believing, ye shall receive."
     When a Christian believer attains to faith of such 
magnificent proportions as these, he steps into the realm of 
implicit trust. He stands without a tremor on the apex of his 
spiritual outreaching. He has attained faith's veritable top stone 
which is unswerving, unalterable, unalienable trust in the power 
of the living God.



                 VI. PRAYER AND IMPORTUNITY

     "How glibly we talk of praying without ceasing! Yet we are 
quite apt to quit, if our prayer remained unanswered but one week 
or month! We assume that by a stroke of His arm or an action of 
His will, God will give us what we ask. It never seems to dawn on 
us, that He is the Master of nature, as of grace, and that, 
sometimes He chooses one way, and sometimes another in which to do 
His work. It takes years, sometimes, to answer a prayer and when 
it is answered, and we look backward we can see that it did. But 
God knows all the time, and it is His will that we pray, and pray, 
and still pray, and so come to know, indeed and of a truth, what 
it is to pray without ceasing." -- Anon.


OUR Lord Jesus declared that "men ought always to pray and not to 
faint," and the parable in which His words occur, was taught with 
the intention of saving men from faint-heartedness and weakness in 
prayer. Our Lord was seeking to teach that laxity must be guarded 
against, and persistence fostered and encouraged. There can be no 
two opinions regarding the importance of the exercise of this 
indispensable quality in our praying.
     Importunate prayer is a mighty movement of the soul toward 
God. It is a stirring of the deepest forces of the soul, toward 
the throne of heavenly grace. It is the ability to hold on, press 
on, and wait. Restless desire, restful patience, and strength of 
grasp are all embraced in it. It is not an incident, or a 
performance, but a passion of soul. It is not a want, half-needed, 
but a sheer necessity.
     The wrestling quality in importunate prayers does not spring 
from physical vehemence or fleshly energy. It is not an impulse of 
energy, not a mere earnestness of soul; it is an inwrought force, 
a faculty implanted and aroused by the Holy Spirit. Virtually, it 
is the intercession of the Spirit of God, in us; it is, moreover, 
"the effectual, fervent prayer, which availeth much." The Divine 
Spirit informing every element within us, with the energy of His 
own striving, is the essence of the importunity which urges our 
praying at the mercy-seat, to continue until the fire falls and 
the blessing descends. This wrestling in prayer may not be 
boisterous nor vehement, but quiet, tenacious and urgent. Silent, 
it may be, when there are no visible outlets for its mighty 
forces.
     Nothing distinguishes the children of God so clearly and 
strongly as prayer. It is the one infallible mark and test of 
being a Christian. Christian people are prayerful, the worldly-
minded, prayerless. Christians call on God; worldlings ignore God, 
and call not on His Name. But even the Christian had need to 
cultivate continual prayer. Prayer must be habitual, but much more 
than a habit. It is duty, yet one which rises far above, and goes 
beyond the ordinary implications of the term. It is the expression 
of a relation to God, a yearning for Divine communion. It is the 
outward and upward flow of the inward life toward its original 
fountain. It is an assertion of the soul's paternity, a claiming 
of the sonship, which links man to the Eternal.
     Prayer has everything to do with moulding the soul into the 
image of God, and has everything to do with enhancing and 
enlarging the measure of Divine grace. It has everything to do 
with bringing the soul into complete communion with God. It has 
everything to do with enriching, broadening and maturing the 
soul's experience of God. That man cannot possibly be called a 
Christian, who does not pray. By no possible pretext can he claim 
any right to the term, nor its implied significance. If he do not 
pray, he is a sinner, pure and simple, for prayer is the only way 
in which the soul of man can enter into fellowship and communion 
with the Source of all Christlike spirit and energy. Hence, if he 
pray not, he is not of the household of faith.
     In this study however, we turn our thought to one phase of 
prayer -- that of importunity; the pressing of our desires upon 
God with urgency and perseverance; the praying with that tenacity 
and tension which neither relaxes nor ceases until its plea is 
heard, and its cause is won.
     He who has clear views of God, and Scriptural conceptions of 
the Divine character; who appreciates his privilege of approach 
unto God; who understands his inward need of all that God has for 
him -- that man will be solicitous, outspoken and importunate. In 
Holy Writ, the duty of prayer, itself, is advocated in terms which 
are only barely stronger than those in which the necessity for its 
importunity is set forth. The praying which influences God is 
declared to be that of the fervent, effectual outpouring of a 
righteous man. That is to say, it is prayer on fire, having no 
feeble, flickering flame, no momentary flash, but shining with a 
vigorous and steady glow.
     The repeated intercessions of Abraham for the salvation of 
Sodom and Gomorrah present an early example of the necessity for, 
and benefit deriving from importunate praying. Jacob, wrestling 
all night with the angel, gives significant emphasis to the power 
of a dogged perseverance in praying, and shows how, in things 
spiritual, importunity succeeds, just as effectively as it does in 
matters relating to time and sense.
     As we have noted, elsewhere, Moses prayed forty days and 
forty nights, seeking to stay the wrath of God against Israel, and 
his example and success are a stimulus to present-day faith in its 
darkest hour. Elijah repeated and urged his prayer seven times ere 
the raincloud appeared above the horizon, heralding the success of 
his prayer and the victory of his faith. On one occasion Daniel 
though faint and weak, pressed his case three weeks, ere the 
answer and the blessing came.
     Many nights during His earthly life did the blessed Saviour 
spend in prayer. In Gethsemane He presented the same petition, 
three times, with unabated, urgent, yet submissive importunity, 
which involved every element of His soul, and issued in tears and 
bloody sweat. His life crises were distinctly marked, his life 
victories all won, in hours of importunate prayer. And the servant 
is not greater than his Lord.
     The Parable of the Importunate Widow is a classic of 
insistent prayer. We shall do well to refresh our remembrance of 
it, at this point in our study:
     "And He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought 
always to pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city a 
judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man; and there was a 
widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of my 
adversary. And he would not for a while; but afterward he said 
within himself, Though I fear not God nor regard man; yet because 
this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual 
coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge 
saith. And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and 
night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell you He will 
avenge them speedily."
     This parable stresses the central truth of importunate 
prayer. The widow presses her case till the unjust judge yields. 
If this parable does not teach the necessity for importunity, it 
has neither point nor instruction in it. Take this one thought 
away, and you have nothing left worth recording. Beyond all cavil, 
Christ intended it to stand as an evidence of the need that 
exists, for insistent prayer.
     We have the same teaching emphasized in the incident of the 
Syrophenician woman, who came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. 
Here, importunity is demonstrated, not as a stark impertinence, 
but as with the persuasive habiliments of humility, sincerity, and 
fervency. We are given a glimpse of a woman's clinging faith, a 
woman's bitter grief, and a woman's spiritual insight. The Master 
went over into that Sidonian country in order that this truth 
might be mirrored for all time -- there is no plea so efficacious 
as importunate prayer, and none to which God surrenders Himself so 
fully and so freely.
     The importunity of this distressed mother, won her the 
victory, and materialized her request. Yet instead of being an 
offence to the Saviour, it drew from Him a word of wonder, and 
glad surprise. "O woman, great is thy faith! Be it unto thee, even 
as thou wilt."
     He prays not at all, who does not press his plea. Cold 
prayers have no claim on heaven, and no hearing in the courts 
above. Fire is the life of prayer, and heaven is reached by 
flaming importunity rising in an ascending scale.
     Reverting to the case of the importunate widow, we see that 
her widowhood, her friendlessness, and her weakness counted for 
nothing with the unjust judge. Importunity was everything. 
"Because this widow troubleth me," he said, "I will avenge her 
speedily, lest she weary me." Solely because the widow imposed 
upon the time and attention of the unjust judge, her case was won.
     God waits patiently as, day and night, His elect cry unto 
Him. He is moved by their requests a thousand times more than was 
this unjust judge. A limit is set to His tarrying, by the 
importunate praying of His people, and the answer richly given. 
God finds faith in His praying child -- the faith which stays and 
cries -- and He honours it by permitting its further exercise, to 
the end that it is strengthened and enriched. Then He rewards it 
by granting the burden of its plea, in plenitude and finality.
     The case of the Syrophenician woman previously referred to is 
a notable instance of successful importunity, one which is 
eminently encouraging to all who would pray successfully. It was a 
remarkable instance of insistence and perseverance to ultimate 
victory, in the face of almost insuperable obstacles and 
hindrances. But the woman surmounted them all by heroic faith and 
persistent spirit that were as remarkable as they were successful. 
Jesus had gone over into her country, "and would have no man know 
it." But she breaks through His purpose, violates His privacy, 
attracts His attention, and pours out to Him a poignant appeal of 
need and faith. Her heart was in her prayer.
     At first, Jesus appears to pay no attention to her agony, and 
ignores her cry for relief. He gives her neither eye, nor ear, nor 
word. Silence, deep and chilling, greets her impassioned cry. But 
she is not turned aside, nor disheartened. She holds on. The 
disciples, offended at her unseemly clamour, intercede for her, 
but are silenced by the Lord's declaring that the woman is 
entirely outside the scope of His mission and His ministry.
     But neither the failure of the disciples to gain her a 
hearing nor the knowledge -- despairing in its very nature -- that 
she is barred from the benefits of His mission, daunt her, and 
serve only to lend intensity and increased boldness to her 
approach to Christ. She came closer, cutting her prayer in twain, 
and falling at His feet, worshipping Him, and making her 
daughter's case her own cries, with pointed brevity -- "Lord, help 
me!" This last cry won her case; her daughter was healed in the 
self-same hour. Hopeful, urgent, and unwearied, she stays near the 
Master, insisting and praying until the answer is given. What a 
study in importunity, in earnestness, in persistence, promoted and 
propelled under conditions which would have disheartened any but 
an heroic, a constant soul.
     In these parables of importunate praying, our Lord sets 
forth, for our information and encouragement, the serious 
difficulties which stand in the way of prayer. At the same time He 
teaches that importunity conquers all untoward circumstances and 
gets to itself a victory over a whole host of hindrances. He 
teaches, moreover, that an answer to prayer is conditional upon 
the amount of faith that goes to the petition. To test this, He 
delays the answer. The superficial pray-er subsides into silence, 
when the answer is delayed. But the man of prayer hangs on, and 
on. The Lord recognizes and honours his faith, and gives him a 
rich and abundant answer to his faith-evidencing, importunate 
prayer.



          VII. PRAYER AND IMPORTUNITY (Continued)

     "Two-thirds of the praying we do, is for that which would 
give us the greatest possible pleasure to receive. It is a sort of 
spiritual self-indulgence in which we engage, and as a consequence 
is the exact opposite of self-discipline. God knows all this, and 
keeps His children asking. In process of time -- His time -- our 
petitions take on another aspect, and we, another spiritual 
approach. God keeps us praying until, in His wisdom, He deigns to 
answer. And no matter how long it may be before He speaks, it is, 
even then, far earlier than we have a right to expect or hope to 
deserve." -- Anon.


