_Friendship with God--The Response_
Probably the greatest result of the life of prayer is an unconscious but
steady growth into the knowledge of the mind of God and into conformity
with His will; for after all prayer is not so much the means whereby
God's will is bent to man's desires as it is that whereby man's will is
bent to God's desires. While Jesus readily responded to the requests and
inquiries of His disciples His great gift to them was Himself, His
personality. He called His apostles that they "should be with Him." The
all-important thing is not to live apart from God, but as far as
possible to be consciously with Him. It must needs be that those who
look much into His face will become like Him. Man reflects in himself
his environment, especially if he surrenders himself unreservedly to its
influence. In the case of God, "in Whom we live and move and have our
being," the influence is not passive, but active in impressing its
character upon us. It is not as the white of the land of snow which
coats its animals with its own colour; it is a Person. The complete
vision of Christ will mean the complete transformation of man--"We shall
be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." If there were no other
conceivable result from prayer than just this, it would even so be
wonderful. Certainly that which we treasure most in companionship with
an earthly friend is not his counsel or service; it is the touch of his
soul upon our own; it is the embrace of his whole being that wraps
itself about our whole being. One may say then that the real end of
prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to
put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God.
This thought, beautiful and true as it is, would be too intangible and
too great a tax upon faith, unless man had some more or less definite
and immediate recognition of his heavenward appeals. The Old Testament
is a standing witness to God's consideration for human limitations and
weakness. He sometimes gave man less than the best because of the
latter's inability to receive the best, though He always gave as much as
could be received, until at last He gave His Son. Now it is in this
same way that He deals with His children of to-day. At first the lesser
gifts are sought for and given, but as spiritual life ripens what man
craves most for and what God is most eager to grant is that the Father's
will may be wholly worked out in His child. Trust so grows that there
can be no such thing as disappointment regarding the way God treats our
petitions.
_Not Thy gifts I seek, O Lord;
Not Thy gifts but Thee.
What were all Thy boundless store
Without Thyself? What less or more?
Not Thy gifts but Thee._
This frame of mind, however, belongs to the to-morrow of most lives. For
the present the lesser gifts are the best we are equal to. And it cannot
be too often or too strongly said that God has direct answers to prayer
for every soul that appeals to Him. But many fail to recognize the
answer when it comes because of inattention. If God is to be heard when
He speaks we must give heed. It is no less a duty to "wait still upon
God" than it is to address Him in prayer. A one-sided conversation is
not a conversation at all. Conversation requires an interchange of
thought. He who is one moment the speaker must the next become the
listener, intent upon the words of his companion. The expectation of an
answer to prayer is laid down as a condition of there being one.
Sec. 1. Oftentimes God's answer is in the shape of an action rather than a
voice. When we entreat a friend to do something for us, speedy
compliance is a sufficient response to the request. If we are certain of
the person addressed no verbal assurance is required. The character of
our friend is the guarantee that the petition will be heeded. When,
therefore, God is petitioned to do, we must look for an action rather
than listen for a voice.
There are some requests the answer to which returns with the speed of a
flash of light, as, for instance, when we ask God to give us some
Christian grace or disposition of heart. The giving comes with the
asking.[7] A man may not be strong enough to retain the gift, but it
actually becomes his before he rises from his knees. The rationalist
will object to this, that such an answer to prayer is nothing more than
the subjective effect of a given attitude of mind. Granted; but that
makes it none the less the direct work of God. Secondary or scientific
causes exhibit to the observer the method by which God fulfils His
purposes. The stone falls to the ground according to the law of
gravitation, but God is behind the law controlling it. The
distinguishing feature of the Jewish mode of thought was the way in
which it related all things to God's immediate activity. The Old
Testament is the book of God's immanence. The present attitude of mind
leads men to rest in all causes short of God, and even to forget the
need of a Cause of causes. An earnest student of nature remarked upon
leaving her microscope: "I have found a universe worthy of God." She at
least felt that a revelation of secondary causes was, at the same time,
a new revelation of the God of causes.
If it could be proved that all answers to prayer came according to the
working of natural law, it would not eliminate God from the process, or
have any sort of bearing upon the efficacy of prayer. All we know of
God's method of work demonstrates His love of law; and it would be no
surprise, but rather what we should expect, to find that all the unseen
stretches of life are equally within the domain of His law and order.[8]
Sec. 2. But when occasion requires, the reply to speech Godward comes in
the shape of a voice. In one sense God is always speaking; He is never
still. Just as in prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His
attention but He ours, so when we fail to hear His voice it is not
because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We may
hear sounds, as a language with which we are not conversant, but be
unable to interpret. Or perhaps we are in the position of one who sits
in the summer evening when nature is instinct with music,--the chirping
of insect life, the whispering wind, the good-night call of the
birds,--deaf to the many voices, whereas a companion has ears for
nothing else but what those voices say. The cause of the former's
deafness is that his attention is wholly absorbed by other interests. We
must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things,
and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to hear God speaking in
His ordinary tone without any special accent. Power to do this comes
slowly and as the result of not separating prayer from the rest of life.
