THAT the men had quit praying in Paul’s time we cannot certainly affirm.
They have, in the main, quit praying now. They are too busy to pray.
Time and strength and every faculty are laid under tribute to money, to
business, to the affairs of the world. Few men lay themselves out in
great praying. The great business of praying is a hurried, petty,
starved, beggarly business with most men.
St. Paul calls a halt, and lays a levy on men for prayer. Put the men to
praying is Paul’s unfailing remedy for great evils in Church, in State,
in politics, in business, in home. Put the men to praying, then politics
will be cleansed, business will be thriftier, the Church will be holier,
the home will be sweeter.
“I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers,
intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings and all
that are in high place; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in
all godliness and gravity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of
God our Saviour.... I desire, therefore, that the men pray in every
place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing” (1 Timothy ii.
1-3, 8).
Praying women and children are invaluable to God, but if their praying
is not supplemented by praying men, there will be a great loss in the
power of prayer—a great breach and depreciation in the value of prayer,
great paralysis in the energy of the Gospel. Jesus Christ spake a
parable unto the people, telling them that men ought always to pray and
not faint. Men who are strong in everything else ought to be strong in
prayer, and never yield to discouragement, weakness or depression. Men
who are brave, persistent, redoubtable in other pursuits ought to be
full of courage, unfainting, strong-hearted in prayer.
_Men_ are to pray; _all men_ are to pray. Men, as distinguished from
women, men in their strength in their wisdom. There is an absolute,
specific command that the men pray; there is an absolute imperative
necessity that men pray. The first of beings, man, should also be first
in prayer.
_The men_ are to pray for men. The direction is specific and classified.
Just underneath we have a specific direction with regard to women. About
prayer, its importance, wideness and practice the Bible here deals with
the men in contrast to, and distinct from, the women. The men are
definitely commanded, seriously charged, and warmly exhorted to pray.
Perhaps it was that men were averse to prayer, or indifferent to it; it
may be that they deemed it a small thing, and gave to it neither time
nor value nor significance. But God would have all men pray, and so the
great Apostle lifts the subject into prominence and emphasises its
importance.
For prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent
to advance God’s work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God’s work.
Prayer succeeds when all else fails. Prayer has won great victories, and
rescued, with notable triumph, God’s saints when every other hope was
gone. Men who know how to pray are the greatest boon God can give to
earth—they are the richest gift earth can offer heaven. Men who know
how to use this weapon of prayer are God’s best soldiers, His mightiest
leaders.
Praying men are God’s chosen leaders. The distinction between the
leaders that God brings to the front to lead and bless His people, and
those leaders who owe their position of leadership to a worldly,
selfish, unsanctified selection, is this, God’s leaders are
pre-eminently men of prayer. This distinguishes them as the simple,
Divine attestation of their call, the seal of their separation by God.
Whatever of other graces or gifts they may have, the gift and grace of
prayer towers above them all. In whatever else they may share or differ,
in the gift of prayer they are one.
What would God’s leaders be without prayer? Strip Moses of his power in
prayer, a gift that made him eminent in pagan estimate, and the crown is
taken from his head, the food and fire of his faith are gone. Elijah,
without his praying, would have neither record nor place in the Divine
legation, his life insipid, cowardly, its energy, defiance and fire
gone. Without Elijah’s praying the Jordan would never have yielded to
the stroke of his mantle, nor would the stern angel of death have
honoured him with the chariot and horses of fire. The argument that God
used to quiet the fears and convince Ananias of Paul’s condition and
sincerity is the epitome of his history, the solution of his life and
work—“Behold he prayeth.”
Paul, Luther, Wesley—what would these chosen ones of God be without the
distinguishing and controlling element of prayer? They were leaders for
God because mighty in prayer. They were not leaders because of
brilliancy in thought, because exhaustless in resources, because of
their magnificent culture or native endowment, but leaders because by
the power of prayer they could command the power of God. Praying men
means much more than men who say prayers; much more than men who pray by
habit. It means men with whom prayer is a mighty force, an energy that
moves heaven and pours untold treasures of good on earth.
Praying men are the safety of the Church from the materialism that is
affecting all its plans and polity, and which is hardening its
life-blood. The insinuation circulates as a secret, deadly poison that
the Church is not so dependent on purely spiritual forces as it used to
be—that changed times and changed conditions have brought it out of its
spiritual straits and dependencies and put it where other forces can
bear it to its climax. A fatal snare of this kind has allured the Church
into worldly embraces, dazzled her leaders, weakened her foundations,
and shorn her of much of her beauty and strength. Praying men are the
saviours of the Church from this material tendency. They pour into it
the original spiritual forces, lift it off the sand-bars of materialism,
and press it out into the ocean depths of spiritual power. Praying men
keep God in the Church in full force; keep His hand on the helm, and
train the Church in its lessons of strength and trust.