THE tenor of Christ's teachings, is to declare that men are to 
pray earnestly -- to pray with an earnestness that cannot be 
denied. Heaven has harkening ears only for the whole-hearted, and 
the deeply-earnest. Energy, courage, and persistent perseverance 
must back the prayers which heaven respects, and God hears. All 
these qualities of soul, so essential to effectual praying, are 
brought out in the parable of the man who went to his friend for 
bread, at midnight. This man entered on his errand with 
confidence. Friendship promised him success. His plea was 
pressing: of a truth, he could not go back empty-handed. The flat 
refusal chagrined and surprised him. Here even friendship failed! 
But there was something to be tried yet -- stern resolution, set, 
fixed determination. He would stay and press his demand until the 
door was opened, and the request granted. This he proceeded to do, 
and by dint of importunity secured what ordinary solicitation had 
failed to obtain.
     The success of this man, achieved in the face of a flat 
denial, was used by the Saviour to illustrate the necessity for 
insistence in supplicating the throne of heavenly grace. When the 
answer is not immediately given, the praying Christian must gather 
courage at each delay, and advance in urgency till the answer 
comes which is assured, if he have but the faith to press his 
petition with vigorous faith.
     Laxity, faint-heartedness, impatience, timidity will be fatal 
to our prayers. Awaiting the onset of our importunity and 
insistence, is the Father's heart, the Father's hand, the Father's 
infinite power, the Father's infinite willingness to hear and give 
to His children.
     Importunate praying is the earnest, inward movement of the 
heart toward God. It is the throwing of the entire force of the 
spiritual man into the exercise of prayer. Isaiah lamented that no 
one stirred himself, to take hold of God. Much praying was done in 
Isaiah's time, but it was too easy, indifferent and complacent. 
There were no mighty movements of souls toward God. There was no 
array of sanctified energies bent on reaching and grappling with 
God, to draw from Him the treasures of His grace. Forceless 
prayers have no power to overcome difficulties, no power to win 
marked results, or to gain complete victories. We must win God, 
ere we can win our plea.
     Isaiah looked forward with hopeful eyes to the day when 
religion would flourish, when there would be times of real 
praying. When those times came, the watchmen would not abate their 
vigilance, but cry day and night, and those, who were the Lord's 
remembrancers, would give Him no rest. Their urgent, persistent 
efforts would keep all spiritual interests engaged, and make 
increasing drafts on God's exhaustless treasures.
     Importunate praying never faints nor grows weary; it is never 
discouraged; it never yields to cowardice, but is buoyed up and 
sustained by a hope that knows no despair, and a faith which will 
not let go. Importunate praying has patience to wait and strength 
to continue. It never prepares itself to quit praying, and 
declines to rise from its knees until an answer is received.
     The familiar, yet heartening words of that great missionary, 
Adoniram Judson, is the testimony of a man who was importunate at 
prayer. He says:
     "I was never deeply interested in any object, never prayed 
sincerely and earnestly for it, but that it came at some time, no 
matter how distant the day. Somehow, in some shape, probably the 
last I would have devised, it came."
     "Ask, and ye shall receive. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, 
and it shall be opened unto you." These are the ringing challenges 
of our Lord in regard to prayer, and His intimation that true 
praying must stay, and advance in effort and urgency, till the 
prayer is answered, and the blessing sought, received.
     In the three words ask, seek, knock, in the order in which He 
places them, Jesus urges the necessity of importunity in prayer. 
Asking, seeking, knocking, are ascending rounds in the ladder of 
successful prayer. No principle is more definitely enforced by 
Christ than that prevailing prayer must have in it the quality 
which waits and perseveres, the courage that never surrenders, the 
patience which never grows tired, the resolution that never 
wavers.
     In the parable preceding that of the Friend at Midnight, a 
most significant and instructive lesson in this respect is 
outlined. Indomitable courage, ceaseless pertinacity, fixity of 
purpose, chief among the qualities included in Christ's estimate 
of the highest and most successful form of praying.
     Importunity is made up of intensity, perseverance, patience 
and persistence. The seeming delay in answering prayer is the 
ground and the demand of importunity. In the first recorded 
instance of a miracle being wrought upon one who was blind, as 
given by Matthew, we have an illustration of the way in which our 
Lord appeared not to hearken at once to those who sought Him. But 
the two blind men continue their crying, and follow Him with their 
continual petition, saying, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on us." 
But He answered them not, and passed into the house. Yet the needy 
ones followed Him, and, finally, gained their eyesight and their 
plea.
     The case of blind Bartimaeus is a notable one in many ways. 
Especially is it remarkable for the show of persistence which this 
blind man exhibited in appealing to our Lord. If it be -- as it 
seems -- that his first crying was done as Jesus entered into 
Jericho, and that he continued it until Jesus came out of the 
place, it is all the stronger an illustration of the necessity of 
importunate prayer and the success which comes to those who stake 
their all on Christ, and give Him no peace until He grants them 
their hearts' desire.
     Mark puts the whole incident graphically before us. At first, 
Jesus seems not to hear. The crowd rebukes the noisy clamour of 
Bartimaeus. Despite the seeming unconcern of our Lord, however, 
and despite the rebuke of an impatient and quick-tempered crowd, 
the blind beggar still cries, and increases the loudness of his 
cry, until Jesus is impressed and moved. Finally, the crowd, as 
well as Jesus, hearken to the beggar's plea and declare in favour 
of his cause. He gains his case. His importunity avails even in 
the face of apparent neglect on the part of Jesus, and despite 
opposition and rebuke from the surrounding populace. His 
persistence won where half-hearted indifference would surely have 
failed.
     Faith has its province, in connection with prayer, and, of 
course, has its inseparable association with importunity. But the 
latter quality drives the prayer to the believing point. A 
persistent spirit brings a man to the place where faith takes 
hold, claims and appropriates the blessing.
     The imperative necessity of importunate prayer is plainly set 
forth in the Word of God, and needs to be stated and re-stated 
today. We are apt to overlook this vital truth. Love of ease, 
spiritual indolence, religious slothfulness, all operate against 
this type of petitioning. Our praying, however, needs to be 
pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency 
which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.
     We have need, too, to give thought to that mysterious fact of 
prayer -- the certainty that there will be delays, denials, and 
seeming failures, in connection with its exercise. We are to 
prepare for these, to brook them, and cease not in our urgent 
praying. Like a brave soldier, who, as the conflict grows sterner, 
exhibits a superior courage than in the earlier stages of the 
battle; so does the praying Christian, when delay and denial face 
him, increase his earnest asking, and ceases not until prayer 
prevail. Moses furnishes an illustrious example of importunity in 
prayer. Instead of allowing his nearness to God and his intimacy 
with Him to dispense with the necessity for importunity, he 
regards them as the better fitting him for its exercise. When 
Israel set up the golden calf, the wrath of God waxed fierce 
against them, and Jehovah, bent on executing justice, said to 
Moses when divulging what He purposed doing, "Let Me alone!" But 
Moses would not let Him alone. He threw himself down before the 
Lord in an agony of intercession in behalf of the sinning 
Israelites, and for forty days and nights, fasted and prayed. What 
a season of importunate prayer was that!
     Jehovah was wroth with Aaron, also, who had acted as leader 
in this idolatrous business of the golden calf. But Moses prayed 
for Aaron as well as for the Israelites; had he not, both Israel 
and Aaron had perished, under the consuming fire of God's wrath.
     That long season of pleading before God, left its mighty 
impress on Moses. He had been in close relation with God 
aforetime, but never did his character attain the greatness that 
marked it in the days and years following this long season of 
importunate intercession.
     There can be no question but that importunate prayer moves 
God, and heightens human character! If we were more with God in 
this great ordinance of intercession, more brightly would our face 
shine, more richly endowed would life and service be, with the 
qualities which earn the goodwill of humanity, and bring glory to 
the Name of God.



           VIII. PRAYER AND CHARACTER AND CONDUCT

     "General Charles James Gordon, the hero of Khartum, was a 
truly Christian soldier. Shut up in the Sudanese town he gallantly 
held out for one year, but, finally, was overcome and slain. On 
his memorial in Westminster Abbey are these words, 'He gave his 
money to the poor; his sympathy to the sorrowing; his life to his 
country and his soul to God.'" -- Homer W. Hodge.


