PETITION.
The next element in prayer that I notice is PETITION. How often we go
to prayer-meetings without really asking for anything! Our prayers go
all round the world, without anything definite being asked for. We do
not expect anything. Many people would be greatly surprised if God did
answer their prayers. I remember hearing of a very eloquent man who was
leading a meeting in prayer. There was not a single definite petition
in the whole. A poor, earnest woman shouted out: “Ask Him summat, man.”
How often you hear what is called prayer without any asking! “Ask, and
ye shall receive.”
I believe if we put all the stumbling-blocks out of the way, God will
answer our petitions. If we put away sin and come into His presence
with pure hands, as He has commanded us to come, our prayers will have
power with Him. In Luke’s Gospel we have as a grand supplement to the
“Disciples’ Prayer,” “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Some people think God
does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The
only way to trouble God is not to come at all. He encourages us to come
to Him repeatedly, and press our claims.
I believe you will find three kinds of Christians in the church to-day.
The first are those who _ask_; the second those who _seek_; and the
third those who _knock_.
“Teacher,” said a bright, earnest-faced boy, “why is it that so many
prayers are unanswered? I do not understand. The Bible says, ‘Ask,
and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you;’ but it seems to me a great many knock and are not
admitted.”
“Did you never sit by your cheerful parlor fire,” said the teacher,
“on some dark evening, and hear a loud knocking at the door? Going
to answer the summons, have you not sometimes looked out into the
darkness, seeing nothing, but hearing the pattering feet of some
mischievous boy, who knocked but did not wish to enter, and therefore
ran away? Thus is it often with us. We ask for blessings, but do not
really expect them; we knock, but do not mean to enter; we fear that
Jesus will not hear us, will not fulfil His promises, will not admit
us; and so we go away.”
“Ah, I see,” said the earnest-faced boy, his eyes shining with the new
light dawning in his soul: “Jesus cannot be expected answer _runaway_
knocks. He has never promised it. I mean to keep knocking, knocking,
until He _cannot help opening the door_.”
Too often we knock at mercy’s door, and then run away, instead of
waiting for an entrance and an answer. Thus we act as if we were afraid
of having our prayers answered.
A great many people pray in that way; they do not wait for the answer.
Our Lord teaches us here that we are not only to ask, but we are to
wait for the answer; if it does not come, we must seek to find out the
reason. I believe that we get a good many blessings just by asking;
others we do not get, because there may be something in our life that
needs to be brought to light. When Daniel began to pray in Babylon for
the deliverance of his people, he sought to find out what the trouble
was, and why God had turned away His face from them. So there may be
something in our life that is keeping back the blessing; if there is,
we want to find it out. Some one, speaking on this subject, has said:
“We are to ask with a beggar’s humility, to seek with a servant’s
carefulness, and to knock with the confidence of a friend.”
How often people become discouraged, and say they do not know whether
or not God does answer prayer! In the parable of the importunate widow,
Christ teaches us how we are not only to pray and seek, but to find. If
the unjust judge heard the petition of the poor woman who pushed her
claims, how much more will our Heavenly Father hear our cry! A good
many years ago an Irishman in the State of New Jersey was condemned to
be hung. Every possible influence was brought to bear upon the Governor
to have the man reprieved; but he stood firm, and refused to alter
the sentence. One morning the wife of the condemned man, with her ten
children, went to see the Governor. When he came to his office, they
all fell on their faces before him, and besought him to have mercy on
the husband--the father. The Governor’s heart was moved; and he at once
wrote out a reprieve. The importunity of the wife and children saved
the life of the man, just as the woman in the parable, who, pressing
her claims, induced the unjust judge to grant her request.
It was this that brought the answer to the prayer of blind Bartimeus.
The people, and even the disciples, tried to hush him into silence; but
he only cried out the louder, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Prayer is hardly ever mentioned in the Bible alone; it is prayer and
earnestness; prayer and watchfulness; prayer and thanksgiving. It is an
instructive fact that throughout Scripture prayer is always linked with
something else. Bartimeus was in earnest, and the Lord heard his cry.
Then the highest type of Christian is the one who has got clear beyond
asking and seeking, and keeps knocking till the answer comes. If we
knock, God has promised to open the door and grant our request. It may
be years before the answer comes; He may keep us knocking; but He has
promised that the answer will come.
I will tell you what I think it means to knock. A number of years ago,
when we were having meetings in a certain city, it came to a point
where there seemed to be very little power. We called together all the
mothers, and asked them to meet and pray for their children. About
fifteen hundred mothers came together, and poured out their hearts
to God in prayer. One mother said: “I wish you would pray for my two
boys. They have gone off on a drunken spree; and it seems as if my
heart would break.” She was a widowed mother. A few mothers gathered
together, and said: “Let us have a prayer-meeting for these boys.”
