My God will hear Me
"Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you.
Blessed are all they that wait for Him. He will be very gracious
unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will
answer thee."--ISA. xxx. 18, 19.
"The Lord will hear when _I call_ upon Him."--PS. iv. 3.
"I have called upon Thee, for Thou _wilt hear me_, O God!"--PS.
xvii. 6.
"I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation:
my God _will hear me_."--MIC. vii. 7.
The power of prayer rests in the faith that God hears it. In more than
one sense this is true. It is this faith that gives a man courage to
pray. It is this faith that gives him power to prevail with God. The
moment I am assured that God hears _me_ too, I feel drawn to pray and to
persevere in prayer. I feel strong to claim and to take in faith the
answer God gives. One great reason of lack of prayer is the want of the
living, joyous assurance: "My God will hear me." If once God's servants
got a vision of the living God waiting to grant their request, and to
bestow all the heavenly gifts of the Spirit they are in need of, for
themselves or those they are serving, how everything would be set aside
to make time and room for this one only power that can ensure heavenly
blessing--the prayer of faith!
When a man can, and does say, in living faith, "My God will hear me!"
surely nothing can keep him from prayer. He knows that what he cannot do
or get done on earth, can and will be done for him from heaven. Let each
one of us bow in stillness before God, and wait on Him to reveal Himself
as the prayer-hearing God. In His presence the wondrous thoughts
gathering round the central truth will unfold themselves to us.
1. "_My God will hear me._"--_What a blessed certainty!_--We have God's
word for it in numberless promises. We have thousands of witnesses to
the fact that they have found it true. We have had experience of it in
our lives. We have had the Son of God come from heaven with the message
that if we ask, the Father will give. We have had Himself praying on
earth, and being heard. And we have Him in heaven now, sitting at the
right hand of God and making intercession for us. God hears prayer--God
delights to hear prayer. He has allowed His people a thousand times over
to be tried, that they might be compelled to cry to Him, and learn to
know Him as the Hearer of Prayer.
Let us confess with shame how little we have believed this wondrous
truth, in the sense of receiving it into our heart, and allowing it to
possess and control our whole being. That we accept a truth is not
enough; the living God, of whom the truth speaks, must in its light so
be revealed, that our whole life is spent in His presence, with the
consciousness as clear as in a little child towards its earthly
parent--I know for certain my father hears me.
Beloved child of God! you know by experience how little an intellectual
apprehension of truth has profited you. Beseech God to reveal Himself to
you. If you want to live a different prayer-life, bow each time ere you
pray in silence to worship this God; to wait till there rests on you
some right sense of His nearness and readiness to answer. So will you
begin to pray with the words, "My God will hear me!"
2. "_My God will hear me._" _What a wondrous grace!_--Think of God in
His infinite majesty, His altogether incomprehensible glory, His
unapproachable holiness, sitting on a throne of grace, waiting to be
gracious, inviting, encouraging you to pray with His promise: "Call upon
Me, and I will answer thee." Think of yourself, in your nothingness and
helplessness as a creature; in your wretchedness and transgressions as a
sinner; in your feebleness and unworthiness as a saint; and praise the
glory of that grace which allows you to say boldly of your prayer for
yourself and others, "My God will hear me." Think of how you are not
left to yourself, and what you can accomplish, in this wonderful
intercourse with God. God has united you with Christ; in Him and His
Name you have your confidence; on the throne He prays with you and for
you; on the footstool of the throne you pray with Him and in Him. His
worth, and the Father's delight in hearing Him, are the measure of your
confidence, your assurance of being heard. There is more. Think of the
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's own Son, sent into your heart to cry,
Abba, Father, and to be _in you_ a Spirit of Supplication, when you know
not what to pray as you ought. Think, in all your insignificance and
unworthiness, of your being as acceptable as Christ Himself. Think in
all your ignorance and feebleness, of the Spirit making intercession
according to God within you, and cry out, "What wondrous grace! Through
Christ I have access to the Father, by the Spirit. I can, I do believe
it: 'My God will hear me.'"
3. "_My God will hear me._"--_What a deep mystery!_--There are
difficulties that cannot but at times arise and perplex even the honest
heart. There is the question as to God's sovereign, all-wise,
all-disposing will. How can our wishes, often so foolish, and our will,
often so selfish, overrule or change that perfect will? Were it not
better to leave all to His disposal, who knows what is best, and loves
to give us the very best? Or how can our prayer change what He has
ordained before? Then there is the question as to the need of
persevering prayer, and long waiting for the answer. If God be Infinite
Love, and delighting more to give than we to receive, where the need for
the pleading and wrestling, the urgency, and the long delay of which
Scripture and experience speak? Arising out of this there is still
another question--that of the multitude of apparently vain and
unanswered prayers. How many have pleaded for loved ones, and they die
unsaved. How many cry for years for spiritual blessing, and no answer
comes. To think of all this tries our faith, and makes us hesitate as we
say, "My God will hear me."
