 
The Necessity of Prayer

Why Christians Ought to Pray

E. M. Bounds

Contents

Editor's Foreword

Prayer and Faith

Prayer and Unwavering Faith

Prayer and Trust

Prayer and Desire

Prayer and Fervency

Prayer and Persistence

Prayer and Perseverance

Prayer and Character

Prayer and Obedience

Prayer and Surrender

Prayer and Vigilance

Prayer and the Word of God

Prayer and Preaching

Prayer and the House of God

E. M. Bounds – A Brief Biography
Editor's Foreword

Edward McKendree Bounds, known as E. M. Bounds, was a twentieth-century American author and pastor who wrote eleven books – nine of them on the subject of prayer. Only two of his books were published before he died. After Bounds' death, Reverend Claudius Lysias Chilton Jr. – a friend who deeply admired Bounds – and later Reverend Homer W. Hodge worked to prepare Bounds' manuscripts for publication. This is one of the works published posthumously.

It has been more than a century since E. M. Bounds stepped into glory, but his words are still relevant. We have edited and revised The Necessity of Prayer to update the language for today's readers and change outdated expressions, all while working to preserve the meaning of the original text. Wherever possible, we've also changed personal pronouns to include both men and women. Except where otherwise noted, Scripture passages throughout the book have been changed to the Jubilee Bible.

In the original foreword to the book, Hodge included this note from Chilton:

"Edward Mckendree Bounds did not merely pray well that he might write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world were upon him. He prayed for many years about subjects to which the easy-going Christian rarely gives a thought and for objects which men of less thought and faith are always ready to call impossible. From his solitary prayer vigils, year by year, there arose teaching equaled by few men in modern Christian history. He wrote supernaturally about prayer, because he was himself transcendent in its practice.

"As breathing is a physical reality to us, so prayer was a reality for Bounds. He took the command pray without ceasing almost as literally as animate nature takes the law of the reflex nervous system, which controls our breathing.

"Prayer books – real textbooks, not forms of prayer – were the fruit of this daily spiritual exercise. These articles for the religious press that came from his pen were not brief, though he had been experienced in that field for years; not pamphlets, but books were the product and result. He was hindered by poverty, obscurity, loss of prestige, yet his victory was not wholly reserved until his death.

"In 1907, he gave the world two small editions. One of these was widely circulated in Great Britain. The years following and up to his death in 1913 were filled with constant labor, and he went home to God, leaving a collection of manuscripts. His letters carry the request that the present editor should publish these products of his gifted pen.

"The preservation of the Bounds manuscripts to the present time has clearly been providential. The work of preparing them for the press has been a labor of love, consuming years of effort.

"These books are unfailing wells for a lifetime of spiritual water drawing. They are hidden treasures, wrought in the darkness of the dawn and the heat of the noon, on the anvil of experience, and beaten into wondrous form by the mighty stroke of the Divine. They are living voices whereby Bounds, though dead, still speaks."

With this updated version of The Necessity of Prayer, we hope a new audience may experience the writing of one of the greats from history. Bounds had a style where he restated his points often – presumably to make sure the message was not only heard but also understood and applied. We long for readers to experience the life-changing power of faithful prayer in their own lives.

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Chapter 1

Prayer and Faith

A dear friend of mine, who was quite a lover of the chase, told me the following story. "Rising early one morning," he said, "I heard the baying of a score of deerhounds in pursuit of their quarry. Looking away to a broad, open field in front of me, I saw a young fawn making its way across and giving signs that its race was well-nigh run. Reaching the rails of the enclosure, it leaped over and crouched within ten feet from where I stood. A moment later two of the hounds came over. When the fawn ran in my direction and pushed its head between my legs, I lifted the little thing to my breast and, swinging round and round, fought off the dogs. I felt, just then, that all the dogs in the West could not and should not capture that fawn after its weakness had appealed to my strength." So is it when human helplessness appeals to Almighty God. Well do I remember when the hounds of sin were after my soul, until at last, I ran into the arms of Almighty God. – A. C. Dixon

In any study of the principles and procedure of prayer, and of its activities and enterprises, it is necessary that first place be given to faith. It is the initial quality in the heart of any person who tries to talk to the unseen. He must, out of sheer helplessness, stretch forth hands of faith. He must believe where he cannot prove. In the ultimate issue, prayer is simply faith claiming its natural, yet marvelous, prerogatives – faith taking possession of its limitless inheritance. True godliness is just as true, steady, and persevering in the realm of faith as it is in the area of prayer. Moreover, when faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.

Faith does the impossible, because it brings God to act on our behalf, and nothing is impossible with God. How great – without qualification or limitation – is the power of faith! If doubt is banished from the heart, and unbelief made a stranger there, what we ask of God will surely take place, and a believer has committed to do whatever he says to do, just as the servants did when Jesus turned water to wine. Mary said to the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it (John 2:5).

Prayer Moves God

Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God. In his cursing of the fig tree, our Lord demonstrated his power (Mark 11:12-25). Following that, he proceeded to state that great power was committed to faith and prayer, not in order to kill but to make alive – not to blast but to bless. He said:

For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Remove thyself and cast thyself into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that what he says shall be done whatsoever he says shall be done unto him. (Mark 11:23)

At this point in our study, we turn to a saying of our Lord, which is important to emphasize, since it is the foundation of the arch of faith and prayer.

Therefore I say unto you that everything that ye ask for, praying, believe that ye receive it, and it shall come upon you. (Mark 11:24)

We should meditate on that statement – believe that ye receive it, and it shall come upon you. Believe that you receive it, and you will have it. This describes a faith that realizes, that appropriates, and that takes. Such faith is a consciousness of the divine, an experienced communion, and a realized certainty.

Is faith growing or declining as the years go by? Does faith stand strong and unwavering these days, as immorality abounds and the love of many grows cold? Does faith maintain its hold, as religion tends to become a mere formality, and worldliness increasingly triumphs? It is greatly appropriate that the inquiry of our Lord may be ours. Jesus asks in Luke 18:8, When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth? We believe he will, and it is our job in our generation to see to it that the lamp of faith is trimmed and burning in case the one who is coming soon.

Faith is the Starting Point

Faith is the foundation of Christian character and the security of the soul. When Jesus was looking ahead to Peter's denial and cautioned him against it, he said to his disciple, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not (Luke 22:31-32).

Our Lord was declaring a central truth; it was Peter's faith he sought to guard, for he knew well that when faith breaks down, the foundations of spiritual life gives way, and the entire structure of religious experience falls. It was Peter's faith that needed guarding. Hence, Christ's concern for the welfare of his disciple's soul and his determination to fortify Peter's faith by his own all-prevailing prayer.

In his second epistle, Peter has this idea in mind when speaking of growth in grace as a measure of safety in the Christian life and as implying fruitfulness.