The number and efficiency of the labourers in God’s vineyard in all
lands is dependent on the men of prayer. The mightiness of these men of
prayer increases, by the divinely arranged process, the number and
success of the consecrated labours. Prayer opens wide their doors of
access, gives holy aptness to enter, and holy boldness, firmness, and
fruitage. Praying men are needed in all fields of spiritual labour.
There is no position in the Church of God, high or low, which can be
well filled without instant prayer. No position where Christians are
found that does not demand the full play of a faith that always prays
and never faints. Praying men are needed in the house of business, as
well as in the house of God, that they may order and direct trade, not
according to the maxims of this world, but according to Bible precepts
and the maxims of the heavenly life.
Men of prayer are needed especially in the positions of Church
influence, honour, and power. These leaders of Church thought, of Church
work, and of Church life should be men of signal power in prayer. It is
the praying heart that sanctifies the toil and skill of the hands, and
the toil and wisdom of the head. Prayer keeps work in the line of God’s
will, and keeps thought in the line of God’s Word. The solemn
responsibilities of leadership, in a large or limited sphere, in God’s
Church should be so hedged about with prayer that between it and the
world there should be an impassable gulf, so elevated and purified by
prayer that neither cloud nor night should stain the radiance nor dim
the sight of a constant meridian view of God. Many Church leaders seem
to think if they can be prominent as men of business, of money,
influence, of thought, of plans, of scholarly attainments, of eloquent
gifts, of taking, conspicuous activities, that these are enough, and
will atone for the absence of the higher spiritual power which much
praying only can give. But how vain and paltry are these in the serious
work of bringing glory to God, controlling the Church for Him, and
bringing it into full accord with its Divine mission.
Praying men are the men that have done so much for God in the past. They
are the ones who have won the victories for God, and spoiled His foes.
They are the ones who have set up His Kingdom in the very camps of His
enemies. There are no other conditions of success in this day. The
twentieth century has no relief statute to suspend the necessity or
force of prayer—no substitute by which its gracious ends can be
secured. We are shut up to this, praying hands only can build for God.
They are God’s mighty ones on earth, His master-builders. They may be
destitute of all else, but with the wrestlings and prevailings of a
simple-hearted faith they are mighty, the mightiest for God. Church
leaders may be gifted in all else, but without this greatest of gifts
they are as Samson shorn of his locks, or as the Temple without the
Divine presence or the Divine glory, and on whose altars the heavenly
flame has died.
The only protection and rescue from worldliness lie in our intense and
radical spirituality; and our only hope for the existence and
maintenance of this high, saving spirituality, under God, is in the
purest and most aggressive leadership—a leadership that knows the
secret power of prayer, the sign by which the Church has conquered, and
that has conscience, conviction, and courage to hold her true to her
symbols, true to her traditions, and true to the hidings of her power.
We need this prayerful leadership; we must have it, that by the
perfection and beauty of its holiness, by the strength and elevation of
its faith, by the potency and pressure of its prayers, by the authority
and spotlessness of its example, by the fire and contagion of its zeal,
by the singularity, sublimity, and unworldliness of its piety, it may
influence God, and hold and mould the Church to its heavenly pattern.
Such leaders, how mightily they are felt. How their flame arouses the
Church! How they stir it by the force of their Pentecostal presence! How
they embattle and give victory by the conflicts and triumphs of their
own faith! How they fashion it by the impress and importunity of their
prayers! How they inoculate it by the contagion and fire of their
holiness! How they lead the march in great spiritual revolutions! How
the Church is raised from the dead by the resurrection call of their
sermons! Holiness springs up in their wake as flowers at the voice of
spring, and where they tread the desert blooms as the garden of the
Lord. God’s cause demands such leaders along the whole line of official
position from subaltern to superior. How feeble, aimless, or worldly are
our efforts, how demoralised and vain for God’s work without them!
The gift of these leaders is not in the range of ecclesiastical power.
They are God’s gifts. Their being, their presence, their number, and
their ability are the tokens of His favour; their lack the sure sign of
His disfavour, the presage of His withdrawal. Let the Church of God be
on her knees before the Lord of hosts, that He may more mightily endow
the leaders we already have, and put others in rank, and lead all along
the line of our embattled front.
The world is coming into the Church at many points and in many ways. It
oozes in; it pours in; it comes in with brazen front or soft,
insinuating disguise; it comes in at the top and comes in at the bottom;
and percolates through many a hidden way.
For praying men and holy men we are looking—men whose presence in the
Church will make it like a censer of holiest incense flaming up to God.