Beloved! prayer, in its power with God, and His faithfulness to His
promise to hear it, is a deep spiritual mystery. To the questions put
above answers can be given that remove some of the difficulty. But,
after all, the first and the last that must be said is this: As little
as we can comprehend God can we comprehend this, one of the most blessed
of His attributes, that He hears prayer. It is a spiritual
mystery--nothing less than the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God hears
because we pray in His Son, because the Holy Spirit prays in us. If we
have believed and claimed the life of Christ as our health, and the
fulness of the Spirit as our strength, let us not hesitate to believe in
the power of our prayer too. The Holy Spirit can enable us to believe
and rejoice in it, even where every question is not yet answered. He
will do this, as we lay our questionings in God's bosom, trust His
faithfulness, and give ourselves humbly to obey His command to pray
without ceasing. Every art unfolds its secrets and its beauty only to
the man who practises it. To the humble soul who prays in the obedience
of faith, who practises prayer and intercession diligently, because God
asks it, the secret of the Lord will be revealed, and the thought of the
deep mystery of prayer, instead of being a weary problem, will be a
source of rejoicing, adoration, and faith, in which the unceasing
refrain is ever heard: "_My God will hear me!_"
4. "_My God will hear me._" _What a solemn responsibility!_--How often
we complain of darkness, of feebleness, of failure, as if there was no
help for it. And God has promised in answer to our prayer to supply our
every need, and give us His light and strength and peace. Would that we
realised the responsibility of having such a God, and such promises,
with the sin and shame of not availing ourselves of them to the utmost.
How confident we should feel that the grace, which we have accepted and
trusted to enable us to pray as we should, will be given.
There is more. This access to a prayer-hearing God is specially meant to
make us intercessors for our fellowmen. Even as Christ obtained His
right of prevailing intercession by His giving Himself a sacrifice to
God for men, and through it receives the blessings He dispenses, so, if
we have truly with Christ given ourselves to God for men, we share His
right of intercession, and are able to obtain the powers of the heavenly
world for them too. The power of life and death is in our hands (1 John
v. 16). In answer to prayer the Spirit can be poured out, souls can be
converted, believers can be established. In prayer the kingdom of
darkness can be conquered, souls brought out of prison into the liberty
of Christ, and the glory of God be revealed. Through prayer, the sword
of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, can be wielded in power, and,
in public preaching as in private speaking, the most rebellious made to
bow at Jesus' feet.
What a responsibility on the Church to give herself to the work of
intercession! What a responsibility on every minister, missionary,
worker, set apart for the saving of souls, to yield himself wholly to
act out and prove his faith: "My God will hear me!" And what a call on
every believer, instead of burying and losing this talent, to seek to
the very utmost to use it in prayer and supplication for all saints and
for all men. My God will hear me: The deeper our entrance into the truth
of this wondrous power God hath given to men, the more whole-hearted
will be our surrender to the work of intercession.
5. "_My God will hear me._" _What a blessed prospect!_--I see it--all
the failures of my past life have been owing to the lack of this faith.
My failure, especially in the work of intercession, has had its deepest
root in this--I did not live in the full faith of the blessed assurance,
"_My God will hear me!_" Praise God! I begin to see it--I believe it.
All can be different. Or, rather, I see Him, I believe Him. "_My God
will hear me!_" Yes, me, even me! Commonplace and insignificant though I
be, filling but a very little place, so that I will scarce be missed
when I go--even I have access to this Infinite God, with the confidence
that He heareth me. One with Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, I dare to
say: "I will pray for others, for I am sure my God will listen to me:
'_My God will hear me._'" What a blessed prospect before me--every
earthly and spiritual anxiety exchanged for the peace of God, who cares
for all and hears prayer. What a blessed prospect in my work--to know
that even when the answer is long delayed, and there is a call for much
patient, persevering prayer, the truth remains infallibly sure--"_My God
will hear me!_"
And what a blessed prospect for Christ's Church if we could but all give
prayer its place, give faith in God its place, or, rather, _give the
prayer-hearing God His place_! Is not this the one great thing, those,
who in some little measure begin to see the urgent need of prayer, ought
in the first place to pray for. When God, at the first, time after time,
poured forth the Spirit on His praying people, He laid down the law for
all time: as much of prayer, so much of the Spirit. Let each one who can
say, "_My God will hear me_," join in the fervent supplication, that
throughout the Church that truth may be restored to its true place, and
the blessed prospect will be realised: a praying Church endued with the
power of the Holy Ghost.
6. "_My God will hear me._" _What a need of Divine teaching!_--We need
this, both to enable us to hold this word in living faith, and to make
full use of it in intercession. It has been said, and it cannot be said
too often or too earnestly, that the one thing needful for the Church of
our day is, the power of the Holy Spirit. It is just because this is
so, from the Divine side, that we may also say as truly that, from the
human side, the one thing needful is, more prayer, more believing,
persevering prayer. In speaking of lack of the Spirit's power, and the
condition for receiving it, someone used the expression--the block is
not on the perpendicular, but on the horizontal line. It is to be feared
that it is on both. There is much to be confessed and taken away in us
if the Spirit is to work freely. But it is specially on the
perpendicular line that the block is--the upward look, and the deep
dependence, and the strong crying to God, and the effectual prayer of
faith that avails--all this is sadly lacking. And just this is the one
thing needful.
Shall we not all set ourselves to learn the lesson which will make
prevailing prayer possible--the lesson of a faith that always sings,
"_My God will hear me_"? Simple and elementary as it is, it needs
practice and patience, it needs time and heavenly teaching, to learn it
aright. Under the impression of a bright thought, or a blessed
experience, it may look as if we knew the lesson perfectly. But ever
again the need will recur of making this our first prayer--that God who
hears prayer would teach us to believe it, and so to pray aright. If we
desire it we can count upon Him He who delights in hearing prayer and
answering it, He who gave His Son that He might ever pray for us and
with us, and His Holy Spirit to pray in us, we can be sure there is not
a prayer that He will hear more certainly than this: that He so reveal
Himself as the prayer-hearing God, that our whole being may respond,
"_My God will hear me._"
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER