“MEN ought _always_ to pray, and not to faint.” The words are the words
of our Lord, who not only ever sought to impress upon His followers the
urgency and the importance of prayer, but set them an example which they
alas! have been far too slow to copy.
The _always_ speaks for itself. Prayer is not a meaningless function or
duty to be crowded into the busy or the weary ends of the day, and we
are not obeying our Lord’s command when we content ourselves with a few
minutes upon our knees in the morning rush or late at night when the
faculties, tired with the tasks of the day, call out for rest. God is
always within call, it is true; His ear is ever attentive to the cry of
His child, but we can never get to know Him if we use the vehicle of
prayer as we use the telephone—for a few words of hurried conversation.
Intimacy requires development. We can never know God as it is our
privilege to know Him, by brief and fragmentary and unconsidered
repetitions of intercessions that are requests for personal favours and
nothing more. That is not the way in which we can come into
communication with heaven’s King. “The goal of prayer is the ear of
God,” a goal that can only be reached by patient and continued and
continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and permitting
Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him, and as
we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and
find that presence a constant and ever-increasing delight.
_Always_ does not mean that we are to neglect the ordinary duties of
life; what it means is that the soul which has come into intimate
contact with God in the silence of the prayer-chamber is never out of
conscious touch with the Father, that the heart is always going out to
Him in loving communion, and that the moment the mind is released from
the task upon which it is engaged it returns as naturally to God as the
bird does to its nest. What a beautiful conception of prayer we get if
we regard it in this light, if we view it as a constant fellowship, an
unbroken audience with the King. Prayer then loses every vestige of
dread which it may once have possessed; we regard it no longer as a duty
which must be performed, but rather as a privilege which is to be
enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.
Thus, when we open our eyes in the morning, our thought instantly mounts
heavenward. To many Christians the morning hours are the most precious
portion of the day, because they provide the opportunity for the
hallowed fellowship that gives the keynote to the day’s programme. And
what better introduction can there be to the never-ceasing glory and
wonder of a new day than to spend it alone with God? It is said that Mr.
Moody, at a time when no other place was available, kept his morning
watch in the coal-shed, pouring out his heart to God, and finding in his
precious Bible a true “feast of fat things.”
George Müller also combined Bible study with prayer in the quiet morning
hours. At one time his practice was to give himself to prayer, after
having dressed, in the morning. Then his plan underwent a change. As he
himself put it: “I saw the most important thing I had to do was to give
myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that
thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved,
instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God, whilst
meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experimental communion
with the Lord. I began, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament
early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few
words for the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was to begin to
meditate on the Word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse to
get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the
Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on, but for
the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to
be almost invariably thus, that after a very few minutes my soul has
been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to
supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to
prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less
into prayer.”
The study of the Word and prayer go together, and where we find the one
truly practised, the other is sure to be seen in close alliance.
But we do not pray _always_. That is the trouble with so many of us. We
need to pray much more than we do and much longer than we do.
Robert Murray McCheyne, gifted and saintly, of whom it was said, that
“Whether viewed as a son, a brother, a friend, or a pastor, he was the
most faultless and attractive exhibition of the true Christian they had
ever seen embodied in a living form,” knew what it was to spend much
time upon his knees, and he never wearied in urging upon others the joy
and the value of holy intercession. “God’s children should pray,” he
said. “They should cry day and night unto Him, God hears every one of
your cries in the busy hour of the daytime and in the lonely watches of
the night.” In every way, by preaching, by exhortation when present and
by letters when absent, McCheyne emphasised the vital duty of prayer,
importunate and unceasing prayer.