PRAYER governs conduct and conduct makes character. Conduct, is 
what we do; character, is what we are. Conduct is the outward 
life. Character is the life unseen, hidden within, yet evidenced 
by that which is seen. Conduct is external, seen from without; 
character is internal -- operating within. In the economy of grace 
conduct is the offspring of character. Character is the state of 
the heart, conduct its outward expression. Character is the root 
of the tree, conduct, the fruit it bears.
     Prayer is related to all the gifts of grace. To character and 
conduct its relation is that of a helper. Prayer helps to 
establish character and fashion conduct, and both for their 
successful continuance depend on prayer. There may be a certain 
degree of moral character and conduct independent of prayer, but 
there cannot be anything like distinctive religious character and 
Christian conduct without it. Prayer helps, where all other aids 
fail. The more we pray, the better we are, the purer and better 
our lives.
     The very end and purpose of the atoning work of Christ is to 
create religious character and to make Christian conduct.
     "Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all 
iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of 
good works."
     In Christ's teaching, it is not simply works of charity and 
deeds of mercy upon which He insists, but inward spiritual 
character. This much is demanded, and nothing short of it, will 
suffice.
     In the study of Paul's Epistles, there is one thing which 
stands out, clearly and unmistakably -- the insistence on holiness 
of heart, and righteousness of life. Paul does not seek, so much, 
to promote what is termed "personal work," nor is the leading 
theme of his letters deeds of charity. It is the condition of the 
human heart and the blamelessness of the personal life, which form 
the burden of the writings of St. Paul.
     Elsewhere in the Scriptures, too, it is character and conduct 
which are made preeminent. The Christian religion deals with men 
who are devoid of spiritual character, and unholy in life, and 
aims so to change them, that they become holy in heart and 
righteous in life. It aims to change bad men into good men; it 
deals with inward badness, and works to change it into inward 
goodness. And it is just here where prayer enters and demonstrates 
its wonderful efficacy and fruit. Prayer drives toward this 
specific end. In fact, without prayer, no such supernatural change 
in moral character, can ever be effected. For the change from 
badness to goodness is not wrought "by works of righteousness 
which we have done," but according to God's mercy, which saves us 
"by the washing of regeneration." And this marvellous change is 
brought to pass through earnest, persistent, faithful prayer. Any 
alleged form of Christianity, which does not effect this change in 
the hearts of men, is a delusion and a snare.
     The office of prayer is to change the character and conduct 
of men, and in countless instances, has been wrought by prayer. At 
this point, prayer, by its credentials, has proved its divinity. 
And just as it is the office of prayer to effect this, so it is 
the prime work of the Church to take hold of evil men and make 
them good. Its mission is to change human nature, to change 
character, influence behaviour, to revolutionize conduct. The 
Church is presumed to be righteous, and should be engaged in 
turning men to righteousness. The Church is God's manufactory on 
earth, and its primary duty is to create and foster righteousness 
of character. This is its very first business. Primarily, its work 
is not to acquire members, nor amass numbers, nor aim at money-
getting, nor engage in deeds of charity and works of mercy, but to 
produce righteousness of character, and purity of the outward 
life.
     A product reflects and partakes of the character of the 
manufactory which makes it. A righteous Church with a righteous 
purpose makes righteous men. Prayer produces cleanliness of heart 
and purity of life. It can produce nothing else. Unrighteous 
conduct is born of prayerlessness; the two go hand-in-hand. Prayer 
and sinning cannot keep company with each other. One, or the 
other, must, of necessity, stop. Get men to pray, and they will 
quit sinning, because prayer creates a distaste for sinning, and 
so works upon the heart, that evil-doing becomes repugnant, and 
the entire nature lifted to a reverent contemplation of high and 
holy things.
     Prayer is based on character. What we are with God gauges our 
influence with Him. It was the inner character, not the outward 
seeming, of such men as Abraham, Job, David, Moses and all others, 
who had such great influence with God in the days of old. And, 
today, it is not so much our words, as what we really are, which 
weighs with God. Conduct affects character, of course, and counts 
for much in our praying. At the same time, character affects 
conduct to a far greater extent, and has a superior influence over 
prayer. Our inner life not only gives colour to our praying, but 
body, as well. Bad living means bad praying and, in the end, no 
praying at all. We pray feebly because we live feebly. The stream 
of prayer cannot rise higher than the fountain of living. The 
force of the inner chamber is made up of the energy which flows 
from the confluent streams of living. And the weakness of living 
grows out of the shallowness and shoddiness of character.
     Feebleness of living reflects its debility and langour in the 
praying hours. We simply cannot talk to God, strongly, intimately, 
and confidently unless we are living for Him, faithfully and 
truly. The prayer-closet cannot become sanctified unto God, when 
the life is alien to His precepts and purpose. We must learn this 
lesson well -- that righteous character and Christlike conduct 
give us a peculiar and preferential standing in prayer before God. 
His holy Word gives special emphasis to the part conduct has in 
imparting value to our praying when it declares:
     "Then shalt thou call and the Lord shall 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."
     The wickedness of Israel and their heinous practices were 
definitely cited by Isaiah, as the reason why God would turn His 
ears away from their prayers:
     "And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes 
from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your 
hands are full of blood."
     The same sad truth was declared by the Lord through the mouth 
of Jeremiah:
     "Therefore, pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a 
cry or prayer for them; for I will not hear them in the time that 
they cry unto Me for their trouble."
     Here, it is plainly stated, that unholy conduct is a bar to 
successful praying, just as it is clearly intimated that, in order 
to have full access to God in prayer, there must be a total 
abandonment of conscious and premeditated sin.
     We are enjoined to pray, "lifting up holy hands, without 
wrath and doubting," and must pass the time of our sojourning 
here, in a rigorous abstaining from evil if we are to retain our 
privilege of calling upon the Father. We cannot, by any process, 
divorce praying from conduct.
     "Whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His 
commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in His 
sight."
     And James declares roundly that men ask and receive not, 
because they ask amiss, and seek only the gratification of selfish 
desires.
     Our Lord's injunction, "Watch ye, and pray always," is to 
cover and guard all our conduct, so that we may come to our inner 
chamber with all its force secured by a vigilant guard kept over 
our lives.
     "And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be 
overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this 
life, and so that day come upon you unawares."
     Quite often, Christian experience founders on the rock of 
conduct. Beautiful theories are marred by ugly lives. The most 
difficult thing about piety, as it is the most impressive, is to 
be able to live it. It is the life which counts, and our praying 
suffers, as do other phases of our religious experience, from bad 
living.
     In primitive times preachers were charged to preach by their 
lives, or not to preach at all. So, today, Christians, everywhere, 
ought to be charged to pray by their lives, or not to pray at all. 
The most effective preaching, is not that which is heard from the 
pulpit, but that which is proclaimed quietly, humbly and 
consistently; which exhibits its excellencies in the home, and in 
the community. Example preaches a far more effective sermon than 
precept. The best preaching, even in the pulpit, is that which is 
fortified by godly living, in the preacher, himself. The most 
effective work done by the pew is preceded by, and accompanied 
with, holiness of life, separation from the world, severance from 
sin. Some of the strongest appeals are made with mute lips -- by 
godly fathers and saintly mothers who, around the fireside, feared 
God, loved His cause, and daily exhibited to their children and 
others about them, the beauties and excellencies of Christian life 
and conduct.
     The best-prepared, most eloquent sermon can be marred and 
rendered ineffective, by questionable practices in the preacher. 
The most active church worker can have the labour of his hands 
vitiated by worldliness of spirit and inconsistency of life. Men 
preach by their lives, not by their words, and sermons are 
delivered, not so much in, and from a pulpit, as in tempers, 
actions, and the thousand and one incidents which crowd the 
pathway of daily life.
     Of course, the prayer of repentance is acceptable to God. He 
delights in hearing the cries of penitent sinners. But repentance 
involves not only sorrow for sin, but the turning away from wrong-
doing, and the learning to do well. A repentance which does not 
produce a change in character and conduct, is a mere sham, which 
should deceive nobody. Old things must pass away, all things must 
become new.
     Praying, which does not result in right thinking and right 
living, is a farce. We have missed the whole office of prayer if 
it fail to purge character and rectify conduct. We have failed 
entirely to apprehend the virtue of prayer, if it bring not about 
the revolutionizing of the life. In the very nature of things, we 
must quit praying, or our bad conduct. Cold, formal praying may 
exist side by side, with bad conduct, but such praying, in the 
estimation of God, is no praying at all. Our praying advances in 
power, just in so far as it rectifies the life. Growing in purity 
and devotion to God will be a more prayerful life.
     The character of the inner life is a condition of effectual 
praying. As is the life, so will the praying be. An inconsistent 
life obstructs praying and neutralizes what little praying we may 
do. Always, it is "the prayer of the righteous man which availeth 
much." Indeed, one may go further and assert, that it is only the 
prayer of the righteous which avails anything at all -- at any 
time. To have an eye to God's glory; to be possessed by an earnest 
desire to please Him in all our ways; to possess hands busy in His 
service; to have feet swift to run in the way of His commandments 
-- these give weight and influence and power to prayer, and secure 
an audience with God. The incubus of our lives often breaks the 
force of our praying, and, not unfrequently, are as doors of 
brass, in the face of prayer.
     Praying must come out of a cleansed heart and be presented 
and urged with the "lifting up of holy hands." It must be 
fortified by a life aiming, unceasingly, to obey God, to attain 
conformity to the Divine law, and to come into submission to the 
Divine will.
     Let it not be forgotten, that, while life is a condition of 
prayer, prayer is also the condition of righteous living. Prayer 
promotes righteous living, and is the one great aid to uprightness 
of heart and life. The fruit of real praying is right living. 
Praying sets him who prays to the great business of "working out 
his salvation with fear and trembling;" puts him to watching his 
temper, conversation and conduct; causes him to "walk 
circumspectly, redeeming the time;" enables him to "walk worthy of 
the vocation wherewith he is called, with all lowliness and 
meekness;" gives him a high incentive to pursue his pilgrimage 
consistently by "shunning every evil way, and walking in the 
good."



                  IX. PRAYER AND OBEDIENCE

     "An obedience discovered itself in Fletcher of Madeley, which 
I wish I could describe or imitate. It produced in him a ready 
mind to embrace every cross with alacrity and pleasure. He had a 
singular love for the lambs of the flock, and applied himself with 
the greatest diligence to their instruction, for which he had a 
peculiar gift. . . . All his intercourse with me was so mingled 
with prayer and praise, that every employment, and every meal was, 
as it were, perfumed therewith." -- John Wesley.