They cried to God for these two wandering boys; and now see how God
answered their prayer.
That day these two brothers had planned to meet at the corner of the
street where our meetings were being held. They were going to spend the
night in debauchery and sin. About seven o’clock the first one came to
the appointed place; he saw the people going into the meeting. As it
was a stormy night, he thought he would go in for a little while. The
word of God reached him, and he went into the inquiry-room, where he
gave his heart to the Savior.
The other brother waited at the corner until the meeting broke up,
expecting his brother to come; he did not know that he had been in the
meeting. There was a young men’s meeting in the church near by, and
this brother thought he would like to see what was going on; so he
followed the crowd into the meeting. He also was impressed with what
he heard, and was the first one to go into the inquiry-room, where he
found peace. While this was happening, the first one had gone home to
cheer his mother’s heart with the good news. He found her on her knees.
She had been knocking at the mercy-seat. While she was doing so, her
boy came in and told her that her prayers had been answered; his soul
was saved. It was not long before the other brother came in and told
his story--how he, too, had been blessed.
On the following Monday night, the first to get up at the young
converts’ meeting was one of these brothers, who told the story of
their conversion. No sooner had he taken his seat, than the other
jumped up and said: “All that my brother has told you is true, for I
am his brother. The Lord has indeed met us and blessed us.”
I heard of a wife in England who had an unconverted husband. She
resolved that she would pray every day for twelve months for his
conversion. Every day at twelve o’clock she went to her room alone and
cried to God. Her husband would not allow her to speak to him on the
subject; but she could speak to God on his behalf. It may be that you
have a friend who does not wish to be spoken with about his salvation;
you can do as this woman did--go and pray to God about it. The twelve
months passed away, and there was no sign of his yielding. She resolved
to pray for six months longer; so every day she went alone and prayed
for the conversion of her husband. The six months passed, and still
there was no sign, no answer. The question arose in her mind, could
she give him up? “No,” she said; “I will pray for him as long as God
gives me breath.” That very day, when he came home to dinner, instead
of going into the dining-room he went upstairs. She waited, and waited,
and waited; but he did not come down to dinner. Finally she went to
his room, and found him on his knees crying to God to have mercy upon
him. God convicted him of sin; he not only became a Christian, but the
Word of God had free course, and was glorified in him. God used him
mightily. That was God answering the prayers of this Christian wife;
she knocked, and knocked, till the answer came.
I heard something the other day that cheered me greatly. Prayer had
been made for a man for about forty years, but there was no sign of any
answer. It seemed as though he was going down to his grave one of the
most self-righteous men on the face of the earth. Conviction came in
one night. In the morning he sent for the members of his family, and
said to his daughter: “I want you to pray for me. Pray that God would
forgive my sins; my whole life has been nothing but sin--sin.” And all
this conviction came in one night. What we want is to press our case
right up to the throne of God. I have often known cases of men who came
to our meetings, and although they could not hear a word that was said,
it seemed as though some unseen power laid hold of them, so that they
were convicted and converted then and there.
I remember at one place where we were holding meetings, a wife came to
the first meeting and asked me to talk with her husband. “He is not
interested,” she said, “but I am in hopes he will become so.” I talked
with him, and I think I hardly ever spoke to a man who seemed to be so
self-righteous. It looked as though I might as well have talked to an
iron post, he seemed to be so encased in self-righteousness. I said to
his wife that he was not at all interested. She said, “I told you that,
but I am interested for him.” All the thirty days we were there that
wife never gave him up. I must confess she had ten times more faith for
him than I had. I had spoken to him several times, but I could see no
ray of hope. The last night but two the man came to me and said: “Would
you see me in another room?” I went, aside with him, and asked him
what was the trouble. He said, “I am the greatest sinner in the State
of Vermont.” “How is that?” I said, “Is there any particular sin you
have been guilty of?” I must confess I thought he had committed some
awful crime, which he was covering up, and that he now wanted to make
confession. “My whole life,” he said, “has been nothing but sin. God
has shown it to me to-day.” He asked the Lord to have mercy on him,
and he went home rejoicing in the assurance of sins forgiven. There
was a man convicted and converted in answer to prayer. So if you are
anxious about the conversion of some relative, or some friend, make up
your mind that you will give God no rest, day or night, till He grants
your petition. He can reach them, wherever they are--at their places of
business, in their homes, or anywhere--and bring them to His feet.