Ye also, giving all diligence to the same, show forth virtue in your faith; and in virtue, knowledge; and in knowledge, temperance; and in temperance, patience; and in patience, fear of God; and in fear of God, brotherly love; and in brotherly love, charity. (2 Peter 1:5-7)

In this adding process, faith is the starting point – the basis of the other graces of the Spirit. Faith is the foundation on which other things are to be built. Peter does not instruct his readers to add to works or gifts or virtues but to faith. Much depends on starting right in this business of growing in grace. There is a divine order of which Peter was aware, so he goes on to declare that we are to give diligence to making our calling and election sure. This election is declared certain and adds to faith, which is, in turn, achieved by constant, earnest praying. Thus, faith is kept alive by prayer, and every step taken in this adding of grace to grace is accompanied by prayer.

Faith that Prays Greatly

The faith that creates powerful praying is the faith that centers itself on a powerful person – God. Faith in Christ's ability to do and to do greatly is the faith that prays greatly. This is how the leper took hold of the power of Christ. Lord, if thou art willing, he cried, thou art able to cleanse me (Matthew 8:2). This example shows us faith that is centered in Christ's ability to do, and it demonstrates how that faith secured the healing power. It was about this very idea that Jesus questioned the blind men who came to him for healing.

And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him; and Jesus said unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yes, Lord. Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. (Matthew 9:28-29)

It was to inspire faith in his ability to do that Jesus left behind him that last, great statement, which in the final analysis, is a ringing challenge to faith. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, he declared (Matthew 28:18).

Again, faith is obedient; it goes when commanded, as the nobleman did when his son was grievously sick. He went to Jesus.

There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

Then Jesus said unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down before my child dies.

Jesus said unto him, Go; thy son lives. And the man believed the word that Jesus spoke unto him, and he went. And as he was now going down, his slaves met him and told him, saying, Thy son lives. Then he enquired of them the hour when he began to get better. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said unto him, Thy son lives; and he believed, and his whole house. (John 4:46-53)

Faith Spurs Action

This type of faith takes action. Like the man who was born blind, it prompts someone to wash in the pool of Siloam when told to wash. Jesus and the disciples encountered him along the road and Jesus spoke to the man:

He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent). Then he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:6-7)

Like Peter on the Lake of Gennesaret, it casts the net where Jesus commands instantly, without question or doubt. That day Jesus preached to the crowds on the shore from out in Simon Peter's fishing boat.

Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.

And when they had done this, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes, and their net was breaking. (Luke 5:4-6)

Such faith takes away the stone from the grave of Lazarus promptly. Even though Lazarus had been dead for four days when Jesus commanded to move the stone, they moved the stone.

And having said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. Then he that had been dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, Loose him, and let him go. (John 11:43-44)

Faith is Needed for Obedience

A praying faith keeps the commandments of God and does the things that are pleasing in his sight. It asks, "Lord, what will you have me to do?" And it answers quickly, "Speak, Lord, your servant hears."

Obedience helps faith, and faith in turn helps obedience. To do God's will is essential to true faith, and faith is necessary to implicit obedience.

Even though we're called to have faith, that often means to wait in patience before God and to be prepared for God's seeming delays in answering prayer. Faith does not grow disheartened when prayer is not immediately honored; it takes God at his Word and lets him take what time he chooses in fulfilling his purposes and carrying on his work. There is bound to be much delay and long days of waiting for true faith, but faith accepts the conditions. It knows there will be delays in answering prayer and regards such delays as times of testing in which faith is privileged to show its courage and the stern stuff of which it is made.

The case of Lazarus was an instance where there was this kind of delay, and where the faith of two good women was sorely tried. Lazarus was critically ill, and his sisters sent for Jesus. But, without any known reason, our Lord delayed in going to the relief of his sick friend. The plea was urgent and touching, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick (John 11:3). But the Master was not moved by it, and the women's earnest request seemed to fall on deaf ears.

What a trial to faith! Furthermore, our Lord's tardiness appeared to bring about hopeless disaster. While Jesus waited, Lazarus died.

But Jesus used this delay in the interest of a greater good. Finally, he made his way to the home in Bethany.

Then Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus has died. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, in order that ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. (John 11:14-15)

After Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, the miracle revealed the greater good in his delay.

Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed on him. (John 11:43-45)

Delays Test Faith

Fear not, tempted and tested believer; Jesus will come if you are patient and your faith holds fast. His delay will serve to make his coming all the more richly blessed. Pray on. Wait on. You cannot fail. If Christ delays, wait for him. In his own good time, he will come and will not wait.

Delay is often the test and the strength of faith. So much patience is required when these times of testing come! Yet faith gathers strength by waiting and praying. Patience has its perfect work in the school of delay. In some instances, delay is of the very essence of the prayer. God has to do many things before giving the final answer – things that are essential to the lasting good of the one who requests God's favor.

Jacob prayed with purpose and fervor to be delivered from Esau:

O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said unto me, Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee.

I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy slave; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan and now I am become two bands.

Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him lest he come and smite me and the mother with the children.

And thou hast said, I will surely do thee good and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. (Genesis 32:9-12)

But before that prayer could be answered, there was much for God to do with and for Jacob. He must be changed, and so must Esau. Jacob had to be made into a new man before Esau could be. Jacob had to be converted to God before Esau could be converted to Jacob.

Among the large and luminous utterances of Jesus concerning prayer, none is more arresting than this:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes in me, the works that I do he shall do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it. (John 14:12-14)

How wonderful these statements are of what God will do in answer to prayer! These ringing words, which are prefaced with the most solemn truth, are of great importance. Faith in Christ is the basis of all working and of all praying. All wonderful works depend on wonderful praying, and all praying is done in the name of Jesus Christ. This praying in the name of the Lord Jesus is an amazing lesson of wondrous simplicity! All other conditions are depreciated; everything else is renounced, except for Jesus only. The name of Christ – the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – must be supremely sovereign in the time and subject of prayer.

If Jesus dwells at the fountain of my life, if the currents of his life have displaced and superseded all self-currents, and if implicit obedience to him is the inspiration and force of every movement of my life, then he can safely commit the praying to my will. Then he can pledge himself by an obligation as profound as his own nature that whatever I ask will be granted. Nothing can be clearer, more distinct, or more unlimited, both in application and extent, than the exhortation and urgency of Christ when he said, Have faith in God, when he spoke with his disciples (Mark 11).

Faith covers temporal as well as spiritual needs. Faith dispels all undue anxiety and needless worry about what we should eat, what we should drink, and what we should wear. Faith lives in the present and regards today's trouble as enough for today. Jesus said:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the affliction thereof. (Matthew 6:34)

Faith lives day by day, and it dispels all fears for the next day. Faith brings great ease of mind and perfect peace of heart.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusts in thee. (Isaiah 26:3)

Our Daily Bread

When we pray, Give us this day our daily bread, we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow, but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. The ones who thrive best and get most out of life are the ones who live in the present. Those who pray best are those who pray for today's needs and not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant if tomorrow doesn't exist at all!

True prayers are born of present trials and present needs. Bread for today is bread enough. Bread given for today is the strongest sort of pledge that there will be bread tomorrow. Victory today is the assurance of victory tomorrow. Our prayers need to be focused on the present; we must trust God today and leave the next day entirely with him. The present is ours; the future belongs to God. Prayer is the task and duty of each recurring day – daily prayer for daily needs.

As every day demands its bread, so every day demands its prayer. No amount of praying done today will suffice for tomorrow's praying. On the other hand, no praying for tomorrow is of any great value to us today. Today's manna is what we need; tomorrow God will see that our needs are supplied. This is the faith that God seeks to inspire.

So leave tomorrow with its cares, its needs, and its troubles in God's hands. There is no storing tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's praying; neither is there any laying up of today's grace to meet tomorrow's necessities. We cannot have tomorrow's grace, we cannot eat tomorrow's bread, and we cannot do tomorrow's praying. Sufficient unto the day is the affliction thereof, and most assuredly, if we possess faith, the good will also be sufficient.

* * *

 Amzi Clarence Dixon (1854-1925) was a Baptist pastor, Bible expositor, and evangelist, popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Chapter 2

Prayer and Unwavering Faith

The guests at a certain hotel were being rendered uncomfortable by repeated strumming on a piano by a little girl who possessed no knowledge of music. They complained to the proprietor with a view to having the annoyance stopped. "I am sorry you are annoyed," he said. "But the girl is the child of one of my very best guests. I can scarcely ask her not to touch the piano. But her father, who is away for a day or so, will return tomorrow. You can then approach him and have the matter set right." When the father returned, he found his daughter in the reception room and, as usual, thumping on the piano. He walked up behind the child and, putting his arms over her shoulders, took her hands in his and produced some most beautiful music. Thus it may be with us, and thus it will be some coming day. Just now we can produce little but clamor and disharmony; but one day the Lord Jesus will take hold of our hands of faith and prayer and use them to bring forth the music of the skies. – Anonymous

Genuine, authentic faith must be definite and free of doubt – not simply general in character, not a mere belief in the being, goodness, and power of God, but a faith that believes the things that he says will come to pass. As the faith is specific, so the answer will also be definite: whatsoever he says shall be done unto him (Mark 11:23).

Faith and prayer select the things, and God commits himself to do the very things that faith and persevering prayer nominate and petition him to accomplish.

Therefore I say unto you that everything that ye ask for, praying, believe that ye receive it, and it shall come upon you (Mark 11:24).

Whatever You Ask For

Perfect faith always has in its possession what perfect prayer asks for. The all things whatsoever part of that verse is large and unqualified. But the promise, ye shall have them, is definite and specific!

Our chief concern is with our faith, the problems of its growth, and the activities of its vigorous maturity. A faith that grasps and holds the very things it asks for without wavering, doubt, or fear is the faith we need. Faith is like a pearl of great price in the process and practice of prayer.

The statement of our Lord about faith and prayer quoted above is of supreme importance. Faith must be definite and specific, an unqualified, unmistakable request for the things asked for. It is not to be a vague, indefinite, shadowy thing; it must be something more than an abstract belief in God's willingness and ability to do for us. It is to be a definite, specific asking for and expecting the things for which we ask. Note again Mark 11:23:

And shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that what he says shall be done whatsoever he says shall be done unto him.

Just as far as the faith and the asking are definite, so also the answer will be. The giving is not to be something other than the things prayed for, but the actual things sought and named. Whatsoever he says shall be done unto him. This is important: whatsoever . . . shall be done. The granting is to be unlimited, both in quality and in quantity.

Faith and prayer select the subjects for petition, thereby determining that God is to do whatsoever he says shall be done unto him. Christ holds himself ready to supply exactly, and fully, all the demands of faith and prayer. If the order on God is made clear, specific, and definite, God will fill it exactly in accordance with the presented terms.

A Holy Energy

Faith is not an abstract belief in the Word of God, a mere mental credence, a simple assent of the understanding and will, or a passive acceptance of facts, however sacred or thorough. Faith is an operation of God, a divine illumination, a holy energy implanted by the Word of God and the Spirit in the human soul. It is a spiritual, divine principle, which takes of the supernatural and makes it clear to understand by the faculties of time and sense.

Faith deals with God and is conscious of God. It deals with the Lord Jesus Christ and sees in him a Savior; it deals with God's Word and lays hold of the truth; it deals with the Spirit of God and is energized and inspired by its holy fire. God is the great objective of faith, for faith rests its whole weight on his Word. Faith is not an aimless act of the soul but a looking to God and a resting upon his promises. Just as love and hope always have an objective, so also does faith. Faith is not believing just anything; it is believing God, resting in him and trusting his Word.

Faith gives birth to prayer, grows stronger, strikes deeper, and rises higher in the struggle and wrestling of mighty petitioning. Faith is the substance of things hoped for – the assurance and realization of the inheritance of the saints. Faith is also humble and persevering. It can wait and pray; it can stay on its knees or lie in the dust. Faith is the one great condition of prayer; the lack of it lies at the root of all poor praying, feeble praying, little praying, and unanswered praying.

The nature and meaning of faith is more demonstrable in what it does than it is by reason of any definition given to it. Thus, if we turn to the record of faith given to us in that great honor roll in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we see something of the wonderful results of faith. What a glorious list it is of these men and women of faith! What marvelous achievements are recorded there and set to the credit of faith! The inspired writer, exhausting his resources in cataloging the Old Testament saints who were such notable examples of wonderful faith, finally exclaims:

And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jephthae, of David also and Samuel and of the prophets. (Hebrews 11:32)

And then the writer of Hebrews goes on again in a wonderful strain, telling of the unrecorded exploits achieved through the faith of the people from long ago of whom the world was not worthy . . . And these all, he said, were approved by testimony of faith (Hebrews 11:38-39).

People of Faith

What a glorious era of achievements would dawn for the church and the world, if only a lineage of saints of similar mighty faith and wonderful praying could be reproduced! It is not the intellectually great that the church needs, nor is it people of wealth that the times demand. People of great social influence are not what this day requires. Above everybody and everything else, it is people of faith, people of mighty prayer, men and women similar to the saints and heroes listed in Hebrews, who were approved by testimony of faith, that the church and the whole wide world of humanity needs.

Many people of this day earn a good reputation because of their money-giving or their great mental gifts and talents, but there are few who earn a good reputation because of their great faith in God, or because of the wonderful things that happen through their great praying. Today, as much as at any time, we need people of great faith and people who are great in prayer. Faith and prayer are the two essential virtues that make men and women great in the eyes of God. These two things create conditions of real spiritual success in the life and work of the church. It is our chief concern to see that we maintain a faith of quality and texture that counts before God, that grasps and holds the things for which it asks without doubt and without fear.

Doubt and fear are the twin foes of faith. Sometimes, they actually take the place of faith, and although we pray, it is a restless, disquieted prayer that we offer, uneasy and often complaining. Peter failed to walk on the Lake of Gennesaret because he permitted the waves to break over him and swamp the power of his faith.

And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked upon the water to go to Jesus.

But seeing that the wind was strong, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me.

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt? (Matthew 14:29-31)

When he took his eyes off the Lord, he noticed the water all around him, and he began to sink and had to cry for help.