In his diary we find this: “In the morning was engaged in preparing the
head, then the heart. This has been frequently my error, and I have
always felt the evil of it, especially in prayer. Reform it then, O
Lord.” While on his trip to the Holy Land he wrote: “For much of our
safety I feel indebted to the prayers of my people. If the veil of the
world’s machinery were lifted off how much we would find done in answer
to the prayers of God’s children.” In an ordination sermon he said to the
preacher: “Give yourself to prayers and the ministry of the Word. If you
do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He
did me, to teach you to pray. Remember Luther’s maxim, ‘To have prayed
well is to have studied well.’ Get your texts from God, your thoughts,
your words. Carry the names of the little flock upon your breast like
the High Priest. Wrestle for the unconverted. Luther spent his last
three hours in prayer; John Welch prayed seven or eight hours a day. He
used to keep a plaid on his bed that he might wrap himself in when he
rose during the night. Sometimes his wife found him on the ground lying
weeping. When she complained, he would say, ‘O, woman, I have the souls
of three thousand to answer for, and I know not how it is with many of
them.’” The people he exhorted and charged: “Pray for your pastor. Pray
for his body, that he may be kept strong and spared many years. Pray for
his soul, that he may be kept humble and holy, a burning and shining
light. Pray for his ministry, that it may be abundantly blessed, that he
may be anointed to preach good tidings. Let there be no secret prayer
without naming him before your God, no family prayer without carrying
your pastor in your hearts to God.”
“Two things,” says his biographer, “he seems never to have ceased
from—the cultivation of personal holiness and the most anxious efforts
to win souls.” The two are the inseparable attendants on the ministry of
prayer. Prayer fails when the desire and effort for personal holiness
fail. No person is a soul-winner who is not an adept in the ministry of
prayer. “It is the duty of ministers,” says this holy man, “to begin the
reformation of religion and manner with themselves, families, etc., with
confession of past sin, earnest prayer for direction, grace and full
purpose of heart.” He begins with himself under the head of “Reformation
in Secret Prayer,” and he resolves:
“I ought not to omit any of the parts of prayer—confession, adoration,
thanksgiving, petition and intercession. There is a fearful tendency to
omit _confession_ proceeding from low views of God and His law, slight
views of my heart, and the sin of my past life. This must be resisted.
There is a constant tendency to omit _adoration_ when I forget to Whom I
am speaking, when I rush heedlessly into the presence of Jehovah without
thought of His awful name and character. When I have little eyesight for
his glory, and little admiration of His wonders, I have the native
tendency of the heart to omit giving _thanks_, and yet it is specially
commanded. Often when the heart is dead to the salvation of others I
omit _intercession_, and yet it especially is the spirit of the great
Advocate Who has the name of Israel on His heart. I ought to pray before
seeing anyone. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, and
then have family prayer and breakfast and forenoon callers, it is eleven
or twelve o’clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched
system; it is unscriptural. Christ rose before day and went into a
solitary place. David says, ‘Early will I seek Thee; Thou shalt early
hear my voice.’ Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre while it was yet
dark. Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness; and I can do
no good to those who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty,
the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed. I feel it is far better to begin
with God, to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is
near another. ‘When I awake I am still with Thee.’ If I have slept too
long, or I am going an early journey, or my time is in any way
shortened, it is best to dress hurriedly and have a few minutes alone
with God than to give up all for lost. But in general it is best to have
at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else. I
ought to spend the best hours of the day in communion with God. When I
awake in the night, I ought to rise and pray as David and John Welch.”
McCheyne believed in being _always_ in prayer, and his fruitful life,
short though that life was, affords an illustration of the power that
comes from long and frequent visits to the secret place where we keep
tryst with our Lord.
Men of McCheyne’s stamp are needed to-day—praying men, who know how to
give themselves to the greatest task demanding their time and their
attention; men who can give their whole heart to the holy task of
intercession, men who can pray through. God’s cause is committed to men;
God commits Himself to men. Praying men are the vicegerents of God; they
do His work and carry out His plans.
We are obliged to pray if we be citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Prayerlessness is expatriation, or worse, from God’s Kingdom. It is
outlawry, a high crime, a constitutional breach. The Christian who
relegates prayer to a subordinate place in his life soon loses whatever
spiritual zeal he may have once possessed, and the Church that makes
little of prayer cannot maintain vital piety, and is powerless to
advance the Gospel. The Gospel cannot live, fight, conquer without
prayer—prayer unceasing, instant and ardent.