UNDER the Mosaic law, obedience was looked upon as being "better 
than sacrifice, and to harken, than the fat of lambs." In 
Deuteronomy 5:29, Moses represents Almighty God declaring Himself 
as to this very quality in a manner which left no doubt as to the 
importance He laid upon its exercise. Referring to the waywardness 
of His people He cries:
     "O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear 
Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well 
with them, and with their children after them."
     Unquestionably obedience is a high virtue, a soldier quality. 
To obey belongs, preeminently, to the soldier. It is his first and 
last lesson, and he must learn how to practice it all the time, 
without question, uncomplainingly. Obedience, moreover, is faith 
in action, and is the outflow as it is the very test of love. "He 
that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth 
Me."
     Furthermore: obedience is the conserver and the life of love.
     "If ye keep My commandments," says Jesus, "ye shall abide in 
My love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in 
His love."
     What a marvellous statement of the relationship created and 
maintained by obedience! The Son of God is held in the bosom of 
the Father's love, by virtue of His obedience! And the factor 
which enables the Son of God to ever abide in His Father's love is 
revealed in His own statement, "For I do, always, those things 
that please Him."
     The gift of the Holy Spirit in full measure and in richer 
experience, depends upon loving obedience:
     "If ye love Me, keep My commandments," is the Master's word. 
"And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another 
Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever."
     Obedience to God is a condition of spiritual thrift, inward 
satisfaction, stability of heart. "If ye be willing and obedient, 
ye shall eat the fruit of the land." Obedience opens the gates of 
the Holy City, and gives access to the tree of life.
     "Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may 
have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the 
gates, into the city."
     What is obedience? It is doing God's will: it is keeping His 
commandments. How many of the commandments constitute obedience? 
To keep half of them, and to break the other half -- is that real 
obedience? To keep all the commandments but one -- is that 
obedience? On this point, James the Apostle is most explicit: 
"Whosoever shall keep the whole law," he declares, "and yet offend 
in one point, he is guilty of all."
     The spirit which prompts a man to break one commandment is 
the spirit which may move him to break them all. God's 
commandments are a unit, and to break one strikes at the principle 
which underlies and runs through the whole. He who hesitates not 
to break a single commandment, would -- it is more than probable 
-- under the same stress, and surrounded by the same 
circumstances, break them all.
     Universal obedience of the race is demanded. Nothing short of 
implicit obedience will satisfy God, and the keeping of all His 
commandments is the demonstration of it that God requires. But can 
we keep all of God's commandments? Can a man receive moral ability 
such as enables him to obey every one of them? Certainly he can. 
By every token, man can, through prayer, obtain ability to do this 
very thing.
     Does God give commandments which men cannot obey? Is He so 
arbitrary, so severe, so unloving, as to issue commandments which 
cannot be obeyed? The answer is that in all the annals of Holy 
Scripture, not a single instance is recorded of God having 
commanded any man to do a thing, which was beyond his power. Is 
God so unjust and so inconsiderate as to require of man that which 
he is unable to render? Surely not. To infer it, is to slander the 
character of God.
     Let us ponder this thought, a moment: Do earthly parents 
require of their children duties which they cannot perform? Where 
is the father who would think, even, of being so unjust, and so 
tyrannical? Is God less kind and just than faulty, earthly 
parents? Are they better and more just than a perfect God? How 
utterly foolish and untenable a thought!
     In principle, obedience to God is the same quality as 
obedience to earthly parents. It implies, in general effect, the 
giving up of one's own way, and following that of another; the 
surrendering of the will to the will of another; the submission of 
oneself to the authority and requirements of a parent. Commands, 
either from our heavenly Father or from our earthly father, are 
love-directing, and all such commands are in the best interests of 
those who are commanded. God's commands are issued neither in 
severity nor tyranny. They are always issued in love and in our 
interests, and so it behooves us to heed and obey them. In other 
words, and appraised at its lowest value -- God having issued His 
commands to us, in order to promote our good, it pays, therefore, 
to be obedient. Obedience brings its own reward. God has ordained 
it so, and since He has, even human reason can realize that He 
would never demand that which is out of our power to render.
     Obedience is love, fulfilling every command, love expressing 
itself. Obedience, therefore, is not a hard demand made upon us, 
any more than is the service a husband renders his wife, or a wife 
renders her husband. Love delights to obey, and please whom it 
loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be exactions, but 
no irk. There are no impossible tasks for love.
     With what simplicity and in what a matter-of-fact way does 
the Apostle John say: "And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, 
because we keep His commandments, and do those things which are 
pleasing in His sight."
     This is obedience, running ahead of all and every command. It 
is love, obeying by anticipation. They greatly err, and even sin, 
who declare that men are bound to commit iniquity, either because 
of environment, or heredity, or tendency. God's commands are not 
grievous. Their ways are ways of pleasantness, and their paths 
peace. The task which falls to obedience is not a hard one. "For 
My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
     Far be it from our heavenly Father, to demand impossibilities 
of His children. It is possible to please Him in all things, for 
He is not hard to please. He is neither a hard master, nor an 
austere lord, "taking up that which he lays not down, and reaping 
that which he did not sow." Thank God, it is possible for every 
child of God, to please his heavenly Father! It is really much 
easier to please Him than to please men. Moreover, we may know 
when we please Him. This is the witness of the Spirit -- the 
inward Divine assurance, given to all the children of God that 
they are doing their Father's will, and that their ways are well-
pleasing in His sight.
     God's commandments are righteous and founded in justice and 
wisdom. "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and 
just and good." "Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints." 
God's commandments, then, can be obeyed by all who seek supplies 
of grace which enable them to obey. These commandments must be 
obeyed. God's government is at stake. God's children are under 
obligation to obey Him; disobedience cannot be permitted. The 
spirit of rebellion is the very essence of sin. It is repudiation 
of God's authority, which God cannot tolerate. He never has done 
so, and a declaration of His attitude was part of the reason the 
Son of the Highest was made manifest among men:
     "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through 
the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful 
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the 
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
     If any should complain that humanity, under the fall, is too 
weak and helpless to obey these high commands of God, the reply is 
in order that, through the atonement of Christ, man is enabled to 
obey. The Atonement is God's Enabling Act. That which God works in 
us, in regeneration and through the agency of the Holy Spirit, 
bestows enabling grace sufficient for all that is required of us, 
under the Atonement. This grace is furnished without measure, in 
answer to prayer. So that, while God commands, He, at the same 
time, stands pledged to give us all necessary strength of will and 
grace of soul to meet His demands. This being true, man is without 
excuse for his disobedience and eminently censurable for refusing, 
or failing, to secure requisite grace, whereby he may serve the 
Lord with reverence, and with godly fear.
     There is one important consideration those who declare it to 
be impossible to keep God's commandments strangely overlook, and 
that is the vital truth, which declares that through prayer and 
faith, man's nature is changed, and made partaker of the Divine 
nature; that there is taken out of him all reluctance to obey God, 
and that his natural inability to keep God's commandments, growing 
out of his fallen and helpless state, is gloriously removed. By 
this radical change which is wrought in his moral nature, a man 
receives power to obey God in every way, and to yield full and 
glad allegiance. Then he can say, "I delight to do Thy will, O my 
God." Not only is the rebellion incident to the natural man 
removed, but a heart which gladly obeys God's Word, blessedly 
received.
     If it be claimed, that the unrenewed man, with all the 
disabilities of the Fall upon him, cannot obey God, there will be 
no denial. But to declare that, after one is renewed by the Holy 
Spirit, has received a new nature, and become a child of the King, 
he cannot obey God, is to assume a ridiculous attitude, and to 
display, moreover, a lamentable ignorance of the work and 
implications of the Atonement.
     Implicit and perfect obedience is the state to which the man 
of prayer is called. "Lifting up holy hands, without wrath and 
doubting," is the condition of obedient praying. Here inward 
fidelity and love, together with outward cleanness are put down as 
concomitants of acceptable praying.
     John gives the reason for answered prayer in the passage 
previously quoted: "And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him 
because we keep His commandments and do those things which are 
pleasing in His sight."
     Seeing that the keeping of God's commandments is here set 
forth as the reason why He answers prayer, it is to be reasonably 
assumed that we can keep God's commandments, can do those things 
which are pleasing to Him. Would God make the keeping of His 
commandments a condition of effectual prayer, think you, if He 
knew we could not keep His statutes? Surely, surely not!
     Obedience can ask with boldness at the Throne of grace, and 
those who exercise it are the only ones who can ask, after that 
fashion. The disobedient folk are timid in their approach and 
hesitant in their supplication. They are halted by reason of their 
wrong-doing. The requesting yet obedient child comes into the 
presence of his father with confidence and boldness. His very 
consciousness of obedience gives him courage and frees him from 
the dread born of disobedience.
     To do God's will without demur, is the joy as it is the 
privilege of the successful praying-man. It is he who has clean 
hands and a pure heart, that can pray with confidence. In the 
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:
     "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 
into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My 
Father which is in heaven."
     To this great deliverance may be added another:
     "If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love, even 
as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love."
     "The Christian's trade," says Luther, "is prayer." But the 
Christian has another trade to learn, before he proceeds to learn 
the secrets of the trade of prayer. He must learn well the trade 
of perfect obedience to the Father's will. Obedience follows love, 
and prayer follows obedience. The business of real observance of 
God's commandments inseparably accompanies the business of real 
praying.
     One who has been disobedient may pray. He may pray for 
pardoning mercy and the peace of his soul. He may come to God's 
footstool with tears, with confession, with penitent heart, and 
God will hear him and answer his prayer. But this kind of praying 
does not belong to the child of God, but to the penitent sinner, 
who has no other way by which to approach God. It is the 
possession of the unjustified soul, not of him who has been saved 
and reconciled to God.
     An obedient life helps prayer. It speeds prayer to the 
throne. God cannot help hearing the prayer of an obedient child. 
He always has heard His obedient children when they have prayed. 
Unquestioning obedience counts much in the sight of God, at the 
throne of heavenly grace. It acts like the confluent tides of many 
rivers, and gives volume and fulness of flow as well as power to 
the prayer chamber. An obedient life is not simply a reformed 
life. It is not the old life primed and painted anew nor a church-
going life, nor a good veneering of activities. Neither is it an 
external conformation to the dictates of public morality. Far more 
than all this is combined in a truly obedient Christian, God-
fearing life.
     A life of full obedience; a life settled on the most intimate 
terms with God; where the will is in full conformity to God's 
will; where the outward life shows the fruit of righteousness -- 
such a life offers no bar to the inner chamber but rather, like 
Aaron and Hur, it lifts up and sustains the hands of prayer.
     If you have an earnest desire to pray well, you must learn 
how to obey well. If you have a desire to learn to pray, then you 
must have an earnest desire to learn how to do God's will. If you 
desire to pray to God, you must first have a consuming desire to 
obey Him. If you would have free access to God in prayer, then 
every obstacle in the nature of sin or disobedience, must be 
removed. God delights in the prayers of obedient children. 
Requests coming from the lips of those who delight to do His will, 
reach His ears with great celerity, and incline Him to answer them 
with promptitude and abundance. In themselves, tears are not 
meritorious. Yet they have their uses in prayer. Tears should 
baptize our place of supplication. He who has never wept 
concerning his sins, has never really prayed over his sins. Tears, 
sometimes, is a penitent's only plea. But tears are for the past, 
for the sin and the wrongdoing. There is another step and stage, 
waiting to be taken. It is that of unquestioning obedience, and 
until it is taken, prayer for blessing and continued sustenance, 
will be of no avail.
     Everywhere in Holy Scripture God is represented as 
disapproving of disobedience and condemning sin, and this is as 
true in the lives of His elect as it is in the lives of sinners. 
Nowhere does He countenance sin, or excuse disobedience. Always, 
God puts the emphasis upon obedience to His commands. Obedience to 
them brings blessing, disobedience meets with disaster. This is 
true, in the Word of God, from its beginning to its close. It is 
because of this, that the men of prayer, in Holy Writ, had such 
influence with God. Obedient men, always, have been the closest to 
God. These are they who have prayed well and have received great 
things from God, who have brought great things to pass.
     Obedience to God counts tremendously in the realm of prayer. 
This fact cannot be emphasized too much or too often. To plead for 
a religious faith which tolerates sinning, is to cut the ground 
from under the feet of effectual praying. To excuse sinning by the 
plea that obedience to God is not possible to unregenerate men, is 
to discount the character of the new birth, and to place men where 
effective praying is not possible. At one time Jesus broke out 
with a very pertinent and personal question, striking right to the 
core of disobedience, when He said: "Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, 
and do not the things I say?"
     He who would pray, must obey. He who would get anything out 
of his prayers, must be in perfect harmony with God. Prayer puts 
into those who sincerely pray a spirit of obedience, for the 
spirit of disobedience is not of God and belongs not to God's 
praying hosts.
     An obedient life is a great help to prayer. In fact, an 
obedient life is a necessity to prayer, to the sort which 
accomplishes things. The absence of an obedient life makes prayer 
an empty performance, a mere misnomer. A penitent sinner seeks 
pardon and salvation and has an answer to his prayers even with a 
life stained and debauched with sin. But God's royal intercessors 
come before Him with royal lives. Holy living promotes holy 
praying. God's intercessors "lift up holy hands," the symbols of 
righteous, obedient lives.



             X. PRAYER AND OBEDIENCE (Continued)

     "Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, 
within my four score years. But one equal to John Fletcher -- one 
so inwardly and outwardly obedient and devoted to God -- I have 
not known."  -- John Wesley.


IT is worthy of note that the praying to which such transcendent 
position is given and from which great results are attributable, 
is not simply the saying of prayers, but holy praying. It is the 
"prayers of the saints," the prayers of the holy men of God. 
Behind such praying, giving to it energy and flame are the men and 
women who are wholly devoted to God, who are entirely separated 
from sin, and fully separated unto God. These are they who always 
give energy, force and strength to praying.
     Our Lord Jesus Christ was preeminent in praying, because He 
was preeminent in saintliness. An entire dedication to God, a full 
surrender, which carries with it the whole being, in a flame of 
holy consecration -- all this gives wings to faith and energy to 
prayer. It opens the door to the throne of grace, and brings 
strong influence to bear on Almighty God.
     The "lifting up of holy hands" is essential to Christly 
praying. It is not, however, a holiness which only dedicates a 
closet to God, which sets apart merely an hour to Him, but a 
consecration which takes hold of the entire man, which dedicates 
the whole life to God.
     Our Lord Jesus Christ, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate 
from sinners," had full liberty of approach and ready access to 
God in prayer. And He had this free and full access because of His 
unquestioning obedience to His Father. Right through His earthly 
life His supreme care and desire was to do the will of His Father. 
And this fact, coupled with another -- the consciousness of having 
so ordered His life -- gave Him confidence and assurance, which 
enabled Him to draw near to the throne of grace with unbounded 
confidence, born of obedience, and promising acceptance, audience, 
and answer.
     Loving obedience puts us where we can "ask anything in His 
name," with the assurance, that "He will do it." Loving obedience 
brings us into the prayer realm, and makes us beneficiaries of the 
wealth of Christ, and of the riches of His grace, through the 
coming of the Holy Spirit who will abide with us, and be in us. 
Cheerful obedience to God, qualifies us to pray effectually.
     This obedience which not only qualifies but fore-runs prayer, 
must be loving, constant, always doing the Father's will, and 
cheerfully following the path of God's commands.
     In the instance of King Hezekiah, it was a potent plea which 
changed God's decree that he should die and not live. The stricken 
ruler called upon God to remember how that he had walked before 
Him in truth, and with a perfect heart. With God, this counted. He 
hearkened to the petition, and, as a result, death found his 
approach to Hezekiah barred for fifteen years.
     Jesus learned obedience in the school of suffering, and, at 
the same time, He learned prayer in the school of obedience. Just 
as it is the prayer of a righteous man which availeth much, so it 
is righteousness which is obedience to God. A righteous man is an 
obedient man, and he it is, who can pray effectually, who can 
accomplish great things when he betakes himself to his knees.
     True praying, be it remembered, is not mere sentiment, nor 
poetry, nor eloquent utterance. Nor does it consist of saying in 
honeyed cadences, "Lord, Lord." Prayer is not a mere form of 
words; it is not just calling upon a Name. Prayer is obedience. It 
is founded on the adamantine rock of obedience to God. Only those 
who obey have the right to pray. Behind the praying must be the 
doing; and it is the constant doing of God's will in daily life 
which gives prayer its potency, as our Lord plainly taught:
     "Not every one which saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 
into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My 
Father which is in heaven. Many will say unto Me in that day, 
Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy Name have 
cast out devils? And in Thy Name done many wonderful works? And 
then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me, 
ye that worketh iniquity."
     No name, however precious and powerful, can protect and give 
efficiency to prayer which is unaccompanied by the doing of God's 
will. Neither can the doing, without the praying, protect from 
Divine disapproval. If the will of God does not master the life, 
the praying will be nothing but sickly sentiment. If prayer do not 
inspire, sanctify and direct our work, then self-will enters, to 
ruin both work and worker.
     How great and manifold are the misconceptions of the true 
elements and functionings of prayer! There are many who earnestly 
desire to obtain an answer to their prayers but who go unrewarded 
and unblest. They fix their minds on some promise of God and then 
endeavour by dint of dogged perseverance, to summon faith 
sufficient to lay hold upon, and claim it. This fixing of the mind 
on some great promise may avail in strengthening faith, but, to 
this holding on to the promise must be added the persistent and 
importunate prayer that expects, and waits till faith grows 
exceedingly. And who is there that is able and competent to do 
such praying save the man who readily, cheerfully and continually, 
obeys God?
     Faith, in its highest form, is the attitude as well as the 
act of a soul surrendered to God, in whom His Word and His Spirit 
dwells. It is true that faith must exist in some form, or another, 
in order to prompt praying; but in its strongest form, and in its 
largest results, faith is the fruit of prayer. That faith 
increases the ability and the efficiency of prayer is true; but it 
is likewise true that prayer increases the ability and efficiency 
of faith. Prayer and faith, work, act and react, one upon the 
other.
     Obedience to God helps faith as no other attribute possibly 
can. When obedience -- implicit recognition of the validity, the 
paramountcy of the Divine commands -- faith ceases to be an almost 
superhuman task. It requires no straining to exercise it. 
Obedience to God makes it easy to believe and trust God. Where the 
spirit of obedience fully impregnates the soul; where the will is 
perfectly surrendered to God; where there is a fixed, unalterable 
purpose to obey God, faith almost believes itself. Faith then 
becomes almost involuntary. After obedience it is, naturally, the 
next step, and it is easily and readily taken. The difficulty in 
prayer is not with faith, but with obedience, which is faith's 
foundation.
     We must look well to our obedience, to the secret springs of 
action, to the loyalty of our heart to God, if we would pray well, 
and desire to get the most out of our praying. Obedience is the 
groundwork of effectual praying; this it is, which brings us nigh 
to God.
     The lack of obedience in our lives breaks down our praying. 
Quite often, the life is in revolt and this places us where 
praying is almost impossible, except it be for pardoning mercy. 
Disobedient living produces mighty poor praying. Disobedience 
shuts the door of the inner chamber, and bars the way to the Holy 
of holies. No man can pray -- really pray -- who does not obey.
     The will must be surrendered to God as a primary condition of 
all successful praying. Everything about us gets its colouring 
from our inmost character. The secret will makes character and 
controls conduct. The will, therefore, plays an important part in 
all successful praying. There can be no praying in its richest 
implication and truest sense, where the will is not wholly and 
fully surrendered to God. This unswerving loyalty to God is an 
utterly indispensable condition of the best, the truest, the most 
effectual praying. We have "simply got to trust and obey; there's 
no other way, to be happy in Jesus -- but to trust, and obey! "



                   XI. PRAYER AND VIGILANCE

     "David Brainerd was pursued by unearthly adversaries, who 
were resolved to rob him of his guerdon. He knew he must never 
quit his armour, but lie down to rest, with his corselet laced. 
The stains that marred the perfection of his lustrous dress, the 
spots of rust on his gleaming shield, are imperceptible to us; but 
they were, to him, the source of much sorrow and ardency of 
yearning." -- Life Of David Brainerd.


THE description of the Christian soldier given by Paul in the 
sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, is compact and 
comprehensive. He is depicted as being ever in the conflict, which 
has many fluctuating seasons -- seasons of prosperity and 
adversity, light and darkness, victory and defeat. He is to pray 
at all seasons, and with all prayer, this to be added to the 
armour in which he is to fare forth to battle. At all times, he is 
to have the full panoply of prayer. The Christian soldier, if he 
fight to win, must pray much. By this means, only, is he enabled 
to defeat his inveterate enemy, the devil, together with the Evil 
One's manifold emissaries. "Praying always, with all prayer," is 
the Divine direction given him. This covers all seasons, and 
embraces all manner of praying.
     Christian soldiers, fighting the good fight of faith, have 
access to a place of retreat, to which they continually repair for 
prayer. "Praying always, with all prayer," is a clear statement of 
the imperative need of much praying, and of many kinds of praying, 
by him who, fighting the good fight of faith, would win out, in 
the end, over all his foes.
     The Revised Version puts it this way:
     "With all prayer and supplication, praying at all seasons in 
the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and 
supplications, for all saints, and on my behalf, that utterance 
may be given unto me, in opening my mouth to make known with 
boldness the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am in bonds."
     It cannot be stated too frequently that the life of a 
Christian is a warfare, an intense conflict, a lifelong contest. 
It is a battle, moreover, waged against invisible foes, who are 
ever alert, and ever seeking to entrap, deceive, and ruin the 
souls of men. The life to which Holy Scripture calls men is no 
picnic, or holiday junketing. It is no pastime, no pleasure jaunt. 
It entails effort, wrestling, struggling; it demands the putting 
forth of the full energy of the spirit in order to frustrate the 
foe and to come off, at the last, more than conqueror. It is no 
primrose path, no rose-scented dalliance. From start to finish, it 
is war. From the hour in which he first draws sword, to that in 
which he doffs his harness, the Christian warrior is compelled to 
"endure hardness like a good soldier."
     What a misconception many people have of the Christian life! 
How little the average church member appears to know of the 
character of the conflict, and of its demands upon him! How 
ignorant he seems to be of the enemies he must encounter, if he 
engage to serve God faithfully and so succeed in getting to heaven 
and receive the crown of life! He seems scarcely to realize that 
the world, the flesh and the devil will oppose his onward march, 
and will defeat him utterly, unless he give himself to constant 
vigilance and unceasing prayer.
     The Christian soldier wrestles not against flesh and blood, 
but against spiritual wickedness in high places. Or, as the 
Scriptural margin reads, "wicked spirits in high places." What a 
fearful array of forces are set against him who would make his way 
through the wilderness of this world to the portals of the 
Celestial City! It is no surprise, therefore, to find Paul, who 
understood the character of the Christian life so well, and who 
was so thoroughly informed as to the malignity and number of the 
foes, which the disciple of the Lord must encounter, carefully and 
plainly urging him to "put on the whole armour of God," and "to 
pray with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." Wise, with a 
great wisdom, would the present generation be if all professors of 
our faith could be induced to realize this all-important and vital 
truth, which is so absolutely indispensable to a successful 
Christian life.
     It is just at this point in much present-day Christian 
profession, that one may find its greatest defect. There is 
little, or nothing, of the soldier element in it. The discipline, 
self-denial, spirit of hardship, determination, so prominent in 
and belonging to the military life, are, one and all, largely 
wanting. Yet the Christian life is warfare, all the way.
     How comprehensive, pointed and striking are all Paul's 
directions to the Christian soldier, who is bent on thwarting the 
devil and saving his soul alive! First of all, he must possess a 
clear idea of the character of the life on which he has entered. 
Then, he must know something of his foes -- the adversaries of his 
immortal soul -- their strength, their skill, their malignity. 
Knowing, therefore, something of the character of the enemy, and 
realizing the need of preparation to overcome them, he is prepared 
to hear the Apostle's decisive conclusion:
     "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in he power 
of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able 
to stand against the wiles of the devil. Wherefore, take unto you 
the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand in the evil 
day, and having done all, to stand."
     All these directions end in a climax; and that climax is 
prayer. How can the brave warrior for Christ be made braver still? 
How can the strong soldier be made stronger still? How can the 
victorious battler be made still more victorious? Here are Paul's 
explicit directions to that end:
     "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the 
Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and 
supplication for all saints."
     Prayer, and more prayer, adds to the fighting qualities and 
the more certain victories of God's good fighting-men. The power 
of prayer is most forceful on the battle-field amid the din and 
strife of the conflict. Paul was preeminently a soldier of the 
Cross. For him, life was no flowery bed of ease. He was no dress-
parade, holiday soldier, whose only business was to don a uniform 
on set occasions. His was a life of intense conflict, the facing 
of many adversaries, the exercise of unsleeping vigilance and 
constant effort. And, at its close -- in sight of the end -- we 
hear him chanting his final song of victory, a I have fought a 
good fight," and reading between the lines, we see that he is more 
than conqueror!
     In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul indicates the nature of 
his soldier-life, giving us some views of the kind of praying 
needed for such a career. He writes:
     "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's 
sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with 
me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from 
them that do not believe in Judaea."
     Paul had foes in Judaea -- foes who beset and opposed him in 
the form of "unbelieving men" and this, added to other weighty 
reasons, led him to urge the Roman Christians to "strive with him 
in prayer." That word "strive" indicated wrestling, the putting 
forth of great effort. This is the kind of effort, and this the 
sort of spirit, which must possess the Christian soldier.
     Here is a great soldier, a captain-general, in the great 
struggle, faced by malignant forces who seek his ruin. His force 
is well-nigh spent. What reinforcements can he count on? What can 
give help and bring success to a warrior in such a pressing 
emergency? It is a critical moment in the conflict. What force can 
be added to the energy of his own prayers? The answer is -- in the 
prayers of others, even the prayers of his brethren who were at 
Rome. These, he believes, will bring him additional aid, so that 
he can win his fight, overcome his adversaries, and, ultimately, 
prevail.
     The Christian soldier is to pray at all seasons, and under 
all circumstances. His praying must be arranged so as to cover his 
times of peace as well as his hours of active conflict. It must be 
available in his marching and his fighting. Prayer must diffuse 
all effort, impregnate all ventures, decide all issues. The 
Christian soldier must be as intense in his praying as in his 
fighting, for his victories will depend very much more on his 
praying than on his fighting. Fervent supplication must be added 
to steady resolve, prayer and supplication must supplement the 
armour of God. The Holy Spirit must aid the supplication with His 
own strenuous plea. And the soldier must pray in the Spirit. In 
this, as in other forms of warfare, eternal vigilance is the price 
of victory; and thus, watchfulness and persistent perseverance, 
must mark the every activity of the Christian warrior.
     The soldier-prayer must reflect its profound concern for the 
success and well-being of the whole army. The battle is not 
altogether a personal matter; victory cannot be achieved for self, 
alone. There is a sense, in which the entire army of Christ is 
involved. The cause of God, His saints, their woes and trials, 
their duties and crosses, all should find a voice and a pleader in 
the Christian soldier, when he prays. He dare not limit his 
praying to himself. Nothing dries up spiritual secretions so 
certainly and completely; nothing poisons the fountain of 
spiritual life so effectively; nothing acts in such deadly 
fashion, as selfish praying.
     Note carefully that the Christian's armour will avail him 
nothing, unless prayer be added. This is the pivot, the connecting 
link of the armour of God. This holds it together, and renders it 
effective. God's true soldier plans his campaigns, arranges his 
battle-forces, and conducts his conflicts, with prayer. It is all 
important and absolutely essential to victory, that prayer should 
so impregnate the life that every breath will be a petition, every 
sigh a supplication. The Christian soldier must needs be always 
fighting. He should, of sheer necessity, be always praying.
     The Christian soldier is compelled to constant picket-duty. 
He must always be on his guard. He is faced by a foe who never 
sleeps, who is always alert, and ever prepared to take advantage 
of the fortunes of war. Watchfulness is a cardinal principle with 
Christ's warrior, "watch and pray," forever sounding in his ears. 
He cannot dare to be asleep at his post. Such a lapse brings him 
not only under the displeasure of the Captain of his salvation, 
but exposes him to added danger. Watchfulness, therefore, 
imperatively constitutes the duty of the soldier of the Lord.
     In the New Testament, there are three different words, which 
are translated "watch." The first means "absence of sleep," and 
implies a wakeful frame of mind, as opposed to listlessness; it is 
an enjoinder to keep awake, circumspect, attentive, constant, 
vigilant. The second word means "fully awake," -- a state induced 
by some rousing effort, which faculty excited to attention and 
interest, active, cautious, lest through carelessness or 
indolence, some destructive calamity should suddenly evolve. The 
third word means "to be calm and collected in spirit," 
dispassionate, untouched by slumberous or beclouding influences, a 
wariness against all pitfalls and beguilements.
     All three definitions are used by St. Paul. Two of them are 
employed in connection with prayer. Watchfulness intensified, is a 
requisite for prayer. Watchfulness must guard and cover the whole 
spiritual man, and fit him for prayer. Everything resembling 
unpreparedness or non-vigilance, is death to prayer.
     In Ephesians, Paul gives prominence to the duty of constant 
watchfulness, "Watching thereunto with all perseverance and 
supplication." Watch, he says, watch, WATCH! "And what I say unto 
you, I say unto all, Watch."
     Sleepless wakefulness is the price one must pay for victory 
over his spiritual foes. Rest assured that the devil never falls 
asleep. He is ever "walking about, seeking whom he may devour." 
Just as a shepherd must never be careless and unwatchful lest the 
wolf devour his sheep, so the Christian soldier must ever have his 
eyes wide open, implying his possession of a spirit which neither 
slumbers nor grows careless. The inseparable companions and 
safeguards of prayer are vigilance, watchfulness, and a mounted 
guard. In writing to the Colossians Paul brackets these 
inseparable qualities together: "Continue in prayer," he enjoins, 
"and watch in the same, with thanksgiving."
     When will Christians more thoroughly learn the twofold 
lesson, that they are called to a great warfare, and that in order 
to get the victory they must give themselves to unsleeping 
watchfulness and unceasing prayer?
     "Be sober, be vigilant," says Peter, "because your adversary, 
the devil, walketh about seeking whom he may devour."
     God's Church is a militant host. Its warfare is with unseen 
forces of evil. God's people compose an army fighting to establish 
His kingdom in the earth. Their aim is to destroy the sovereignty 
of Satan, and over its ruins, erect the Kingdom of God, which is 
"righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." This militant 
army is composed of individual soldiers of the Cross, and the 
armour of God is needed for its defence. Prayer must be added as 
that which crowns the whole.

