The wonders of prayer

by Unknown

So the word of God teaches us as His children (inviting us to pray, commanding us to pray, and teaching us how to pray), that there is a divine reality in prayer. Experience abundantly corroborates the teaching.

Every truly converted man knows from this experience that God answers prayer. He has verified the promise. "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." (Jer. xxxiii., 8.) His life is a life of prayer, and grows more and more to be a life of almost unconscious dependence upon God, as he becomes fixed in the habit of prayer. This, and it is the purpose of God, is the result secured by prayer. With this in view, it will not be so much what we expect to get by praying, as a consciousness of coming into closer relations to God, the giver of all, in our prayers, that will give us true joy.

Often God's children are driven to the throne of grace by some desperate need of help and definite supply of an absolute want, and, as they cry to God and plead their case with tears before him, he so manifests his presence to them and so fills them with a consciousness of his love and power, that the burden is gone and without the want being supplied that drove them to God, they rejoice in God himself and care not for the deprivation. This was Paul's experience when he went thus to God about the thorn, and came away without the specific relief he had prayed for, but with such a blessing as a result of his drawing near to God, that he little cared whether the thorn remained or not--or, rather, rejoiced that it was not removed; that it might be used to keep him near to God, whose love so filled his soul.

A widow once told the writer of the turning point in her Christian life, when God's love was so shed abroad in her heart that she had been enabled to go on through all her trials rejoicingly conscious of God's presence, and casting all her burdens upon Him. She was driven to seek God by great need. Her husband's death left her destitute, with little children to provide for, and few friends from whom to look for continuous aid. Winter drew on, and, one day, her little boy came in shivering with cold and asked if he could not have a fur cap, as his straw hat was very cold and none of the boys at school wore straw hats. She was without a cent in the world. She gave a hopeful answer to the boy and sent him out to play, and then went to her bedroom and knelt and wept in utter desolation of heart before God, praying most earnestly that God would give her a token that He was her God and was caring for her by sending her a cap for her boy. While she prayed the peace of God filled her soul. She was made to feel the presence of her Saviour in such a way that all doubts as to his love for her and his fulfillment of all his promises to care for her vanished away, and she went out of her room, rejoicing in the Lord and singing his praise. She had no burden about the cap, and was quite content for God to send it or not as it pleased Him; and, in the afternoon, when a neighbor called, occupied with the Lord and his wonderful love, the thought of the cap had gone from her mind. When the neighbor rose to depart, she said, "You know my little boy died last fall. Just before he died I bought him a fur cap: he only wore it two or three times. After his death I put away all his things and thought I could never part with any of them. But, this morning, as I went to the drawer to look them over, I felt that I should give you this cap for your little boy. Will you take it of me?" As she took the cap and told her neighbor of the morning trial, prayer and blessing, two souls were filled with the sense of the reality of prayer and the love of God for his children. "My little boy," said the widow, "wore that cap for three winters. And often, when sorely tried by my circumstances, has God lifted the burden from my heart, by my just looking at it, and remembering the blessing that came with it."

Experiences like this God gives to all his children, not for the purpose of leading them to look to Him for supplying their physical necessities, as an end, but to make Himself known to them, and to secure their confidence and love, for "this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." (Jno. xvii, 8.)

The use of prayer is to bring us into communion with God, for the growth of the spiritual life, that is ours by faith in Christ Jesus. To leave it upon any lower plane than this, is to rob it of its highest functions and to paralyze it of lasting power for good in any direction. The promises of God are conditioned upon our being in this state of heart toward God. "If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." (Jno. xv., 7.) Abiding in Christ, our will will be His will, as to desiring that which will most advance the divine life and promote confidence in God, and all our desires for material blessings will be subordinated to this motive. Right here must come in a line of truth that will lead us from the spirit of dictation in our prayers to God in all matters pertaining to our worldly concerns. We cannot tell what is for our highest spiritual good. The saving of our property or the taking it away. The recovery from sickness or the continuance of it; the restoration of the health of our loved one, or his departing to be with Christ; the removing the thorn or the permitting it to remain. "In everything" it is indeed our blessed privilege to let our requests be make known unto God, but, praise his name, he has not passed over to us the awful responsibility of the assurance that in everything the requests we make known will be granted. He has reserved the decision, where we should rejoice to leave it, to his infinite wisdom and his infinite love.

There is a danger to be carefully guarded against in the reading of this book and in the consideration of the precious truth. The incidents it relates bring before the mind, of the unlimited resources and the unquenchable love of God, that are made available to believing prayer. That danger has been suggested by what has been said, that the highest use of prayer is to bring the soul nearer to God, and not the making of it a mere matter of convenience to escape physical ills or supply physical necessities.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh" and continues flesh until the end. "Have no confidence in the flesh" is always a much needed exhortation. Now, unquestionably, the desires of the natural heart may and do deceive us, and often lead as to believe that our fervent earnest prayer for temporal blessing is led of the Spirit, when the mind of the Spirit is, that we will be made more humble, more Christ-like and more useful by being denied than by being granted. Again, we are in danger of disobeying the plain commands of God's word in allowing prayer ever to take the place of anything in our power to do, and that we are commanded to do as a means to secure needed good. He who has said "pray always," has also said, "Be ambitious to be quiet and to do your own business, and to work with your hands, even as we charged you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and may have need of nothing." (1 Thess., iv., 11, 12; R.V.)

How often the flesh has led men to read (Phil, iv., 19): "My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," in a spirit entirely opposed to this exhortation. They have ceased to labor with their hands, and, without warrant in the providences of God and the judgment of brethren, have turned from doing their own business, expecting the Lord to pay their debts and provide for their necessities. The quotations of Scripture made by our Lord to Satan, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God," is surely applicable in all such cases. The spirit of a "sound mind" (see 2 Tim. i., 7) will surely recognize this.

So in all things, that which God has given me intelligence and power to do, in avoiding evil or securing good, I am under direct command from him to do, always depending upon His blessing to secure the needed result. A true faith in God will be made manifest by careful obedience to known commands. An intelligent faith can never allow dependence upon means used to take the place of dependence upon the living God, who alone makes them efficacious.