With God the man counts for everything. Rites, forms, organisations are
of small moment; unless they are backed by the holiness of the man they
are offensive in His sight. “Incense is an abomination unto Me; the new
moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with; it is
iniquity, even the solemn meeting.”
Why does God speak so strongly against His own ordinances? Personal
purity had failed. The impure man tainted all the sacred institutions of
God and defiled them. God regards the man in so important a way as to
put a kind of discount on all else. Men have built Him glorious temples
and have striven and exhausted themselves to please God by all manner of
gifts; but in lofty strains He has rebuked these proud worshippers and
rejected their princely gifts.
“Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool: where is the house
that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all those
things hath Mine hand made, and all those things hath been, saith the
Lord. He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth
a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as
if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed
an idol.” Turning away in disgust from these costly and profane
offerings, He declares: “But to this man will I look, even to him that
is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.”
This truth that God regards the personal purity of the man is
fundamental. This truth suffers when ordinances are made much of and
forms of worship multiply. The man and his spiritual character
depreciate as Church ceremonials increase. The simplicity of worship is
lost in religious æsthetics, or in the gaudiness of religious forms.
This truth that the personal purity of the individual is the only thing
God cares for is lost sight of when the Church begins to estimate men
for what they have. When the Church eyes a man’s money, social standing,
his belongings in any way, then spiritual values are at a fearful
discount, and the tear of penitence, the heaviness of guilt are never
seen at her portals. Worldly bribes have opened and stained its pearly
gates by the entrance of the impure.
This truth that God is looking after personal purity is swallowed up
when the Church has a greed for numbers. “Not numbers, but personal
purity is our aim,” said the fathers of Methodism. The parading of
Church statistics is mightily against the grain of spiritual religion.
Eyeing numbers greatly hinders the looking after personal purity. The
increase of quantity is generally at a loss of quality. Bulk abates
preciousness.
The age of Church organisation and Church machinery is not an age noted
for elevated and strong personal piety. Machinery looks for engineers
and organisations for generals, and not for saints, to run them. The
simplest organisation may aid purity as well as strength; but beyond
that narrow limit organisation swallows up the individual, and is
careless of personal purity; push, activity, enthusiasm, zeal for an
organisation, come in as the vicious substitutes for spiritual
character. Holiness and all the spiritual graces of hardy culture and
slow growth are discarded as too slow and too costly for the progress
and rush of the age. By dint of machinery, new organisations, and
spiritual weakness, results are vainly expected to be secured which can
only be secured by faith, prayer, and waiting on God.
The man and his spiritual character is what God is looking after. If
men, holy men, can be turned out by the easy processes of Church
machinery readier and better than by the old-time processes, we would
gladly invest in every new and improved patent; but we do not believe
it. We adhere to the old way—the way the holy prophets went, the king’s
highway of holiness.
An example of this is afforded by the case of William Wilberforce. High
in social position, a member of Parliament, the friend of Pitt the
famous statesman, he was not called of God to forsake his high social
position nor to quit Parliament, but he was called to order his life
according to the pattern set by Jesus Christ and to give himself to
prayer. To read the story of his life is to be impressed with its
holiness and its devotion to the claims of the quiet hours alone with
God. His conversion was announced to his friends—to Pitt and others—by
letter.
In the beginning of his religious career he records: “My chief reasons
for a day of secret prayer are, (1) That the state of public affairs is
very critical and calls for earnest deprecation of the Divine
displeasure. (2) My station in life is a very difficult one, wherein I
am at a loss to know how to act. Direction, therefore, should be
specially sought from time to time. (3) I have been graciously supported
in difficult situations of a public nature. I have gone out and returned
home in safety, and found a kind reception has attended me. I would
humbly hope, too, that what I am now doing is a proof that God has not
withdrawn His Holy Spirit from me. I am covered with mercies.”
The recurrence of his birthday led him again to review his situation and
employment. “I find,” he wrote, “that books alienate my heart from God
as much as anything. I have been framing a plan of study for myself, but
let me remember but one thing is needful, that if my heart cannot be
kept in a spiritual state without so much prayer, meditation, Scripture
reading, etc., as are incompatible with study, I must _seek first_ the
righteousness of God.” All were to be surrendered for spiritual advance.
“I fear,” we find him saying, “that I have not studied the Scriptures
enough. Surely in the summer recess I ought to read the Scriptures an
hour or two every day, besides prayer, devotional reading and
meditation. God will prosper me better if I wait on Him. The experience
of all good men shows that without constant prayer and watchfulness the
life of God in the soul stagnates. Doddridge’s morning and evening
devotions were serious matters. Colonel Gardiner always spent hours in
prayer in the morning before he went forth. Bonnell practised private
devotions largely morning and evening, and repeated Psalms dressing and
undressing to raise his mind to heavenly things. I would look up to God
to make the means effectual. I fear that my devotions are too much
hurried, that I do not read Scripture enough. I must grow in grace; I
must love God more; I must feel the power of Divine things more. Whether
I am more or less learned signifies not. Whether even I execute the work
which I deem useful is comparatively unimportant. But beware my soul of
luke-warmness.”