Doubts should never be cherished or fears harbored. Let no one cherish the delusion that he or she is a martyr to fear and doubt. It is no credit to any person's mental capacity to cherish doubt of God, and no comfort can possibly come from such a thought. Our eyes should be taken off self, removed from our own weakness, and allowed to rest totally upon God's strength.

Do not lose, therefore, this your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. (Hebrews 10:35)

A simple, confiding faith, living day by day and casting its burden on the Lord each hour of the day, will dissipate fear, drive away misgiving, and deliver from doubt:

Be anxious for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6)

That is the divine cure for all fear, anxiety, and undue concern of soul, all of which are closely related to doubt and unbelief. This is the divine prescription for securing the peace that passes all understanding and keeps the heart and mind in quietness and peace.

Guard Against Unbelief

All of us need to pay attention to the caution given in Scripture:

Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unfaithfulness, to depart from the living God. (Hebrews 3:12)

We also need to guard against unbelief as we would against an enemy. Faith needs to be cultivated. We need to keep on praying, "Lord, increase our faith," for faith is capable of increase. Paul's tribute to the Thessalonians was that their faith grew exceedingly. Faith is increased by exercise – by being put into use. It is nourished by sore trials.

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold (which perishes, nevertheless it is tried with fire), might be found unto praise and glory and honour when Jesus, the Christ, is made manifest. (1 Peter 1:7)

Faith grows by reading and meditating upon the Word of God. Best of all, faith thrives in an atmosphere of prayer.

It would be good if all of us were to stop and ask ourselves, "Do I have faith in God? Do I have real faith – faith that keeps me in perfect peace about the things of earth and the things of heaven?" This is the most important question anyone can ask and expect to be answered.

And there is another question, closely related to it in significance and importance: "Do I really pray to God so that he hears me and answers my prayers? And do I truly pray to God so that I get the things I ask of him directly from God?"

Some have claimed that Augustus Caesar found Rome a city of wood and left it a city of marble. The pastor who succeeds in changing his people from a prayerless to a prayerful people has done a greater work than Augustus did in changing a city from wood to marble. And after all, this is one of the most important tasks of pastors, teachers, and Christian leaders. Primarily, they deal with prayerless people – with people of whom it is said, "God is not in all their thoughts."

They meet such people everywhere and all the time. Their main business is to turn people from being forgetful of God, devoid of faith, and prayerless to being people who habitually pray, believe in God, remember him, and do his will. Christian leaders are not only sent to induce people to join the church or merely get them to do better. They are sent to get them to pray, trust God, and keep him ever before their eyes that they may not sin against him.

A primary work of the ministry is to change unbelieving sinners into praying and believing saints. The call goes forth by divine authority: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved (Acts 16:31).

The Value of Faith

We catch a glimpse of the tremendous importance of faith and of the great value God has put on it when we remember that he has made it the one, indispensable condition of being saved. For by grace are ye saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8). Thus, when we contemplate the great importance of prayer, we find faith standing immediately by its side. By faith are we saved, and by faith we stay saved.

Prayer introduces us to a life of faith. Paul declared that the life he lived, he lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave himself for him – he walked by faith and not by sight.

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Prayer is dependent upon faith. Virtually, it has no existence apart from it and accomplishes nothing unless prayer is faith's inseparable companion. Faith makes prayer effective, and in a certain important sense, must precede it.

But without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

Before prayer ever starts toward God, before its petition is chosen, and before its requests are made known, faith must have gone on ahead; it must have asserted its belief in the existence of God and must have given its assent to the gracious truth that God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. This is the primary step in praying. In this regard, while faith does not bring the blessing, it does put prayer in a position to ask for it and leads to another step toward realization by helping the petitioner believe that God is able and willing to bless.

Faith starts the work of prayer; it clears the way to the mercy seat. It gives assurance, first of all, that there is a mercy seat, and that there the High Priest awaits those who pray and their prayers. Faith opens the way for prayer to approach God.

But it does more. It accompanies prayer at every step it takes. It is the inseparable companion, and when requests are made to God, it is faith that turns the asking into obtaining. Faith follows prayer, since the spiritual life into which a believer is led by prayer is a life of faith. The prominent characteristic of the experience into which believers are brought through prayer is not a life of works but of faith.

Faith makes prayer strong and gives it patience to wait on God. Faith believes that God is a rewarder. No truth is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures than this, and none is more encouraging. Even the prayer closet has its promised reward that God sees us, while the most insignificant service rendered to a disciple in the name of the Lord surely receives its reward. And to this precious truth, faith gives its hearty approval.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father who sees in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:6)

Diligently Seek Him

Yet faith is narrowed down to one particular thing: it does not believe that God will reward everybody, or that he is a rewarder of all who pray, but that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Faith rests its care on diligence in prayer and gives assurance and encouragement to diligent seekers after God. For only diligent seekers are richly rewarded when they pray.

We need to be constantly reminded that faith is the one inseparable condition of successful praying. There are other considerations entering into the exercise, but faith is the final, the one indispensable requirement of true praying. As it is written in a familiar, primary declaration: Without faith, it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6).

James puts this truth very plainly:

And if any of you lacks wisdom, let them ask of God (who gives abundantly to all, and without reproach), and it shall be given them.

But ask in faith, not doubting anything. For he that doubts is like the wave of the sea which is driven of the wind and is tossed from one side to another.

For let not such a man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. (James 1:5-7)

Doubting is always to be abolished because it stands as a foe to faith and hinders effective praying. In the first epistle to Timothy, Paul gives us an invaluable truth related to the conditions of successful praying:

I desire, therefore, that the men in every place, pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and strife. (1 Timothy 2:8)

Keep a lookout for all questioning and avoid it. Fear and doubt have no place in true praying. Faith must assert itself and evict these foes to prayer.

Too much authority cannot be attributed to faith, but prayer is the scepter by which it defines its power. There is much spiritual wisdom in following advice written by a prominent old theologian. He asks:

Would you be freed from the bondage to corruption? Would you grow in grace in general and grow in grace in particular? If you would, your way is plain. Ask of God more faith. Beg of him morning, and noon, and night, while you walk by the way, while you sit in the house, when you lie down and when you rise up. Beg of him simply to impress divine things more deeply on your heart, to give you more and more of the substance of things hoped for and of the evidence of things not seen.   
– John Wesley

The Holy Scriptures give us great incentives to pray, and our Lord closes his teaching about prayer with the assurance and promise of heaven. The presence of Jesus Christ in heaven, the preparation for his saints that he is making, and the assurance that he will come again to receive them, all help the weariness of praying, strengthen its conflicts, and sweeten its arduous toil! These things are the star of hope to prayer, the wiping away of its tears, and the putting of the sweetness of heaven into the bitterness of its cry. The spirit of a pilgrim greatly facilitates praying.

Wait on the Lord

An earth-bound, earth-satisfied spirit cannot pray. In such a heart, the flame of spiritual desire is either gone out or smoldering with the faintest glow. The wings of its faith are clipped, its eyes are filmed, its tongue silenced. But those who wait continually upon the Lord in unswerving faith and unceasing prayer renew their strength, mount up with wings as eagles, run and are not weary, walk and do not faint.