     "Stand then in His great might,
          With all His strength endued;
     But take, to arm you for the fight,
          The panoply of God."

     Prayer is too simple, too evident a duty, to need definition. 
Necessity gives being and shape to prayer. Its importance is so 
absolute, that the Christian soldier's life, in all the breadth 
and intensity of it, should be one of prayer. The entire life of a 
Christian soldier -- its being, intention, implication and action 
-- are all dependent on its being a life of prayer. Without prayer 
-- no matter what else he have -- the Christian soldier's life 
will be feeble, and ineffective, and constitute him an easy prey 
for his spiritual enemies.
     Christian experience will be sapless, and Christian influence 
will be dry and arid, unless prayer has a high place in the life. 
Without prayer the Christian graces will wither and die. Without 
prayer, we may add, preaching is edgeless and a vain thing, and 
the Gospel loses its wings and its loins. Christ is the lawgiver 
of prayer, and Paul is His Apostle of prayer. Both declare its 
primacy and importance, and demonstrate the fact of its 
indispensability. Their prayer-directions cover all places, 
include all times, and comprehend all things. How, then, can the 
Christian soldier hope or dream of victory, unless he be fortified 
by its power? How can he fail, if in addition to putting on the 
armour of God he be, at all times and seasons, "watching unto 
prayer"?



              XII. PRAYER AND THE WORD OF GOD

     "How constantly, in the Scriptures, do we encounter such 
words as 'field,' 'seed,' 'sower,' 'reaper,' 'seed-time,' 
'harvest'! Employing such metaphors interprets a fact of nature by 
a parable of grace. The field is the world and the good seed is 
the Word of God .Whether the Word be spoken or written, it is the 
power of God unto salvation. In our work of evangelism, the whole 
world is our field, every creature the object of effort and every 
book and tract, a seed of God." -- David Fant, Jr.


