More praying and better is the secret of the whole matter. More time for
prayer, more relish and preparation to meet God, to commune with God
through Christ—this has in it the whole of the matter. Our manner and
matter of praying ill become us. The attitude and relationship of God
and the Son are the eternal relationship of Father and Son, of asking
and giving—the Son always asking, the Father always giving:
_Ask of Me_, and I will give _Thee_ the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Jesus is to be always praying through His people. “And men shall pray
for Him continually.” “For My house shall be called a house of prayer
for My peoples.” We must prepare ourselves to pray; to be like Christ,
to pray like Christ.
Man’s access in prayer to God opens everything, and makes his
impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer. The wealth
and the glory—all things are Christ’s. As the light grows brighter and
prophets take in the nature of the restoration, the Divine record seems
to be enlarged.
“Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and His Maker, ask Me of
the things that are to come, concerning My sons, and concerning the work
of My hands command ye Me. I have made the earth, and created man upon
it: I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens and all their host
have I commanded.”
To man is given to command God with all this authority and power in the
demands of God’s earthly Kingdom. Heaven, with all it has, is under
tribute to carry out the ultimate, final and glorious purposes of God.
Why then is the time so long in carrying out these wise benedictions for
man? Why then does sin so long reign? Why are the oath-bound covenant
promises so long in coming to their gracious end? Sin reigns, Satan
reigns, sighing marks the lives of many; all tears are fresh and full.
Why is all this so? We have not prayed to bring the evil to an end; we
have not prayed as we must pray. We have not met the conditions of
prayer.
_Ask of Me._ Ask of God. We have not rested on prayer. We have not made
prayer the sole condition. There has been violation of the primary
condition of prayer. We have not prayed aright. We have not prayed at
all. God is willing to give, but we are slow to ask. The Son, through
His saints, is ever praying and God the Father is ever answering.
_Ask of Me._ In the invitation is conveyed the assurance of answer; the
shout of victory is there and may be heard by the listening ear. The
Father holds the authority and power in His hands. How easy is the
condition, and yet how long are we in fulfilling the conditions! Nations
are in bondage; the uttermost parts of the earth are still unpossessed.
The earth groans; the world is still in bondage; Satan and evil hold
sway.
The Father holds Himself in the attitude of Giver, _Ask of Me_, and that
petition to God the Father empowers all agencies, inspires all
movements. The Gospel is Divinely inspired. Back of all its inspirations
is prayer. _Ask of Me_ lies back of all movements. Standing as the
endowment of the enthroned Christ is the oath-bound covenant of the
Father, “_Ask of Me_, and I will give thee the nations for thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
“And men shall pray to Him continually.”
Ever are the prayers of holy men streaming up to God as fragrant as the
richest incense. And God in many ways is speaking to us, declaring His
wealth and our impoverishment. “I am the Maker of all things; the wealth
and glory are Mine. _Command ye Me._”
We can do all things by God’s aid, and can have the whole of His aid by
asking. The Gospel, in its success and power, depends on our ability to
pray. The dispensations of God depend on man’s ability to pray. We can
have all that God has. _Command_ _ye Me._ This is no figment of the
imagination, no idle dream, no vain fancy. The life of the Church is the
highest life. Its office is to pray. Its prayer life is the highest
life, the most odorous, the most conspicuous.
The Book of Revelation says nothing about prayer as a great duty, a
hallowed service, but much about prayer in its aggregated force and
energies. It is the prayer force ever living and ever praying; it is all
saints’ prayers going out as a mighty, living energy while the lips that
uttered the words are stilled and sealed in death, while the living
church has an energy of faith to inherit the forces of all the past
praying and make it deathless.
The statement by the Baptist philosopher, John Foster, contains the
purest philosophy and the simple truth of God, for God has no force and
demands no conditions but prayer. “More and better praying will bring
the surest and readiest triumph to God’s cause; feeble, formal, listless
praying brings decay and death. The Church has its sheet-anchor in the
closet; its magazine stores are there.”
“I am convinced,” Foster continues, “that every man who amidst his
serious projects is apprized of his dependence upon God as completely as
that dependence is a fact, will be impelled to pray and anxious to
induce his serious friends to pray almost every hour. He will not
without it promise himself any noble success any more than a mariner
would expect to reach a distant coast by having his sails spread in a
stagnation of air.
“I have intimated my fear that it is visionary to expect an unusual
success in the human administration of religion unless there are unusual
omens: now a most emphatical spirit of prayer would be such an omen; and
the individual who should determine to try its last possible efficacy
might probably find himself becoming a much more prevailing agent in his
little sphere. And if the whole, or the greater number of the disciples
of Christianity were with an earnest and unalterable resolution of each
to combine that heaven should not withhold one single influence which
the very utmost effort of conspiring and persevering supplication would
obtain, it would be a sign that a revolution of the world was at hand.”
Edward Payson, one of God’s own, says of this statement of Foster, “Very
few missionaries since the apostles, probably have tried the experiment.
He who shall make the first trial will, I believe, effect wonders.
Nothing that I could write, nothing that an angel could write, would be
necessary to him who should make this trial.
“One of the principal results of the little experience which I have had
as a Christian minister is a conviction that religion consists very much
in giving God that place in our views and feelings which He actually
fills in the universe. We know that in the universe He is all in all. So
far as He is constantly all in all to us, so far as we comply with the
Psalmist’s charge to his soul, ‘My soul, wait thou _only_ upon God;’ so
far, I apprehend, have we advanced towards perfection. It is
comparatively easy to wait upon God; but to wait upon Him _only_—to
feel, so far as our strength, happiness, and usefulness are concerned,
as if all creatures and second causes were annihilated, and we were
alone in the universe with God, is, I suspect, a difficult and rare
attainment. At least, I am sure it is one which I am very far from
having made. In proportion as we make this attainment we shall find
everything easy; for we shall become, emphatically, men of prayer; and
we may say of prayer as Solomon says of money, that it answereth all
things.”
This same John Foster said, when approaching death: “I never prayed more
earnestly nor probably with such faithful frequency. ‘Pray without
ceasing’ has been the sentence repeating itself in the silent thought,
and I am sure it must be my practice till the last conscious hour of
life. Oh, why not throughout that long, indolent, inanimate half-century
past?”
And yet this is the way in which we all act about prayer. Conscious as
we are of its importance, of its vital importance, we yet let the hours
pass away as a blank and can only lament in death the irremediable loss.
When we calmly reflect upon the fact that the progress of our Lord’s
Kingdom is dependent upon prayer, it is sad to think that we give so
little time to the holy exercise. Everything depends upon prayer, and
yet we neglect it not only to our own spiritual hurt but also to the
delay and injury of our Lord’s cause upon earth. The forces of good and
evil are contending for the world. If we would, we could add to the
conquering power of the army of righteousness, and yet our lips are
sealed, our hands hang listlessly by our side, and we jeopardise the
very cause in which we profess to be deeply interested by holding back
from the prayer chamber.
Prayer is the one prime, eternal condition by which the Father is
pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays through
His people. Had there been importunate, universal and continuous prayer
by God’s people, long ere this the earth had been possessed for Christ.
The delay is not to be accounted for by the inveterate obstacles, but by
the lack of the right asking. We do more of everything else than of
praying. As poor as our giving is, our contributions of money exceed our
offerings of prayer. Perhaps in the average congregation fifty aid in
paying, where one saintly, ardent soul shuts itself up with God and
wrestles for the deliverance of the heathen world. Official praying on
set or state occasions counts for nothing in this estimate. We emphasise
other things more than we do the necessity of prayer.
We are saying prayers after an orderly way, but we have not the world in
the grasp of our faith. We are not praying after the order that moves
God and brings all Divine influences to help us. The world needs more
true praying to save it from the reign and ruin of Satan.
We do not pray as Elijah prayed. John Foster puts the whole matter to a
practical point. “When the Church of God,” he says, “is aroused to its
obligation and duties and right faith to claim what Christ has
promised—‘all things whatsoever’—a revolution will take place.”
But not all praying is praying. The driving power, the conquering force
in God’s cause is God Himself. “Call upon Me and I will answer thee and
show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not,” is God’s
challenge to prayer. Prayer puts God in full force into God’s work. “Ask
of Me things to come, concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My
hands command ye Me”—God’s _carte blanche_ to prayer. Faith is only
omnipotent when on its knees, and its outstretched hands take hold of
God, then it draws to the utmost of God’s capacity; for only a praying
faith can get God’s “all things whatsoever.” Wonderful lessons are the
Syrophenician woman, the importunate widow, and the friend at midnight,
of what dauntless prayer can do in mastering or defying conditions, in
changing defeat into victory and triumphing in the regions of despair.
Oneness with Christ, the acme of spiritual attainment, is glorious in
all things; most glorious in that we can then “ask what we will and it
shall be done unto us.” Prayer in Jesus’ name puts the crowning crown on
God, because it glorifies Him through the Son and pledges the Son to
give to men “whatsoever and anything” they shall ask.
In the New Testament the marvellous prayer of the Old Testament is put
to the front that it may provoke and stimulate our praying, and it is
preceded with a declaration, the dynamic energy of which we can scarcely
translate. “The supplication of a righteous man availeth much. Elijah
was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed earnestly that it
might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three
years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and
the earth brought forth her fruit.”
Our paucity in results, the cause of all leanness, is solved by the
Apostle James—“Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not,
because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your pleasures.”
That is the whole truth in a nutshell.
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_The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it had
bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished
wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of
death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled
frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its
course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an
all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is
never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by
the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand
blessings._
—CHRYSOSTOM.
_The prayers of holy men appease God’s wrath, drive away
temptations, resist and overcome the devil, procure the ministry
and service of angels, rescind the decrees of God. Prayer cures
sickness and obtains pardon; it arrests the sun in its course and
stays the wheels of the chariot of the moon; it rules over all gods
and opens and shuts the storehouses of rain, it unlocks the cabinet
of the womb and quenches the violence of fire; it stops the mouths
of lions and reconciles our suffering and weak faculties with the
violence of torment and violence of persecution; it pleases God and
supplies all our need._
—JEREMY TAYLOR.
_More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God._
—TENNYSON.
_Perfect prayer is only another name for love._
—FÉNELON.