* * *

 John Wesley, excerpt from The Monthly Religious Magazine and Theological Review, Vol. 35 (Boston: Leonard C. Bowles, 1866), 374.
Chapter 3

Prayer and Trust

One evening, I left my office in New York with a bitterly cold wind in my face. I had with me (or I thought) my thick, warm muffler, but when I proceeded to button up against the storm, I found that it was gone. I turned back, looked along the streets, searched my office, but in vain. I realized then that I must have dropped it, and I prayed God that I might find it, for such was the state of the weather that it would be running a great risk to proceed without it. I looked again, up and down the surrounding streets, but without success. Suddenly, I saw a man on the opposite side of the road holding out something in his hand. I crossed over and asked him if that were my muffler? He handed it to me saying, "It was blown to me by the wind." He who rides upon the storm had used the wind as a means of answering prayer. – William Horst

Prayer does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty and independent principle. It lives in association with other Christian duties, wedded to other principles, and a partner with other graces. But prayer is permanently joined to faith, which gives it color and tone, shapes its character, and secures its results.

Trust is faith that has become absolute, ratified, and completed. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full flower. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware. According to the scriptural concept, it is the eye of the newborn soul and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul, the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling – all of these relate to trust. How luminous, how distinct, how conscious, how powerful, and more than all, how scriptural is such a trust!

How different it is from many forms of modern belief, which are so feeble, dry, and cold! These new phases of belief bring no consciousness of their presence, no joy unspeakable and full of glory kind of results from their practice (1 Peter 1:8). For the most part, they are adventures in the peradventure – the uncertainty – of the soul. There is no safe, sure trust in anything. The whole transaction takes place in the realm of maybe and perhaps.

The Realm of Trust

Trust, like life, is feeling, though much more than feeling. An unfelt life is a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, a delusion, and a contradiction. Trust is the most felt of all attributes. It is all feeling, and it works only by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of which we are now speaking is a conviction. An unfelt conviction? How absurd!

Trust brings eternity into the records and events of time, transforms the substance of hope into the reality of fulfillment, and changes promise into present possession. We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, and holds. Trust is its own witness.

Yet, quite often faith is too weak to immediately obtain God's greatest good, so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, and pressing obedience, until it grows in strength and is able to bring down the eternal into the realms of experience and time.

To this point, trust accumulates all its forces and holds them. And in the struggle, trust's grasp becomes mightier, and it grasps all that God has done for it in his eternal wisdom and plenitude of grace.

In the matter of waiting in prayer – mightiest prayer – faith rises to its highest plane and truly becomes the gift of God. It becomes the blessed nature and expression of the soul that is secured by a constant communication with God and persistent appeal to God.

Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig tree, the disciples were surprised that its withering had actually taken place, and their remarks indicated their astonishment. It was then that Jesus said to them, Have faith in God.

For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Remove thyself and cast thyself into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that what he says shall be done whatsoever he says shall be done unto him. (Mark 11:22-23)

Growing Trust

Nowhere does trust grow so readily and richly as in the prayer chamber. Its unfolding and development are rapid and wholesome when these engagements are regularly and well kept. When they are hearty and full and free, trust especially flourishes. The eye and presence of God give vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit and flower to grow into all things beautiful and bright with fuller life.

Have faith in God and trust in the Lord form the keynote and foundation of prayer. It is not primarily trust in the Word of God but rather trust in the person of God. For trust in the person of God must precede trust in the Word of God. The demand our Lord makes on the personal trust of his disciples is ye believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1). The person of Jesus Christ must be central to the eye of trust. Jesus sought to impress this great truth upon Martha when her brother lay dead in the home at Bethany. Martha declared her belief in the fact of the resurrection of her brother:

Martha said unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection in the last day. (John 11:24)

Jesus lifted her trust clear above the mere fact of the resurrection to his own person by saying:

Jesus said unto her, I AM the resurrection and the life; he that believes in me, though he is dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Believest thou this? (John 11:25-26)

Trust in a historical fact or in a mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person gives strength to the quality, makes it fruitful, and informs it with love. The trust that informs prayer centers in a person.

Trust goes even further than this. The trust that inspires our prayer must be not only trust in the person of God and of Christ but in their ability and willingness to grant the thing for which we pray. It is not only Trust ye in the Lord for ever, but also for in JAH, the Lord is the strength of the ages (Isaiah 26:4).

The trust our Lord taught as a condition of effective prayer is not of the head, but of the heart. It is the one who trusts that does not have doubt in his heart.

But ask in faith, not doubting anything. For he that doubts is like the wave of the sea which is driven of the wind and is tossed from one side to another. (James 1:6)

Such trust has the divine assurance that it will be honored with large and satisfying answers. The strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the present and counts on a present answer.

Beyond a Doubt

Do we believe without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe not that we will receive the things for which we ask on a future day, but that we receive them immediately? Such is the teaching of this inspiring Scripture. We need to pray as the apostles did – Lord, increase our faith (Luke 17:5) – until doubt is gone, and implicit trust claims the promised blessings as its very own.

This is no easy condition. It is usually reached only after many failures, much praying, considerable waiting, and much trial of faith. May our faith so increase until we understand and receive all the fullness there is in the name that guarantees to do so much.

Our Lord puts trust as the very foundation of praying. The background of prayer is trust. The whole outcome of Christ's ministry and work was dependent on steadfast trust in his Father. The center of trust is God. Mountains of difficulties and all other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and its powerful accomplice – faith.

When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand ready to receive. Trust perfected is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless or that he will bless, but that he does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So what prayer needs at all times is abiding and abundant trust.

The disciples' inexcusable lack of trust and resulting failure to do what they were sent out to do is seen in the case of the lunatic son, who was brought by his father to nine disciples while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. A sadly afflicted boy was brought to these men to be cured of his condition. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. This was a part of their mission.

They had attempted to cast out the devil from the boy but completely failed. The devil was too much for them. They were humiliated at their failure and filled with shame, while their enemies were in triumph. Amid the confusion surrounding the failure, Jesus drew near. They informed him of the circumstances and told him the conditions connected with it. Here is the subsequent account:

Then Jesus answered and said, O unfaithful and crooked generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him here to me.

And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour.

Then the disciples came to Jesus apart and said, Why could not we cast him out?

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unfaithfulness; for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove from here to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Howbeit this lineage of demons does not go out but by prayer and fasting. (Matthew 17:17-21)

Where was the difficulty with these men? They had been lax in cultivating their faith by prayer, and as a consequence, their trust utterly failed. They did not trust God, or Christ, or the authenticity of his mission or their own.

It has been this way many times since and in many crises in the church of God. Failure has resulted from a lack of trust or from a weakness of faith and this in turn from a lack of prayerfulness. Many a failure in revival efforts has been traceable to the same cause. Faith had not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Neglect of the inner prayer chamber is the cause of most spiritual failure.

