XXXIV. PRAYER
`Thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thine inner chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in
secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.' -- Matt.
6:6
The spiritual life with its growth depends in
great measure on prayer. According as I pray much or little, pray with
pleasure or as a duty, pray according to the word of God or my own inclination,
will my life flourish or decay. In the word of Jesus quoted above, we have the
leading ideas of true prayer.
Alone with God: that is the first
thought. The door must be shut, with the world and man outside, because I am
to have converse with God undisturbed. When God met with His servants in the
olden time, He took them alone. (Gen. 28:22,23; 22:5; 32:24; Ex. 33:11) Let
the first thought in your prayer be: here are God and I in the chamber with
each other. According to your conviction of the nearness of God will be the
power of your prayer.
In the presence of your Father: this is
the second thought. You come to the inner chamber, because your Father with
His love awaits you there. Although you are cold, dark, sinful; although it is
doubtful whether you can pray at all; come, because the Father is there, and
there looks upon you. Set yourself beneath the light of his eye. Believe in
His tender fatherly love, and out of this faith prayer will be born. (Matt.
6:8; 7:11)
Count certainly upon an answer: that is
the third point in the word of Jesus. `Your Father will recompense you
openly.' There is nothing about which the Lord Jesus has spoken so positively
as the certainty of an answer to prayer. Pray, review the promises. (Matt
6:7,8; 11:24; Luke 28:8; John 14:13,14; 15:7,16; 16:23,24) Observe how
constantly in the Psalms, that prayer-book of God's saints, God is called upon
as the God who hears prayer and gives answers. (Ps. 3:5; 4:4; 6:10; 10:17;
27:6,22,25; 20:2,7,10; 34:5,7,18; 38:16; 40:2; 65:3; 66:19)
It may be that there is much in you that
prevents the answer. Delay in the answer is a very blessed discipline. It
leads to self-searching as to whether we are praying amiss, and whether our
life is truly in harmony with our prayer. It rouses to a purer exercise of
faith. (Josh. 7:12; 1 Sam. 8:18; 14:37,38; 28:6,15; Prov. 21:13; Isa. 1:15;
Mic. 3:4; Hag. 1:9; Jas. 1:6; 4:3; 5:16) It conducts to a closer and more
persistent converse with God. The sure confidence of an answer is the secret
of powerful praying. Let this always be with us the chief thing in prayer.
When you pray, stop in the midst of your prayer to ask, Do I believe that I am
receiving what I pray for? Let your faith receive and hold fast the answer as
given: it shall turn out according to your faith. (Ps. 145:9; Isa. 30:19;
Jer. 33:3; Mal. 3:10; Matt. 9:29; 15:28; 1 John 3:22; 5:14,15)
Beloved young Christians, if there is one thing
about which you must be conscientious, it is this: secret converse with God.
Your life is hid with Christ in God. Every day must you in prayer ask from
above, and by faith receive in prayer what you need for that day. Every day
must personal intercourse with the Father and the Lord Jesus be renewed and
strengthened. God is our salvation and our strength: Christ is our life and
our holiness: only in personal fellowship with the living God is our
blessedness found.
Christian, pray much, pray continually, pray
without ceasing. When you have no desire to pray, go just then to the inner
chamber. Go as one who has nothing to bring to the Father, to set yourself
before Him in faith in His love. That coming to the Father, and abiding before
Him, is already a prayer that He understands. Be assured that to appear before
God, however passively, always brings a blessing. The Father not only hears:
He sees in secret, and He will recompense it openly.
O my Father, who hast so certainly promised in Thy word to hear the
prayer of faith, give to me the Spirit of prayer, that I may know how to offer
that prayer. Graciously reveal to me Thy wonderful Fatherly love, the complete
blotting out of my sins in Christ, by which every hindrance in this direction
is taken away, and the intercession of the Spirit in me, by which my ignorance
or weakness cannot deprive me of the blessing. Teach me with faith in Thee,
the Three-One, to pray in fellowship with Thee. And confirm me in the strong
living certitude that I receive what I believingly ask. Amen.
1. In prayer the principal
thing is faith. The whole of salvation, the whole of the new life is by faith,
therefore also by prayer. There is all too much prayer that brings nothing,
because there is little faith in it. Before I pray, and while I pray, and after
I have prayed, I must ask: Do I pray in faith? I must say: I believe with my
whole heart.
2. To arrive at this faith we must take time in
prayer: time to set ourselves silently and trustfully before God, and to become
awake to His presence: time to have our soul sanctified in fellowship with God:
time for the Holy Spirit to teach us to hold fast and use trustfully the word
of promise. No earthly knowledge, no earthly possessions, no earthly food, no
intercourse with friends, can we have without time, sufficient time. Let us
not think to learn how to pray, how to enjoy the power and the blessedness of
prayer, if we do not take time with God.
3. And then there must be not only time every
day, but perseverance from day to day. Time is required to grow in the
certitude that we are acceptable to the Father, and that our prayer has power,
in the confidence which knows that our prayer is according to His will and is
heard. We must not suppose that we know well enough how to pray, and can but
ask, and then it is over. No: prayer is converse and fellowship with God, in
which God has time and opportunity to work in us, in which our souls die to
their own will and power, and become bound up and united with God.
4. For encouragement in persistent prayer, the
following instance may be of service. In an address delivered at Calcutta,
George Muller recently said that in 1844 five persons were laid upon his heart,
and that he began to pray for their conversion. Eighteen months passed by
before the first was converted. He prayed five years more, when the second was
converted. After twelve years and a half, yet another was converted. And now
he also already prayed forty years for the other two, without letting slip a
single day; and still they are not converted. He was, nevertheless, full of
courage in the sure confidence that these two also would be given him in answer
to his prayer.