GOD'S Word is a record of prayer -- of praying men and their 
achievements, of the Divine warrant of prayer and of the 
encouragement given to those who pray. No one can read the 
instances, commands, examples, multiform statements which concern 
themselves with prayer, without realizing that the cause of God, 
and the success of His work in this world is committed to prayer; 
that praying men have been God's vicegerents on earth; that 
prayerless men have never been used of Him.
     A reverence for God's holy Name is closely related to a high 
regard for His Word. This hallowing of God's Name; the ability to 
do His will on earth, as it is done in heaven; the establishment 
and glory of God's kingdom, are as much involved in prayer, as 
when Jesus taught men the Universal Prayer. That "men ought always 
to pray and not to faint," is as fundamental to God's cause, 
today, as when Jesus Christ enshrined that great truth in the 
immortal settings of the Parable of the Importunate Widow.
     As God's house is called "the house of prayer," because 
prayer is the most important of its holy offices; so by the same 
token, the Bible may be called the Book of Prayer. Prayer is the 
great theme and content of its message to mankind.
     God's Word is the basis, as it is the directory of the prayer 
of faith. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all 
wisdom," says St. Paul, "teaching and admonishing one another in 
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your 
hearts to the Lord."
     As this word of Christ dwelling in us richly is transmuted 
and assimilated, it issues in praying. Faith is constructed of the 
Word and the Spirit, and faith is the body and substance of 
prayer.
     In many of its aspects, prayer is dependent upon the Word of 
God. Jesus says:
     "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."
     The Word of God is the fulcrum upon which the lever of prayer 
is placed, and by which things are mightily moved. God has 
committed Himself, His purpose and His promise to prayer. His Word 
becomes the basis, the inspiration of our praying, and there are 
circumstances under which, by importunate prayer, we may obtain an 
addition, or an enlargement of His promises. It is said of the old 
saints that they, "through faith obtained promises." There would 
seem to be in prayer the capacity for going even beyond the Word, 
of getting even beyond His promise, into the very presence of God, 
Himself.
     Jacob wrestled, not so much with a promise, as with the 
Promiser. We must take hold of the Promiser, lest the promise 
prove nugatory. Prayer may well be defined as that force which 
vitalizes and energizes the Word of God, by taking hold of God, 
Himself. By taking hold of the Promiser, prayer reissues, and 
makes personal the promise. "There is none that stirreth up 
himself to take hold of Me," is God's sad lament. "Let him take 
hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me," is God's 
recipe for prayer.
     By Scriptural warrant, prayer may be divided into the 
petition of faith and that of submission. The prayer of faith is 
based on the written Word, for "faith cometh by hearing, and 
hearing by the Word of God." It receives its answer, inevitably -- 
the very thing for which it prays.
     The prayer of submission is without a definite word of 
promise, so to speak, but takes hold of God with a lowly and 
contrite spirit, and asks and pleads with Him, for that which the 
soul desires. Abraham had no definite promise that God would spare 
Sodom. Moses had no definite promise that God would spare Israel; 
on the contrary, there was the declaration of His wrath, and of 
His purpose to destroy. But the devoted leader gained his plea 
with God, when he interceded for the Israelites with incessant 
prayers and many tears. Daniel had no definite promise that God 
would reveal to him the meaning of the king's dream, but he prayed 
specifically, and God answered definitely.
     The Word of God is made effectual and operative, by the 
process and practice of prayer. The Word of the Lord came to 
Elijah, "Go show thyself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the 
earth." Elijah showed himself to Ahab; but the answer to his 
prayer did not come, until he had pressed his fiery prayer upon 
the Lord seven times.
     Paul had the definite promise from Christ, that he "would be 
delivered from the people and the Gentiles," but we find him 
exhorting the Romans in the urgent and solemn manner concerning 
this very matter:
     "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's 
sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with 
me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from 
them that do not believe in Judaea, and that my service which I 
have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints."
     The Word of God is a great help in prayer. If it be lodged 
and written in our hearts, it will form an outflowing current of 
prayer, full and irresistible. Promises, stored in the heart, are 
to be the fuel from which prayer receives life and warmth, just as 
the coal, stored in the earth, ministers to our comfort on stormy 
days and wintry nights. The Word of God is the food, by which 
prayer is nourished and made strong. Prayer, like man, cannot live 
by bread alone, "but by every word which proceedeth out of the 
mouth of the Lord."
     Unless the vital forces of prayer are supplied by God's Word, 
prayer, though earnest, even vociferous, in its urgency, is, in 
reality, flabby, and vapid, and void. The absence of vital force 
in praying, can be traced to the absence of a constant supply of 
God's Word, to repair the waste, and renew the life. He who would 
learn to pray well, must first study God's Word, and store it in 
his memory and thought.
     When we consult God's Word, we find that no duty is more 
binding, more exacting, than that of prayer. On the other hand, we 
discover that no privilege is more exalted, no habit more richly 
owned of God. No promises are more radiant, more abounding, more 
explicit, more often reiterated, than those which are attached to 
prayer. "All things, whatsoever" are received by prayer, because 
"all things whatsoever" are promised. There is no limit to the 
provisions, included in the promises to prayer, and no exclusion 
from its promises. "Every one that asketh, receiveth." The word of 
our Lord is to this all-embracing effect: "If ye shall ask 
anything in My Name, I will do it."
     Here are some of the comprehensive, and exhaustive statements 
of the Word of God about prayer, the things to be taken in by 
prayer, the strong promise made in answer to prayer:
     "Pray without ceasing;" "continue in prayer;" "continuing 
instant in prayer;" "in everything by prayer, let your request be 
made known unto God;" "pray always, pray and not faint;" "men 
should pray everywhere;" "praying always, with all prayer and 
supplication."
     What clear and strong statements are those which are put in 
the Divine record, to furnish us with a sure basis of faith, and 
to urge, constrain and encourage us to pray! How wide the range of 
prayer, as given us, in the Divine Revelation! How these 
Scriptures incite us to seek the God of prayer, with all our 
wants, with all our burdens!
     In addition to these statements left on record for our 
encouragement, the sacred pages teem with facts, examples, 
incidents, and observations, stressing the importance and the 
absolute necessity of prayer, and putting emphasis on its all-
prevailing power.
     The utmost reach and full benefit of the rich promises of the 
Word of God, should humbly be received by us, and put to the test. 
The world will never receive the full benefits of the Gospel until 
this be done. Neither Christian experience nor Christian living 
will be what they ought to be till these Divine promises have been 
fully tested by those who pray. By prayer, we bring these promises 
of God's holy will into the realm of the actual and the real. 
Prayer is the philosopher's stone which transmutes them into gold.
     If it be asked, what is to be done in order to render God's 
promises real, the answer is, that we must pray, until the words 
of the promise are clothed upon with the rich raiment of 
fulfilment.
     God's promises are altogether too large to be mastered by 
desultory praying. When we examine ourselves, all too often, we 
discover that our praying does not rise to the demands of the 
situation; is so limited that it is little more than a mere oasis 
amid the waste and desert of the world's sin. Who of us, in our 
praying, measures up to this promise of our Lord:
     "Verily, 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 to My Father."
     How comprehensive, how far reaching, how all-embracing! How 
much is here, for the glory of God, how much for the good of man! 
How much for the manifestation of Christ's enthroned power, how 
much for the reward of abundant faith! And how great and gracious 
are the results which can be made to accrue from the exercise of 
commensurate, believing prayer!
     Look, for a moment, at another of God's great promises, and 
discover how we may be undergirded by the Word as we pray, and on 
what firm ground we may stand on which to make our petitions to 
our God:
     "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."
     In these comprehensive words, God turns Himself over to the 
will of His people. When Christ becomes our all-in-all, prayer 
lays God's treasures at our feet. Primitive Christianity had an 
easy and practical solution of the situation, and got all which 
God had to give. That simple and terse solution is recorded in 
John's First Epistle:
     "Whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His 
commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in His 
sight."
     Prayer, coupled with loving obedience, is the way to put God 
to the test, and to make prayer answer all ends and all things. 
Prayer, joined to the Word of God, hallows and makes sacred all 
God's gifts. Prayer is not simply to get things from God, but to 
make those things holy, which already have been received from Him. 
It is not merely to get a blessing, but also to be able to give a 
blessing. Prayer makes common things holy and secular things, 
sacred. It receives things from God with thanksgiving and hallows 
them with thankful hearts, and devoted service.
     In the First Epistle to Timothy, Paul gives us these words:
     "For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be 
refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified 
by the word of God and prayer."
     That is a statement which gives a negative to mere 
asceticism. God's good gifts are to be holy, not only by God's 
creative power, but, also, because they are made holy to us by 
prayer. We receive them, appropriate them and sanctify them by 
prayer.
     Doing God's will, and having His Word abiding in us, is an 
imperative of effectual praying. But, it may be asked, how are we 
to know what God's will is? The answer is, by studying His Word, 
by hiding it in our hearts, and by letting the Word dwell in us 
richly. "The entrance of Thy word, giveth light."
     To know God's will in prayer, we must be filled with God's 
Spirit, who maketh intercession for the saints, and in the saints, 
according to the will of God. To be filled with God's Spirit, to 
be filled with God's Word, is to know God's will. It is to be put 
in such a frame of mind, to be found in such a state of heart, as 
will enable us to read and interpret aright the purposes of the 
Infinite. Such filling of the heart, with the Word and the Spirit, 
gives us an insight into the will of the Father, and enables us to 
rightly discern His will, and puts within us, a disposition of 
mind and heart to make it the guide and compass of our lives.
     Epaphras prayed that the Colossians might stand "perfect and 
complete in all the will of God." This is proof positive that, not 
only may we know the will of God, but that we may know all the 
will of God. And not only may we know all the will of God, but we 
may do all the will of God. We may, moreover, do all the will of 
God, not occasionally, or by a mere impulse, but with a settled 
habit of conduct. Still further, it shows us that we may not only 
do the will of God externally, but from the heart, doing it 
cheerfully, without reluctance, or secret disinclination, or any 
drawing or holding back from the intimate presence of the Lord.



         XIII. PRAYER AND THE WORD OF GOD (Continued)

     "Some years ago a man was travelling in the wilds of 
Kentucky. He had with him a large sum of money and was well armed. 
He put up at a log-house one night, but was much concerned with 
the rough appearance of the men who came and went from this abode. 
He retired early but not to sleep. At midnight he heard the dogs 
barking furiously and the sound of someone entering the cabin. 
Peering through a chink in the boards of his room, he saw a 
stranger with a gun in his hand. Another man sat before the fire. 
The traveller concluded they were planning to rob him, and 
prepared to defend himself and his property. Presently the 
newcomer took down a copy of the Bible, read a chapter aloud, and 
then knelt down and prayed. The traveller dismissed his fears, put 
his revolver away and lay down, to sleep peacefully until morning 
light. And all because a Bible was in the cabin, and its owner a 
man of prayer." -- Rev. F. F. Shoup.


PRAYER has all to do with the success of the preaching of the 
Word. This, Paul clearly teaches in that familiar and pressing 
request he made to the Thessalonians:
     "Finally, brethren, pray for us that the Word of the Lord may 
have free course, and be glorified."
     Prayer opens the way for the Word of God to run without let 
or hindrance, and creates the atmosphere which is favourable to 
the word accomplishing its purpose. Prayer puts wheels under God's 
Word, and gives wings to the angel of the Lord "having the 
everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, 
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." Prayer 
greatly helps the Word of the Lord.
     The Parable of the Sower is a notable study of preaching, 
showing its differing effects and describing the diversity of 
hearers. The wayside hearers are legion. The soil lies all 
unprepared either by previous thought or prayer; as a consequence, 
the devil easily takes away the seed (which is the Word of God) 
and dissipating all good impressions, renders the work of the 
sower futile. No one for a moment believes, that so much of 
present-day sowing would go fruitless if only the hearers would 
prepare the ground of their hearts beforehand by prayer and 
meditation.
     Similarly with the stony-ground hearers, and the thorny-
ground hearers. Although the word lodges in their hearts and 
begins to sprout, yet all is lost, chiefly because there is no 
prayer or watchfulness or cultivation following. The good-ground 
hearers are profited by the sowing, simply because their minds 
have been prepared for the reception of the seed, and that, after 
hearing, they have cultivated the seed sown in their hearts, by 
the exercise of prayer. All this gives peculiar emphasis to the 
conclusion of this striking parable: "Take heed, therefore, how ye 
hear." And in order that we may take heed how we hear, it is 
needful to give ourselves continually to prayer.
     We have got to believe that underlying God's Word is prayer, 
and upon prayer, its final success will depend. In the Book of 
Isaiah we read:
     "So shall My word be that goeth out of My mouth; it shall not 
return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, 
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
     In Psalm 19, David magnifies the Word of God in six 
statements concerning it. It converts the soul, makes wise the 
simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures 
eternally, and is true and righteous altogether. The Word of God 
is perfect, sure, right, pure. It is heart-searching, and at the 
same time purifying, in its effect. It is no surprise therefore 
that after considering the deep spirituality of the Word of God, 
its power to search the inner nature of man, and its deep purity, 
the Psalmist should close his dissertation with this passage:
     "Who can understand his errors?" And then praying after this 
fashion: "Cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy 
servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion 
over me. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my 
heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my 
redeemer."
     James recognizes the deep spirituality of the Word, and its 
inherent saving power, in the following exhortation:
     "Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of 
naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which 
is able to save your souls."
     And Peter talks along the same line, when describing the 
saving power of the Word of God:
     "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth 
forever."
     Not only does Peter speak of being born again, by the 
incorruptible Word of God, but he informs us that to grow in grace 
we must be like new-born babes, desiring or feeding upon the 
"sincere milk of the Word."
     That is not to say, however, that the mere form of words as 
they occur in the Bible have in them any saving efficacy. But the 
Word of God, be it remembered, is impregnated with the Holy 
Spirit. And just as there is a Divine element in the words of 
Scripture, so also is the same Divine element to be found in all 
true preaching of the Word, which is able to save and convert the 
soul.
     Prayer invariably begets a love for the Word of God, and sets 
people to the reading of it. Prayer leads people to obey the Word 
of God, and puts into the heart which obeys a joy unspeakable. 
Praying people and Bible-reading people are the same sort of folk. 
The God of the Bible and the God of prayer are one. God speaks to 
man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer. One reads the Bible 
to discover God's will; he prays in order that he may receive 
power to do that will. Bible-reading and praying are the 
distinguishing traits of those who strive to know and please God. 
And just as prayer begets a love for the Scriptures, and sets 
people to reading the Bible, so, also, does prayer cause men and 
women to visit the house of God, to hear the Scriptures expounded. 
Church-going is closely connected with the Bible, not so much 
because the Bible cautions us against "forsaking the assembling of 
ourselves together as the manner of some is," but because in God's 
house, God's chosen minister declares His Word to dying men, 
explains the Scriptures, and enforces their teachings upon his 
hearers. And prayer germinates a resolve, in those who practise 
it, not to forsake the house of God.
     Prayer begets a church-going conscience, a church-loving 
heart, a church-supporting spirit. It is the praying people, who 
make it a matter of conscience, to attend the preaching of the 
Word; who delight in its reading; exposition; who support it with 
their influence and their means. Prayer exalts the Word of God and 
gives it preeminence in the estimation of those who faithfully and 
wholeheartedly call upon the Name of the Lord.
     Prayer draws its very life from the Bible, and has no 
standing ground outside of the warrant of the Scriptures. Its very 
existence and character is dependent on revelation made by God to 
man in His holy Word. Prayer, in turn, exalts this same 
revelation, and turns men toward that Word. The nature, necessity 
and all-comprehending character of prayer, is based on the Word of 
God.
     Psalm 119 is a directory of God's Word. With three or four 
exceptions, each verse contains a word which identifies, or 
locates, the Word of God. Quite often, the writer breaks out into 
supplication, several times praying, "Teach me Thy statutes." So 
deeply impressed is he with the wonders of God's Word, and of the 
need for Divine illumination wherewith to see and understand the 
wonderful things recorded therein, that he fervently prays:
     "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out 
of Thy law."
     From the opening of this wonderful Psalm to its close, prayer 
and God's Word are intertwined. Almost every phase of God's Word 
is touched upon by this inspired writer. So thoroughly convinced 
was the Psalmist of the deep spiritual power of the Word of God 
that he makes this declaration:
     "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against 
Thee."
     Here the Psalmist found his protection against sinning. By 
having God's Word hidden in his heart; in having his whole being 
thoroughly impregnated with that Word; in being brought completely 
under its benign and gracious influence, he was enabled to walk to 
and fro in the earth, safe from the attack of the Evil One, and 
fortified against a proneness to wander out of the way.
     We find, furthermore, the power of prayer to create a real 
love for the Scriptures, and to put within men a nature which will 
take pleasure in the Word. In holy ecstasy he cries, "O, how I 
love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day." And again: "How 
sweet are Thy words to my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my 
taste."
     Would we have a relish for God's Word? Then let us give 
ourselves continually to prayer. He who would have a heart for the 
reading of the Bible must not -- dare not -- forget to pray. The 
man of whom it can be said, "His delight is in the law of the 
Lord," is the man who can truly say, "I delight to visit the place 
of prayer." No man loves the Bible, who does not love to pray. No 
man loves to pray, who does not delight in the law of the Lord.
     Our Lord was a man of prayer, and He magnified the Word of 
God, quoting often from the Scriptures. Right through His earthly 
life Jesus observed Sabbath-keeping, church-going and the reading 
of the Word of God, and had prayer intermingled with them all:
     "And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as 
His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and 
stood up to read."
     Here, let it be said, that no two things are more essential 
to a spirit-filled life than Bible-reading and secret prayer; no 
two things more helpful to growth in grace; to getting the largest 
joy out of a Christian life; toward establishing one in the ways 
of eternal peace. The neglect of these all-important duties, 
presages leanness of soul, loss of joy, absence of peace, dryness 
of spirit, decay in all that pertains to spiritual life. 
Neglecting these things paves the way for apostasy, and gives the 
Evil One an advantage such as he is not likely to ignore. Reading 
God's Word regularly, and praying habitually in the secret place 
of the Most High puts one where he is absolutely safe from the 
attacks of the enemy of souls, and guarantees him salvation and 
final victory, through the overcoming power of the Lamb.