This is as true of our personal struggles with the devil as has been the case when we have gone forth to attempt to cast out devils. The only surety that we will have God with us, either in our personal struggles or in our efforts to convert sinners, is to be always on our knees in private communion with God.

Trust Evidenced by Action

Everywhere in the approaches of the people to our Lord, he put trust in God and the divinity of his mission in the forefront. He gave no definition of trust, and he furnished no theological discussion or analysis of it. For he knew that men and women would see what faith was by what faith did, and from its free exercise, trust grew up spontaneously in his presence. It was the product of his work, his power, and his person. These furnished and created an atmosphere most favorable for its exercise and development.

Trust is altogether too splendidly simple for verbal definition, too hearty and spontaneous for theological terminology. The very simplicity of trust is what causes many people to stumble. They look for some great thing to come to pass, while all the time the word is near thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart (Romans 10:8).

When Jairus received the sad news of his daughter's death, our Lord interjected: Be not afraid, he said calmly, only believe (Matthew 5:36). To the woman with the issue of blood, who stood tremblingly before him, he said, Daughter, thy faith has made thee saved; go in peace and remain whole of thy plague (Matthew 5:34).

As the two blind men followed him, pressing their way into the house, Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened (Matthew 9:29-30).

When the paralytic was let down through the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching and placed before him by four of his friends, it is recorded this way: And, behold, they brought him a paralyzed man, lying on a bed; and Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the paralyzed man, Trust, son; thy sins are forgiven thee (Matthew 9:2).

When the centurion came to Jesus asking that he speak a healing word for his servant who was seriously ill, Jesus dismissed the centurion, and healed the servant without even going to the centurion's house. Then Jesus said unto the centurion, Go, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in that same hour (Matthew 8:13).

When the poor leper fell at the feet of Jesus and cried out for relief, Jesus immediately granted his request: And, behold, a leper came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou art willing, thou art able to cleanse me. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed (Matthew 8:2-3).

Lord, Help Us

The Syrophenician woman (a Gentile who was born in Phoenicia in the Roman province of Syria, part of the land of Canaan) came to Jesus about her afflicted daughter but made the case her own when she prayed, Lord, help me. She made a fearful and heroic struggle. Jesus honored her faith and prayer, saying: O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou desire. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour (Matthew 15:28).

After the disciples had utterly failed to cast the devil out of the boy with the dumb spirit, the father of the stricken lad came to Jesus with the plaintive and almost despairing cry, if thou canst do any thing, help us, having mercy on us. And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe this, all things are possible to him that believes (Mark 9:22-23).

Blind Bartimaeus, sitting by the wayside, heard our Lord as he passed by and cried out pitifully and almost despairingly, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. The keen ears of our Lord immediately caught the sound of prayer, and he said to the beggar, Go; thy faith has saved thee. And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way (Mark 10:47, 52).

A weeping, penitent woman washed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head; Jesus spoke cheering, soul-comforting words to her: Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace (Luke 7:50).

One day Jesus healed ten lepers at one time in answer to their united prayer, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us, and he told them to go and show themselves to the priests. And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed (Luke 17:13-14).

When one of the men came back to express gratitude, the man glorified Jesus with a loud voice. And Jesus said to him, Arise, go; thy faith has saved thee (Luke 17:19).
Chapter 4

Prayer and Desire

There are those who will mock me, tell me to stick to my trade as a cobbler, and not trouble my mind with philosophy and theology. But the truth of God did so burn in my bones that I took my pen in hand and began to set down what I had seen. – Jacob Behmen

Desire is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep-seated craving, an intense longing for attaining something. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important accessory to prayer. It is so important that one might almost say desire is an absolute essential of prayer. Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, and follows it. Desire goes before prayer, and by prayer it is created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire.

The Motivation to Pray

If prayer is asking God for something, then prayer must be expressed. Prayer comes out into the open; desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire is unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words. Such automatic, formal praying with no heart, no feeling, and no real desire accompanying it is to be shunned like a plague. Its exercise is a waste of precious time, and no real blessing grows from it.

And yet, even if it is discovered that desire is honestly absent, we should pray anyway. We ought to pray. The "ought" comes in, so that both desire and expression can be cultivated. God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray – whether we feel like it or not – and not allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer.

In such circumstances, we ought to pray for the desire to pray, for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire. Then, when desire has been given, we should pray according to its dictates. Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us; it should lead us to lament its absence and seek earnestly for its arrival, so our praying from this point forward would be an expression of "the soul's sincere desire."

A sense of need creates, or should create, earnest desire. The stronger the sense of need before God, the greater the desire should be and the more earnest the praying. The poor in spirit are highly competent to pray.

Hunger is an active sense of physical need. It prompts the request for bread. In like manner, the inward consciousness of spiritual need creates desire, and desire breaks forth in prayer. Desire is an inward longing for something we do not possess, but we need – something God has promised that may be secured by an earnest request to his throne of grace.

Spiritual desire, carried to a higher degree, is the evidence of the new birth. It is born in the renewed soul:

As newborn babes, desire the rational milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby in health. (1 Peter 2:2)

The absence of this holy desire in the heart is either probable proof of a decline in spiritual delight or proof that the new birth has never taken place.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)

Spiritual Appetite

These heaven-given appetites are the proof of a renewed heart, the evidence of the stirring of spiritual life. Physical appetites are the attributes of a living body not of a corpse; spiritual desires belong to a soul made alive to God. And as the renewed soul hungers and thirsts after righteousness, these holy inward desires break out into earnest, supplicating prayer.

In prayer, we are constrained to the name, merit, and intercessory virtue of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. Probing below the accompanying conditions and forces in prayer, we come to its vital basis, which is seated in the human heart. It is not simply our need; it is the heart's yearning for what we need and for what we feel compelled to pray. Desire is the will in action, a strong, conscious longing, excited in the inner nature for some great good. Desire exalts the object of its longing and fixes the mind on it. It has choice, security, and flame in it; prayer based on that is explicit and specific. It knows its need, feels and sees the thing that will meet it, and hurries to acquire it.

Devout contemplation greatly helps holy desire. Meditation on our spiritual need and God's readiness and ability to correct it aids desire to grow. When we engage in serious thought before praying, it increases desire and makes it more insistent; it tends to save us from the menace of private prayer's wandering thoughts. We fail much more in desire than in its outward expression. We retain the form, while the inner life fades and almost dies.

A Holy Flame

One might ask whether the weakness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fullness of Christ isn't the cause of our praying so little and failing in the exercise of prayer. Do we really feel this inward panting of desire after heavenly treasures? Does the ingrained groaning of desire stir our souls to mighty wrestling?

Unfortunately for us, the fire burns altogether too low. The flaming heat of soul has been tempered down to a tepid lukewarm quality. We should remember this was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians, of whom the awful condemnation is written that they were rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and did not know that they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind (Revelation 3:17).

Again, we might ask, do we have the desire that presses us to close communion with God – one that is filled with unspeakable eagerness and holds us through the agony of an intense and soul-stirred appeal? Our hearts need to be worked over – not only to get the evil out of them but to get the good into them. And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming good is strong, propelling desire. This holy and passionate flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places the infinite riches of divine grace at the disposal of those who exercise it.

The dampening of the flame of holy desire is destructive to the vital and aggressive forces in church life. God requires representation by a fiery church, or he is not in any proper sense represented at all. God himself is all on fire; if his church is to be like him, it must also be at white heat.

The great and eternal interests of heaven-born, God-given conviction are the only things about which his church can afford to be on fire. Yet holy zeal does not need to be particular in order to be consuming. Our Lord was the incarnate antithesis of nervous excitability, the absolute opposite of intolerant or clamorous ranting, yet the zeal of God's house consumed him, and the world is still feeling the glow of his fierce, consuming flame and responding to it with an ever-increasing readiness and an ever-enlarging response.

A lack of ardor in prayer is the sure sign of a lack of depth and of intensity of desire, and the absence of intense desire is a sure sign of God's absence from the heart! To lessen fervor is to retire from God. He can, and does, tolerate many things in the way of infirmity and error in his children. He can, and will, pardon sin when the repentant one prays, but two things are intolerable to God – insincerity and lukewarmness. Lack of heart and lack of heat are two things he loathes, and in terms of unmistakable severity and condemnation, he said to the Laodiceans: So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:16)

This was God's expressed judgment on the lack of fire in one of the seven churches in the book of Revelation, and it is his indictment against individual Christians for the fatal lack of sacred zeal. In prayer, fire is the motive power. Religious principles that do not emerge in flame have neither force nor effect. Flame is the wing on which faith ascends; fervency is the soul of prayer. It is the fervent, effectual prayer that James said had benefit.

The effectual prayer of the righteous is very powerful. (James 5:16)

Prayer Ablaze

Love is kindled in a flame, and intensity is its life. Flame is the air that true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything except a feeble flame. It dies when chilled and starved to its vitals, when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm.

True prayer must be ablaze. Christian life and character need to be all on fire. Lack of spiritual heat creates more infidelity than lack of faith. If we are not consumed with interest about the things of heaven, we are not interested in them at all. The fiery souls are those who conquer in the day of battle; From the days of John the Baptist until now, life is given unto the kingdom of the heavens, and the valiant take hold of it (Matthew 11:12). The citadel of God is taken only by those who storm it in dreadful earnestness and besiege it with fiery, unabated zeal.

Nothing short of being red hot for God can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts these chilly days. The early Methodists had no heating apparatus in their churches. They declared that the flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must suffice to keep them warm. Right now, we need to have the live coal from God's altar and the consuming flame from heaven glowing in our hearts. This flame is not mental enthusiasm or fleshly energy. It is divine fire in the soul, intense and burning away impurities – the very essence of the Spirit of God.

No education, no purity of language, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, and no personal grace can compensate for lack of fire. Prayer rises by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings – acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire, no prayer without flame.

Intense desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination; it is a strong yearning, an unquenchable ardor, which permeates, glows in, burns, and fixes the heart. It is the flame of a present and active principle rising up to God. The passion that is propelled by desire burns its way to the throne of mercy and gains its plea. The determination of desire gives triumph to the conflict in a great struggle of prayer. The burden of a weighty desire sobers, makes restless, and reduces to quietness the soul that has emerged from its mighty wrestling. The embracing character of desire arms prayer with a thousand pleas and robes it with an invincible courage and an all-conquering power.

The Flame of Urgency

The Syrophenician woman is an object lesson of desire settled to its consistency but invulnerable in its intensity and persistent boldness. The unrelenting widow represents desire gaining its desired outcome through obstacles, which seem impossible to weaker impulses. Prayer is not the rehearsal of a mere performance, nor is it an indefinite, widespread commotion.

Desire, while it kindles the soul, holds it to the object that is sought. Prayer is an indispensable phase of spiritual habit, but it ceases to be prayer when carried on by habit alone. It is depth and intensity of spiritual desire that give intensity and depth to prayer. The soul cannot be listless when some great desire fires and inflames it. The urgency of our desire holds us to the thing desired with a tenacity that refuses to be lessened or loosened; it stays, pleads, persists, and refuses to let go until the blessing has been granted.

Lord, I cannot let Thee go,

Till a blessing Thou bestow;

Do not turn away Thy face;

Mine's an urgent, pressing case.

– John Newton

The hidden source of faintheartedness – lack of persistence, courage, and strength – in prayer lies in the weakness of spiritual desire, whereas the non-observance of prayer is the alarming sign that the desire has ceased to live. The soul that has turned from God is the one whose desire after him no longer presses it to the inner chamber. There can be no successful praying without consuming desire. Of course, there can be the appearance of prayer without desire of any kind.

A Clear Objective

Many things may be listed and much ground covered, but does desire compile the list? Does desire map out the region to be covered? The issue of whether our petitioning is prattling or prayer hangs on the answer. Desire is intense but narrow; it cannot spread itself over a wide area. It wants a few things and wants them badly – so badly, that nothing but God's willingness to answer can bring it easement or contentment.

Desire shoots once at its objective. There may be many things desired, but they are specifically and individually felt and expressed. David did not yearn for everything, nor did he allow his desires to spread out everywhere and hit nothing. Here is the way his desires ran and found expression:

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)

This singleness of desire and definiteness of yearning are what counts in praying and drives prayer directly to the core and center of supply.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus voiced the words that directly pertain to the innate desires of a renewed soul and the promise that they will be granted:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)

This is the basis of prayer that compels an answer – a strong inward desire enters into the spiritual appetite and clamors to be satisfied. Unfortunately for us, it is altogether too true and frequent that our prayers operate in the arid region of a mere wish or in the leafless area of a memorized prayer. Sometimes our prayers are merely stereotyped expressions of set phrases and conventional compositions where the freshness and life have departed long years ago.

Without desire, there is no burden of soul, no sense of need, no passion, no vision, no strength, and no glow of faith. There is no mighty pressure and no holding on to God with a despairing grasp – I will not let thee go except thou bless me (Genesis 32:26). Without desire, there is no utter self-abandonment, as there was with Moses – when lost in the agony of a desperate, persistent, and all-consuming plea, he cried, that thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me now out of thy book which thou hast written (Exodus 32:32). Or, as there was with John Knox when he pleaded, "Give me Scotland, or I die!"

Seeking God

God draws mightily near to the praying soul. To see God, to know God, and to live for God – these form the objective of true praying. After all, praying is inspired to seek after God. Prayer desire is inflamed to see God – to have clearer, fuller, sweeter, and richer revelation of God. So, to those who pray this way, the Bible becomes a new Bible, and Christ a new Savior, by the light and revelation of the inner prayer chamber.

