The possibilities and necessity of prayer, its power and results are
manifested in arresting and changing the purposes of God and in
relieving the stroke of His power. Abimelech was smitten by God:
So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife,
and his maidservants; and they bare _children_.
For the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of
Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham’s wife.
Job’s miserable mistaken comforters had so deported themselves in their
controversy with Job that God’s wrath was kindled against them. “My
servant Job shall pray for you,” said God, “for him will I accept.”
“And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his
friends.”
Jonah was in dire condition when “the Lord sent out a great wind into
the sea, and there was a mighty tempest.” When lots were cast, “the lot
fell upon Jonah.” He was cast overboard into the sea, but “the Lord had
prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.... Then Jonah prayed unto the
Lord his God out of the fish’s belly ... and the Lord spake unto the
fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”
When the disobedient prophet lifted up his voice in prayer, God heard
and sent deliverance.
Pharaoh was a firm believer in the possibilities of prayer, and its
ability to relieve. When staggering under the woeful curses of God, he
pleaded with Moses to intercede for him. “Intreat the Lord for me,” was
his pathetic appeal four times repeated when the plagues were scourging
Egypt. Four times were these urgent appeals made to Moses, and four
times did prayer lift the dread curse from the hard king and his doomed
land.
The blasphemy and idolatry of Israel in making the golden calf and
declaring their devotions to it were a fearful crime. The anger of God
waxed hot, and He declared that He would destroy the offending people.
The Lord was very wroth with Aaron also, and to Moses He said, “Let Me
alone that I may destroy them.” But Moses prayed, and kept on praying;
day and night he prayed forty days. He makes the record of his prayer
struggle. “I fell down,” he says, “before the Lord at the first forty
days and nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water because of your
sins which ye sinned in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to
provoke Him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure
wherewith the Lord was hot against you to destroy you. But the Lord
hearkened to me at this time also. And the Lord was very angry with
Aaron to have destroyed him. And I prayed for him also at the same
time.”
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” It was the purpose of
God to destroy that great and wicked city. But Nineveh prayed, covered
with sackcloth; sitting in ashes she cried “mightily to God,” and “God
repented of the evil that He had said He would do unto them; and He did
it not.”
The message of God to Hezekiah was: “Set thine house in order; for thou
shalt die and not live.” Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and
prayed unto the Lord, and said: “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech Thee,
how I have walked before Thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and
have done that which is good in Thy sight.” And Hezekiah wept sore. God
said to Isaiah, “Go, say to Hezekiah, I have heard thy prayer, I have
seen thy tears; behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.”
These men knew how to pray and how to prevail in prayer. Their faith in
prayer was no passing attitude that changed with the wind or with their
own feelings and circumstances; it was a fact that God heard and
answered, that His ear was ever open to the cry of His children, and
that the power to do what was asked of Him was commensurate with His
willingness. And thus these men, strong in faith and in prayer, “subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,
from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight
the armies of the aliens.”
Everything then, as now, was possible to the men and women who knew how
to pray. Prayer, indeed, opened a limitless storehouse, and God’s hand
withheld nothing. Prayer introduced those who practised it into a world
of privilege, and brought the strength and wealth of heaven down to the
aid of finite man. What rich and wonderful power was theirs who had
learned the secret of victorious approach to God! With Moses it saved a
nation; with Ezra it saved a church.
And yet, strange as it seems when we contemplate the wonders of which
God’s people had been witness, there came a slackness in prayer. The
mighty hold upon God, that had so often struck awe and terror into the
hearts of their enemies, lost its grip. The people, backslidden and
apostate, had gone off from their praying—if the bulk of them had ever
truly prayed. The Pharisee’s cold and lifeless praying was substituted
for any genuine approach to God, and because of that formal method of
praying the whole worship became a parody of its real purpose. A
glorious dispensation, and gloriously executed, was it by Moses, by
Ezra, by Daniel and Elijah, by Hannah and Samuel; but the circle seems
limited and shortlived; the praying ones were few and far between. They
had no survivors, none to imitate their devotion to God, none to
preserve the roll of the elect.
In vain had the decree established the Divine order, the Divine call.
_Ask of Me._ From the earnest and fruitful crying to God they turned
their faces to pagan gods, and cried in vain for the answers that could
never come. And so they sank into that godless and pitiful state that
has lost its object in life when the link with the Eternal has been
broken. Their favoured dispensation of prayer was forgotten; they knew
not how to pray.
What a contrast to the achievements that brighten up other pages of holy
writ. The power working through Elijah and Elisha in answer to prayer
reached down even to the very grave. In each case a child was raised
from the dead, and the powers of famine were broken. “The supplications
of a righteous man avail much.” Elijah was a man of like passions with
us. He prayed fervently that it might not rain, and it rained not on the
earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the
heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Jonah prayed
while imprisoned in the great fish, and he came to dry land, saved from
storm and sea and monsters of the deep by the mighty energy of his
praying.
How wide the gracious provision of the grace of praying as administered
in that marvellous dispensation. They prayed wondrously. Why could not
their praying save the dispensation from decay and death? Was it not
because they lost the fire without which all praying degenerates into a
lifeless form? It takes effort and toil and care to prepare the incense.
Prayer is no laggard’s work. When all the rich, spiced graces from the
body of prayer have by labour and beating been blended and refined and
intermixed, the fire is needed to unloose the incense and make its
fragrance rise to the throne of God. The fire that consumes creates the
spirit and life of the incense. Without fire prayer has no spirit; it
is, like dead spices, for corruption and worms.
The casual, intermittent prayer is never bathed in this Divine fire. For
the man who thus prays is lacking in the earnestness that lays hold of
God, determined not to let Him go until the blessing comes. “Pray
without ceasing,” counselled the great Apostle. That is the habit that
drives prayer right into the mortar that holds the building stones
together. “You can do more than pray after you have prayed,” said the
godly Dr. A. J. Gordon, “but you cannot do more than pray until you have
prayed.” The story of every great Christian achievement is the history
of answered prayer.
“The greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in
this world is the talent of prayer,” writes Principal Alexander Whyte.
“And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He
comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer.
And those servants best put their Lord’s money ‘to the exchangers’ who
rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding
out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and
ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful
habits of prayer, till they literally ‘pray without ceasing,’ and till
they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new
achievements, and new enrichments.”
Martin Luther, when once asked what his plans for the following day
were, answered: “Work, work, from early until late. In fact, I have so
much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”
Cromwell, too, believed in being much upon his knees. Looking on one
occasion at the statues of famous men, he turned to a friend and said:
“Make mine kneeling, for thus I came to glory.”
It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer
that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets
access to the ear of God.
_When thou feelest thyself most indisposed to prayer yield not to
it, but strive and endeavour to pray even when thou thinkest thou
canst not pray._
—HILDERSAM.
_It was among the Parthians the custom that none was to give their
children any meat in the morning before they saw the sweat on their
faces, and you shall find this to be God’s usual course not to give
His children the taste of His delights till they begin to sweat in
seeking after them._
—RICHARD BAXTER.
_Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential
and yet more neglected than prayer. Most people consider the
exercise a fatiguing ceremony, which they are justified in
abridging as much as possible. Even those whose profession or fears
lead them to pray, pray with such languor and wanderings of mind
that their prayers, far from drawing down blessings, only increase
their condemnation._
—FÉNELON.