Little prayer is the characteristic of a backslidden age and of a
backslidden Church. Whenever there is little praying in the pulpit or in
the pew, spiritual bankruptcy is imminent and inevitable.
The cause of God has no commercial age, no cultured age, no age of
education, no age of money. But it has one golden age, and that is the
age of prayer. When its leaders are men of prayer, when prayer is the
prevailing element of worship, like the incense giving continual
fragrance to its service, then the cause of God will be triumphant.
Better praying and more of it, that is what we need. We need holier men,
and more of them, holier women, and more of them to pray—women like
Hannah, who, out of their greatest griefs and temptations brewed their
greatest prayers. Through prayer Hannah found her relief. Everywhere the
Church was backslidden and apostate, her foes were victorious. Hannah
gave herself to prayer, and in sorrow she multiplied her praying. She
saw a great revival born of her praying. When the whole nation was
oppressed, prophet and priest, Samuel was born to establish a new line
of priesthood, and her praying warmed into life a new life for God.
Everywhere religion revived and flourished. God, true to His promise,
“_Ask of Me_,” though the praying came from a woman’s broken heart,
heard and answered, sending a new day of holy gladness to revive His
people.
So once more, let us apply the emphasis and repeat that the great need
of the Church in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of
such unsullied holiness, of such marked spiritual vigour and consuming
zeal, that they will work spiritual revolutions through their mighty
praying. “Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as
factors in this matter; but a capacity for faith, the ability to pray,
the power of a thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an
absolute losing of one’s self in God’s glory and an ever present and
insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fulness of God. Men who
can set the Church ablaze for God, not in a noisy, showy way, but with
an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves every thing for God.”
And, to return to the vital point, secret praying is the test, the
gauge, the conserver of man’s relation to God. The prayer-chamber, while
it is the test of the sincerity of our devotion to God, becomes also the
measure of the devotion. The self-denial, the sacrifices which we make
for our prayer-chambers, the frequency of our visits to that hallowed
place of meeting with the Lord, the lingering to stay, the loathness to
leave, are values which we put on communion alone with God, the price we
pay for the Spirit’s trysting hours of heavenly love.
The prayer-chamber conserves our relation to God. It hems every raw
edge; it tucks up every flowing and entangling garment; girds up every
fainting loin. The sheet-anchor holds not the ship more surely and
safely than the prayer-chamber holds to God. Satan has to break our hold
on, and close up our way to the prayer-chambers, ere he can break our
hold on God or close up our way to heaven.
“Be not afraid to pray; to pray is right;
Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray,
Though hope be weak or sick with long delay;
Pray in the darkness if there be no light;
And if for any wish thou dare not pray
Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”
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_In God’s name I beseech you let prayer nourish your soul as your
meals nourish your body. Let your fixed seasons of prayer keep you
in God’s presence through the day, and His presence frequently
remembered through it be an ever-fresh spring of prayer. Such a
brief, loving recollection of God renews a man’s whole being,
quiets his passions, supplies light and counsel in difficulty,
gradually subdues the temper, and causes him to possess his soul in
patience, or rather gives it up to the possession of God._
—FÉNELON.
_Devoted too much time and attention to outward and public duties
of the ministry. But this has a mistaken conduct, for I have
learned that neglect of much and fervent communion with God in
meditation and prayer is not the way to redeem the time nor to fit
me for public ministrations._
_I rightly attribute my present deadness to want of sufficient time
and tranquillity for private devotion. Want of more reading,
retirement and private devotion, I have little mastery over my own
tempers. An unhappy day to me for want of more solitude and prayer.
If there be anything I do, if there be anything I leave undone, let
me be perfect in prayer._
_After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing. Oh
that I may be a man of prayer!_
—HENRY MARTYN.