Dr. Austin Phelps, in his “Still Hour,” says: “The prospect of gaining
an object will always affect thus the expression of intense desire.
The feeling which will become spontaneous with a Christian under the
influence of such a trust is this: ‘I come to my devotions this morning
on an errand of real life. This is no romance, and no farce. I do not
come here to go through a form of words; I have no hopeless desires to
express. I have an object to gain; I have an end to accomplish. This is
a business in which I am about to engage. An astronomer does not turn
his telescope to the skies with a more reasonable hope of penetrating
those distant heavens, than I have of reaching the mind of God by
lifting up my heart at the throne of grace. This is the privilege of my
calling of God in Christ Jesus. Even my faltering voice is now to be
heard in heaven; and it is to put forth a new power there, the results
of which only God can know, and only eternity can develop. Therefore,
O Lord, Thy servant findeth it in his heart to pray this prayer unto
Thee!’”
Jeremy Taylor says: “Easiness of desire is a great enemy to the success
of a good man’s prayer. It must be an intent, zealous, busy, operative
prayer; for consider what a huge indecency it is that a man should
speak to God for a thing that he values not! Our prayers upbraid our
spirits when we beg tamely for those things for which we ought to die,
which are more precious than imperial sceptres, richer than the spoils
of the sea, or the treasures of Indian hills.”
Dr. Patton, in his work on “Remarkable Answers to Prayer,” says:
“Jesus bids us seek. Imagine a mother seeking a lost child. She looks
through the house, and along the streets, then searches the fields
and woods, and examines the river-banks. A wise neighbor meets her
and says: ‘Seek on, look everywhere; search every accessible place.
You will not find, indeed; but then seeking is a good thing. It puts
the mind on the stretch; it fixes the attention; it aids observation;
it makes the idea of the child very real. And then, after a while,
you will cease to want your child.’ The words of Christ are, ‘Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you.’ Imagine a man knocking at the door
of a house, long and loud. After he has done this for an hour, a
window opens, and the occupant of the house puts out his head and
says: ‘That is right, my friend; I shall not open the door, but keep
on knocking--it is excellent exercise, and you will be the healthier
for it. Knock away till sundown; and then come again, and knock all
to-morrow. After some days thus spent you will attain to a state of
mind in which you will no longer care to come in.’ Is this what Jesus
intended us to understand, when He said--‘Ask, and ye shall receive;
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you?’ No
doubt one would thus soon cease to ask, to seek, and to knock; but
would it not be from disgust?”
Nothing is more pleasing to our Father in heaven than direct,
importunate, and persevering prayer. Two Christian ladies, whose
husbands were unconverted, feeling their great danger, agreed to spend
one hour each day in united prayer for their salvation. This was
continued for seven years, when they debated whether they should pray
longer, so useless did their prayers appear. They decided to persevere
till death, and, if their husbands went to destruction, it should
be laden with prayers. In renewed strength, they prayed three years
longer, when one of them was awakened in the night by her husband, who
was in great distress for sin. As soon as the day dawned, she hastened,
with joy, to tell her praying companion that God was about to answer
their prayers. What was her surprise to meet her friend coming to her
on the same errand! Thus ten years of united and persevering prayer was
crowned with the conversion of both husbands on the same day.
We cannot be too frequent in our requests; God will not weary of
His children’s prayers. Sir Walter Raleigh asked a favor of Queen
Elizabeth, to which she replied, “Raleigh, when will you leave off
begging?” “When your Majesty leaves off giving,” he replied. So long
must we continue praying.
Mr. George Muller, in a recent address given by him in Calcutta, said
that in 1844 five individuals were laid on his heart, and he began
to pray for them. Eighteen months passed away before one of them was
converted. He prayed on for five years more, and another was converted.
At the end of twelve years and a half, a third was converted. And
now for forty years he had been praying for the other two, without
missing one single day on any account whatever; but they were not yet
converted. He felt encouraged, however, to continue in prayer; and he
was sure of receiving an answer in relation to the two who were still
resisting the Spirit.
“To See His Face.”
“Sweet is the precious gift of prayer,
To bow before a throne of grace;
To leave our every burden there,
And gain new strength to run our race;
To gird our heavenly armor on,
Depending on the Lord alone.
“And sweet the whisper of His love,
When conscience sinks beneath its load,
That bids our guilty fears remove,
And points to Christ’s atoning blood;
Oh, then ’tis sweet indeed to know
God can be just and gracious too.
“But oh, to see our Savior’s face!
From sin and sorrow to be freed!
To dwell in His divine embrace--
This will be sweeter far indeed!
The fairest form of earthly bliss
Is less than nought, compared with this.”