The New Year began with the Holy Communion and new vows. “I will press
forward,” he wrote, “and labour to know God better and love Him more.
Assuredly I may, because God will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him, and the Holy Spirit will shed abroad the love of God in the heart.
O, then, pray, pray; be earnest, press forward and follow on to know the
Lord. Without watchfulness, humiliation and prayer, the sense of Divine
things must languish.” To prepare for the future he said he found
nothing more effectual than private prayer and the serious perusal of
the New Testament.
And again: “I must put down that I have lately too little time for
private devotions. I can sadly confirm Doddridge’s remark that when we
go on ill in the closet we commonly do so everywhere else. I must mend
here. I am afraid of getting into what Owen calls the trade of sinning
and repenting ... Lord help me, the shortening of private devotions
starves the soul; it grows lean and faint. This must not be. I must
redeem more time. I see how lean in spirit I become without full
allowance of time for private devotions; I must be careful to be
watching unto prayer.”
At another time he puts on record: “I must try what I long ago heard was
the rule of E—— the great upholsterer, who, when he came from Bond
Street to his little villa, always first retired to his closet. I have
been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half hour
to myself. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the
proposition, that without due measure of private devotions, the soul
will grow lean.”
To his son he wrote: “Let me conjure you not to be seduced into
neglecting, curtailing or hurrying over your morning prayers. Of all
things, guard against neglecting God in the closet. There is nothing
more fatal to the life and power of religion. More solitude and earlier
hours—prayer three times a day at least. How much better might I serve
if I cultivated a closer communion with God.”
Wilberforce knew the secret of a holy life. Is that not where most of us
fail? We are so busy with other things, so immersed even in doing good
and in carrying on the Lord’s work, that we neglect the quiet seasons of
prayer with God, and before we are aware of it our soul is lean and
impoverished.
“One night alone in prayer,” says Spurgeon, “might make us new men,
changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth, from trembling to
triumphing. We have an example of it in the life of Jacob. Aforetime the
crafty shuffler, always bargaining and calculating, unlovely in almost
every respect, yet one night in prayer turned the supplanter into a
prevailing prince, and robed him with celestial grandeur. From that
night he lives on the sacred page as one of the nobility of heaven.
Could not we, at least now and then, in these weary earthbound years,
hedge about a single night for such enriching traffic with the skies?
What, have we no sacred ambition? Are we deaf to the yearnings of Divine
love? Yet, my brethren, for wealth and for science men will cheerfully
quit their warm couches, and cannot we do it now and again for the love
of God and the good of souls? Where is our zeal, our gratitude, our
sincerity? I am ashamed while I thus upbraid both myself and you. May we
often tarry at Jabbok, and cry with Jacob, as he grasped the angel—
‘With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.’
Surely, brethren, if we have given whole days to folly, we can afford a
space for heavenly wisdom. Time was when we gave whole nights to
chambering and wantonness, to dancing and the world’s revelry; we did
not tire then; we were chiding the sun that he rose so soon, and wishing
the hours would lag awhile that we might delight in wilder merriment and
perhaps deeper sin. Oh, wherefore, should we weary in heavenly
employments? Why grow we weary when asked to watch with our Lord? Up,
sluggish heart, Jesus calls thee! Rise and go forth to meet the Heavenly
Friend in the place where He manifests Himself.”
We can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord unless we follow
His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A revival
of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.
————————————————————————————————
_Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the
tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the
throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down._
—JOHN WESLEY.
_We must remember that the goal of prayer is the ear of God. Unless
that is gained the prayer has utterly failed. The uttering of it
may have kindled devotional feeling in our minds, the hearing of it
may have comforted and strengthened the hearts of those with whom
we have prayed, but if the prayer has not gained the heart of God,
it has failed in its essential purpose._
_A mere formalist can always pray so as to please himself. What has
he to do but to open his book and read the prescribed words, or bow
his knee and repeat such phrases as suggest themselves to his
memory or his fancy? Like the Tartarian Praying Machine, give but
the wind and the wheel, and the business is fully arranged. So much
knee-bending and talking, and the prayer is done. The formalist’s
prayers are always good, or, rather, always bad, alike. But the
living child of God never offers a prayer which pleases himself;
his standard is above his attainments; he wonders that God listens
to him, and though he knows he will be heard for Christ’s sake, yet
he accounts it a wonderful instance of condescending mercy that
such poor prayers as his should ever reach the ears of the Lord God
of Sabaoth._
—C. H. SPURGEON.