Let all the present day praying be measured by these standards, “Pouring out the soul before God,” and “Seeking with all the heart,” and how much of it will be found to be mere form, waste, worthless. James says of Elijah that he “prayed with prayer.”
In Paul’s directions to Timothy about prayer, (I Tim. 1:8) we have a comprehensive verbal description of prayer in its different departments, or varied manifestations. They are all in the plural form, supplications, prayers and intercessions. They declare the many-sidedness, the endless diversity, and the necessity of going beyond the formal simplicity of a single prayer, and press and add prayer upon prayer, supplication to supplication, intercession over and over again, until the combined force of prayers in their most superlative modes, unite their aggregation and pressure with cumulative power to our praying. The unlimited superlative and the unlimited plural are the only measures of prayer. The one term of “prayer” is the common and comprehensive one for the act, the duty, the spirit, and the service we call prayer. It is the condensed statement of worship. The heavenly worship does not have the element of prayer so conspicuous. Prayer is the conspicuous, all-important essence and the all-colouring ingredient of earthly worship, while praise is the pre-eminent, comprehensive, all-colouring, all-inspiring element of the heavenly worship.
III
PRAYER—THE ALL-IMPORTANT ESSENCE OF EARTHLY WORSHIP
Where the spiritual consciousness is concerned—the department which asks the question and demands the evidence—no evidence is competent or relevant except such as is spiritual. Only that which is above matter and above logic can be heard, because the very question at issue is the existence and personality of a spiritual and supernatural God. Only the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit. This must be done in a spiritual or supernatural way, or it cannot be done at all.—C. L. Chilton.
The Jewish law and the prophets know something of God as a Father. Occasional and imperfect, yet comforting glimpses they had of the great truth of God’s Fatherhood, and of our sonship. Christ lays the foundation of prayer deep and strong with this basic principle. The law of prayer, the right to pray, rests on sonship. “Our Father” brings us into the closest relationship to God. Prayer is the child’s approach, the child’s plea, the child’s right. It is the law of prayer that looks up, that lifts up the eye to “Our Father, Who art in Heaven.” Our Father’s house is our home in Heaven. Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer. Prayer is an appeal from the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency of Heaven. Prayer turns the eye and the heart heavenward with a child’s longings, a child’s trust and a child’s expectancy. To hallow God’s Name, to speak it with bated breath, to hold it sacredly, this also belongs to prayer.
In this connection it might be said that it is requisite to dictate to children the necessity of prayer in order to their salvation. But alas! Unhappily it is thought sufficient to tell them there is a Heaven and a hell; that they must avoid the latter place and seek to reach the former. Yet they are not taught the easiest way to arrive at salvation. The only way to Heaven is by the route of prayer, such prayer of the heart which every one is capable of. It is prayer, not of reasonings which are the fruits of study, or of the exercise of the imagination, which fills the mind with wondering objects, but which fails to settle salvation, but the simple, confidential prayer of the child to his Father in Heaven.
Poverty of spirit enters into true praying. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” “The poor” means paupers, beggars, those who live on the bounties of others, who live by begging. Christ’s people live by asking. “Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath.” It is his affluent inheritance, his daily annuity.
In His own example, Christ illustrates the nature and necessity of prayer. Everywhere He declares that he who is on God’s mission in this world will pray. He is an illustrious example of the principle that the more devoted the man is to God, the more prayerful will he be. The diviner the man, the more of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son he has, the more prayerful will he be. And, conversely, it is true that the more prayerful he is, the more of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son will he receive.
The great events and crowning periods of the life of Jesus we find Him in prayer—at the beginning of His ministry, at the fords of the Jordan, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him; just prior to the transfiguration, and in the garden of Gethsemane. Well do the words of Peter come in here: “Leaving us an example that ye should follow His steps.”
There is an important principle of prayer found in some of the miracles of Christ. It is the progressive nature of the answer to prayer. Not at once does God always give the full answer to prayer, but rather progressively, step by step. Mark (8:22) describes a case which illustrates this important truth, too often overlooked: