By prayer God’s Name is hallowed. By prayer God’s kingdom comes. By prayer is His kingdom established in power and made to move with conquering force swifter than the light. By prayer God’s will is done till earth rivals Heaven in harmony and beauty. By prayer daily toil is sanctified and enriched, and pardon is secured, and Satan is defeated. Prayer concerns God, and concerns man in every way.
God has nothing too good to give in answer to prayer. There is no vengeance pronounced by God so dire which does not yield to prayer. There is no justice so flaming that is not quenched by prayer.
Take the record and attitude of Heaven against Saul of Tarsus. That attitude is changed and that record is erased when the astonishing condition is announced, “Behold he prayeth.” The recreant Jonah is alive, and on dry ground, with scarce the taste of the sea or the smell of its weeds about him, as he prays. “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardst my voice.”
“The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
“I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever; yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.
“When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
“And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”
Prayer has all the force of God in it. Prayer can get anything which God has. Thus prayer has all of its plea and its claim in the name of Jesus Christ, and there is nothing too good or great for God to give that name.
It must be borne in mind that there is no test surer than this thing of prayer of our being in the family of God. God’s children pray. They repose in Him for all things. They ask Him for all things—for everything. The faith of the child in the father is evinced by the child’s asking. It is the answer to prayer which convinces men not only that there is a God, but that He is a God who concerns Himself about men, and about the affairs of this world. Answered prayer brings God nigh, and assures men of His being. Answered prayer is the credentials of our relation to and our representative of Him. Men cannot represent God who do not get answers to prayer from Him.
The possibilities of prayer are found in the illimitable promise, the willingness and the power of God to answer prayer, to answer all prayer, to answer every prayer, and to supply fully the illimitable need of man. None are so needy as man, none are so able and anxious to supply every need and any need as God.