               XIV. PRAYER AND THE HOUSE OF GOD

     "And dear to me the loud 'Amen,'
          Which echoes through the blest abode --
     Which swells, and sinks, then swells again,
          Dies on the walls -- but lives with God! "


PRAYER stands related to places, times, occasions and 
circumstances. It has to do with God and with everything which is 
related to God, and it has an intimate and special relationship to 
His house. A church is a sacred place, set apart from all 
unhallowed and secular uses, for the worship of God. As worship is 
prayer, the house of God is a place set apart for worship. It is 
no common place; it is where God dwells, where He meets with His 
people, and He delights in the worship of His saints.
     Prayer is always in place in the house of God. When prayer is 
a stranger there, then it ceases to be God's house at all. Our 
Lord put peculiar emphasis upon what the Church was when He cast 
out the buyers and sellers in the Temple, repeating the words from 
Isaiah, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of 
prayer." He makes prayer preeminent, that which stands out above 
all else in the house of God. They, who sidetrack prayer or seek 
to minify it, and give it a secondary place, pervert the Church of 
God, and make it something less and other than it is ordained to 
be.
     Prayer is perfectly at home in the house of God. It is no 
stranger, no mere guest; it belongs there. It has a peculiar 
affinity for the place, and has, moreover, a Divine right there, 
being set, therein, by Divine appointment and approval.
     The inner chamber is a sacred place for personal worship. The 
house of God is a holy place for united worship. The prayer-closet 
is for individual prayer. The house of God is for mutual prayer, 
concerted prayer, united prayer. Yet even in the house of God, 
there is the element of private worship, since God's people are to 
worship Him and pray to Him, personally, even in public worship. 
The Church is for the united prayer of kindred, yet individual 
believers.
     The life, power and glory of the Church is prayer. The life 
of its members is dependent on prayer and the presence of God is 
secured and retained by prayer. The very place is made sacred by 
its ministry. Without it, the Church is lifeless and powerless. 
Without it, even the building, itself, is nothing, more or other, 
than any other structure. Prayer converts even the bricks, and 
mortar, and lumber, into a sanctuary, a holy of holies, where the 
Shekinah dwells. It separates it, in spirit and in purpose from 
all other edifices. Prayer gives a peculiar sacredness to the 
building, sanctifies it, sets it apart for God, conserves it from 
all common and mundane affairs.
     With prayer, though the house of God might be supposed to 
lack everything else, it becomes a Divine sanctuary. So the 
Tabernacle, moving about from place to place, became the holy of 
holies, because prayer was there. Without prayer the building may 
be costly, perfect in all its appointments, beautiful for 
situation and attractive to the eye, but it comes down to the 
human, with nothing Divine in it, and is on a level with all other 
buildings.
     Without prayer, a church is like a body without spirit; it is 
a dead, inanimate thing. A church with prayer in it, has God in 
it. When prayer is set aside, God is outlawed. When prayer becomes 
an unfamiliar exercise, then God Himself is a stranger there.
     As God's house is a house of prayer, the Divine intention is 
that people should leave their homes and go to meet Him in His own 
house. The building is set apart for prayer especially, and as God 
has made special promise to meet His people there, it is their 
duty to go there, and for that specific end. Prayer should be the 
chief attraction for all spiritually minded church-goers. While it 
is conceded that the preaching of the Word has an important place 
in the house of God, yet prayer is its predominating, 
distinguishing feature. Not that all other places are sinful, or 
evil, in themselves or in their uses. But they are secular and 
human, having no special conception of God in them. The Church is, 
essentially, religious and Divine. The work belonging to other 
places is done without special reference to God. He is not 
specifically recognized, nor called upon. In the Church, however, 
God is acknowledged, and nothing is done without Him. Prayer is 
the one distinguishing mark of the house of God. As prayer 
distinguishes Christian from unchristian people, so prayer 
distinguishes God's house from all other houses. It is a place 
where faithful believers meet with their Lord.
     As God's house is, preeminently, a house of prayer, prayer 
should enter into and underlie everything that is undertaken 
there. Prayer be longs to every sort of work appertaining to the 
Church of God. As God's house is a house where the business of 
praying is carried on, so is it a place where the business of 
making praying people out of prayerless people is done. The house 
of God is a Divine workshop, and there the work of prayer goes on. 
Or the house of God is a Divine schoolhouse, in which the lesson 
of prayer is taught; where men and women learn to pray, and where 
they are graduated, in the school of prayer.
     Any church calling itself the house of God, and failing to 
magnify prayer; which does not put prayer in the forefront of its 
activities; which does not teach the great lesson of prayer, 
should change its teaching to conform to the Divine pattern or 
change the name of its building to something other than a house of 
prayer.
     On an earlier page, we made reference to the finding of the 
Book of the Law of the Lord given to Moses. How long that book had 
been there, we do not know. But when tidings of its discovery were 
carried to Josiah, he rent his clothes and was greatly disturbed. 
He lamented the neglect of God's Word and saw, as a natural 
result, the iniquity which abounded throughout the land.
     And then, Josiah thought of God, and commanded Hilkiah, the 
priest, to go and make inquiry of the Lord. Such neglect of the 
Word of the Law was too serious a matter to be treated lightly, 
and God must be enquired of, and repentance shown, by himself, and 
the nation:
     "Go enquire of the Lord for me, and for them that are left in 
Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is 
found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon 
us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do 
after all that is written in this book."
     But that was not all. Josiah was bent on promoting a revival 
of religion in his kingdom, so we find him gathering all the 
elders of Jerusalem and Judah together, for that purpose. When 
they had come together, the king went into the house of the Lord, 
and himself read in all the words of the Book of the Covenant that 
was found in the house of the Lord.
     With this righteous king, God's Word was of great importance. 
He esteemed it at its proper worth, and counted a knowledge of it 
to be of such grave importance, as to demand his consulting God in 
prayer about it, and to warrant the gathering together of the 
notables of his kingdom, so that they, together with himself, 
should be instructed out of God's Book concerning God's Law.
     When Ezra, returned from Babylon, was seeking the 
reconstruction of his nation, the people, themselves, were alive 
to the situation, and, on one occasion, the priests, Levites and 
people assembled themselves together as one man before the water 
gate.
     "And they spake unto Ezra the scribe, to bring the book of 
the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And Ezra 
the priest brought the law before the congregation, both of men 
and women, and all that could hear with understanding. And he read 
therein before the street that was before the water gate from the 
morning until midday; and the ears of all the people were 
attentive unto the book of the law."
     This was Bible-reading Day in Judah -- a real revival of 
Scripture-study. The leaders read the law before the people, whose 
ears were keen to hear what God had to say to them out of the Book 
of the Law. But it was not only a Bible-reading day. It was a time 
when real preaching was done, as the following passage indicates:
     "So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly and 
gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading."
     Here then is the Scriptural definition of preaching. No 
better definition can be given. To read the Word of God distinctly 
-- to read it so that the people could hear and understand the 
words read; not to mumble out the words, nor read it in an 
undertone or with indistinctness, but boldly and clearly -- that 
was the method followed in Jerusalem, on this auspicious day. 
Moreover: the sense of the words was made clear in the meeting 
held before the water gate; the people were treated to a high type 
of expository preaching. That was true preaching -- preaching of a 
sort which is sorely needed, today, in order that God's Word may 
have due effect on the hearts of the people. This meeting in 
Jerusalem surely contains a lesson which all present-day preachers 
should learn and heed.
     No one having any knowledge of the existing facts, will deny 
the comparative lack of expository preaching in the pulpit effort 
of today. And none, we should, at least, imagine, will do other 
than lament the lack. Topical preaching, polemical preaching, 
historical preaching, and other forms of sermonic output have, one 
supposes, their rightful and opportune uses. But expository 
preaching -- the prayerful expounding of the Word of God is 
preaching that is preaching -- pulpit effort par excellence.
     For its successful accomplishment, however, a preacher needs 
must be a man of prayer. For every hour spent in his study-chair, 
he will have to spend two upon his knees. For every hour he 
devotes to wrestling with an obscure passage of Holy Writ, he must 
have two in the which to be found wrestling with God. Prayer and 
preaching: preaching and prayer! They cannot be separated. The 
ancient cry was: "To your tents, O Israel! "The modern cry should 
be: "To your knees, O preachers, to your knees!"



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