A man must not stop listening any more than praying when he rises from
his knees. No one questions the need of times of formal address to God,
but few admit in any practical way the need of quiet waiting upon God,
gazing into His face, feeling for His hand, listening for His voice. "I
will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me." God has special
confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest
truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and
contemplation.
The written Word of God has special messages for the individual as well
as a large general message for the entire Christian body. The devotional
use of Holy Scripture is the means by which the soul reaches some of the
most precious manifestations of God's will. By devotional use is meant
such a study as has for its ultimate purpose an act of worship, or of
conscious fellowship with Him. The Bible reveals not merely what God
was, but what He is. Finding from its pages how He loved, we know how He
loves; learning how He dealt with or spoke to men, we perceive how He
deals with and speaks to us. But our instruction in things divine must
come to us from a Person rather than a book, though _through_ a book
perhaps. If we approach the Bible as we would approach Bacon or Milton,
merely as a collection of the wise thoughts and actions of the dead, it
will never sway the life to any large extent. Holy Scripture is
separated from all other literature by the fact that it contains
absolute spiritual truth and because its Author, as a living Person,
always stands behind it. Those who listen will hear the Holy Spirit
saying to them, in direct application, the same things that lie on the
open pages as the record of what was once said to men of old. Meditation
or the devotional use of Scripture renders conscience, that organ of the
soul by which God's voice is received by man, increasingly sensitive.
The Old Testament days were full of men who could say "Thus saith the
Lord," with the same assurance that they could report the speech of a
comrade. Doubtless God had many ways of speaking to the prophets, but
whatever these ways were and however special and singular, they were
based originally on those by means of which He addresses all men in
common. As a result of the Incarnation "all the Lord's people are
prophets" and the Lord has "put His Spirit upon them;" and they, too,
ought to be able to say "Thus saith the Lord."
Sec. 3. A third way in which God makes His will known to man is by His
silences, silences which are always eloquent. As experience has taught
us, silence can convey a message just as readily as speech sometimes, or
even more readily. The silence of the Easter tomb was the first voice
that told of the Resurrection. The loved disciple read the message of
the orderly silence of the place where the Lord had lain; "he saw and
believed." Silence has expression and accent telling of sympathy,
rebuke, anger, grief, as occasion may require. The silence of Jesus
before the importunate appeal of the woman of Canaan, was full of
sympathy and encouraged her faith to rise to sublime heights. Whereas
His silence before the accusations of His enemies during His trial was
so eloquent as to establish His innocence even in the eyes of a Pontius
Pilate. And if God is silent now at times when we long for some sign
from Him, it is because by means of silence He can best make known to us
His mind. His silence may mean that our request is so foreign to His
will, that it may not be heeded without hurt to the petitioner. Or, on
the other hand, He may be luring on our faith and inciting it to a more
ambitious flight. Or, again, it may be that His silence is His way of
telling us that the answer to our query or petition lies in ourselves.
God never tells man what man can find out for himself, as He never does
what man can do for himself. The result of giving a person what he
should earn is pauperism. As God will do, nay, can do, only what will
enrich human nature, it would be a contradiction of Himself to answer
what we can find out for ourselves, or give what we can gain by our own
efforts. Love lies within God's silences as their explanation.[9] The
mother refuses to answer her child's questions because the child by a
little observation and thought can itself get at the truth, and truth
won by struggle is the only truth that we really possess. If God is
silent when we ask for new knowledge of His Person and His love, may it
not be that it is because we are substituting books about the Bible for
an earnest study of the Bible itself, which contains a full answer to
our prayer? Or if, when day after day we have prayed for the conversion
of a relative, no response comes, may it not be that we have never put
ourselves at the disposal of God to be the instrument for working out
what is at once our desire and His purpose? At any rate, whatever be the
explanation of a silence in this or that special instance, God is never
silent excepting when silence speaks more clearly than a voice.
So the sure response comes to speech Godward in an action, or a voice,
or a speaking silence. The persevering, faithful, attentive soul will
never fail to discern God's answer to prayer, nor be disappointed in the
quality of that answer when it comes. God is more ready to hear than we
to pray, and it is His wont to give more than either we desire or
deserve.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _St. Mark xi: 24._
[8] _Cf. Liddon, Advent in St. Paul's, p. 22._
[9] _I suppose that a constant vision of God would be an injury to
almost all men,--that there are periods when even utter scepticism is
the sign of God's mercy, and the necessary condition of moral
restoration.--R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays, p. 7._
[10] _Collect for Twelfth Sunday after Trinity._