We reiterate that burning desire – enlarged and ever enlarging – for the best and most powerful gifts and graces of the Spirit of God are the legitimate heritage of true and effective praying. Self and service cannot be divorced; they cannot possibly be separated. More than that, desire must be made intensely personal and must be centered on God with an insatiable hungering and thirsting after him and his righteousness.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:2)

The indispensable requisite for true praying is a deeply seated desire that seeks after God himself and remains unappeased until the choicest gifts in heaven's storehouse have been richly and abundantly granted.
Chapter 5

Prayer and Fervency

Let each one who can say, "My God will hear me," join in the fervent supplication, that throughout the church, this truth may be restored to its true place, and the blessed prospect will be realized: a praying church endued with the power of the Holy Spirit. – Andrew Murray

Prayer without fervor stakes nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to stake. It comes with empty hands – hands that are listless as well as empty and have never learned the lesson of clinging to the cross.

Prayer with no fervor has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life must find a place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.

Paul was a notable example of the man who possessed a fervent spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all consuming, centered immovably upon the object of his desire and the God who was able to meet it.

Intense Heat

Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effective and that prospers. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning and dry up the springs of supplication. It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of soul creates an atmosphere favorable to prayer because it is favorable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat or noise. Heat is intensity – something that glows and burns. Heaven is a mighty poor market for ice.

God wants warm-hearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire to dwell in us; we are to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A phlegmatic temperament is contrary to fervent Christian living. If our conviction does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire. To be absorbed in God's will and to be so sincere about doing it that our whole being takes fire is the qualifying condition of the person who would engage in effective prayer.

Pray Strong

Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. Jesus said, It behooves us always to pray and not faint (Luke 18:1). That means we are to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer. Fire makes one alert and vigilant and brings him or her away more than a conqueror. The atmosphere about us is too heavily charged with resisting forces for limp or lazy prayers to make headway. It takes heat and fervency and meteoric fire to push through to the upper heavens where God dwells with his saints in light.

Many of the great Bible characters were notable examples of fervency of spirit when seeking God. The psalmist declared with great earnestness:

My soul is broken from desiring thy judgments at all times. (Psalm 119:20)

What strong desires of heart are here! What earnest soul longings for the Word of the living God! An even greater fervency is expressed by him in another place:

As the hart pants after the water brooks, so does my soul pant after thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)

That is the word of a man who lived in a state of grace that had been deeply and supernaturally formed in his soul.

Fervency before God counts in the hour of prayer and finds a speedy and rich reward at his hands. The psalmist gives us this statement of what God had done for the king, as his heart turned toward his Lord:

Thou hast given him his heart's desire and hast not withheld the request of his lips. (Psalm 21:2)

At another time, he expressed himself directly to God this way in choosing his request:

Lord, all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee. (Psalm 38:9)

What a cheerful thought! Our inward groaning, our secret desires, and our heart longings are not hidden from the eyes of the one with whom we have to deal in prayer.

Nurture Passion

The incentive for fervency of spirit before God is precisely the same as it is for continued and earnest prayer. While fervency is not prayer, it still originates from an earnest soul and is precious in the sight of God. Fervency in prayer is the precursor to what God will do by way of answer. God stands pledged to give us the desire of our hearts in proportion to the fervency of spirit we exhibit when seeking his face in prayer.

Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain or in the intellectual faculties of the mind. Fervency, therefore, is not an expression of the intellect. Fervency of spirit is something far transcending poetic fancy or sentimental imagery. It is something besides mere preference or the contrasting of like with dislike. Fervency is the pulse and motion of the emotional nature.

Perhaps it is not in our power to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can pray and ask God to implant it. It is ours then to nourish and cherish it, to guard it against extinction, and to prevent its decrease or decline. The process of personal salvation is not only to pray and express our desires to God but to acquire a fervent spirit and seek to cultivate it by all proper means. It is never out of place to pray and ask God to create within us and to keep alive the spirit of fervent prayer.

Fervency has to do with God, just as prayer has to do with him. Desire always has an objective. If we desire at all, we desire something. The degree of fervency with which we create our spiritual desires will always serve to determine the earnestness of our praying. In relation to this, Adoniram Judson said:

A travailing spirit, the throes of a great burdened desire, belongs to prayer. A fervency strong enough to drive away sleep, which devotes and inflames the spirit, and which retires all earthly ties, all this belongs to wrestling, prevailing prayer. The Spirit, the power, the air, and food of prayer is in such a spirit.

Prayer must be clothed with fervency, strength, and power. The force centered on God determines the outlay of himself for earthly good. Men and women who are fervent in spirit are fixed on attaining righteousness, truth, grace, and all other magnificent and powerful graces that adorn the character of the authentic, unquestioned child of God.

Strive Together

God once used the mouth of a brave prophet to declare a message to a king who at one time had been true to God but had lost his faith through success and material prosperity:

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly, for from now on thou shalt have wars. (2 Chronicles 16:9)

God had heard Asa's prayer in early life, but disaster and trouble came because he had given up the life of prayer and simple faith.

In Romans 15:30, the word strive occurs in the request that Paul made for prayerful cooperation:

Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. (KJV)

Paul charged the Romans to strive together with him in prayer – that is, to help him in his struggle of prayer. The word means to enter into a contest or to fight against adversaries. It also means to engage with fervent zeal or to endeavor to obtain.

These recorded instances of the exercise and reward of faith make it easy to see that in almost every instance, faith was blended with trust to the point that it is not exaggerating to say the former was swallowed up in the latter. It is hard to distinguish the specific activities of these two qualities – faith and trust. But there is a point beyond all doubt when faith is relieved of its burden, and trust comes along and says, "You have done your part; the rest is mine!"

In the incident of the barren fig tree, our Lord transferred the marvelous power of faith to his disciples. When he cursed the tree, he said, Let no fruit grow on thee from now on for ever. And then the fig tree withered away. Then when they exclaimed, How soon is the fig tree withered away, he said:

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do this to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. (Matthew 21:19-22)

When a Christian believer attains faith of such magnificent proportions as these, he steps into the realm of implicit trust. He stands without a tremor on the apex of his spiritual outreaching. He has attained faith's real capstone, which is unswerving, unalterable, inalienable trust in the power of the living God.

* * *

 Adoniram Judson Jr. (1788-1850) was an American Baptist missionary.
Chapter 6

Prayer and Persistence

How glibly we talk of praying without ceasing! Yet we are quite apt to quit if our prayer remains unanswered but one week or month! We assume that by a stroke of his arm or an action of his will, God will give us what we ask. It never seems to dawn on us that he is the master of nature, as of grace, and that sometimes he chooses one way and sometimes another in which to do his work. It takes years sometimes to answer a prayer, and when it is answered, and we look backward, we can see that it did. But God knows all the time, and it is his will that we pray, and pray, and still pray. So we come to know, indeed, and of a truth, what it is to pray without ceasing. – Anonymous

Our Lord Jesus declared, it behooves us always to pray and not faint, and he taught the parable in which these words occur with the intention of saving people from fainthearted and weak prayer. Our Lord sought to teach to guard against negligence, and he sought to foster and encourage persistence. There can be no two opinions regarding the importance of the exercise of this indispensable quality in our praying.

Persistent prayer is a mighty movement of the soul toward God, and it stirs the deepest forces of the soul toward the throne of heavenly grace. It is the ability to hold on, press on, and wait. Restless desire, restful patience, and strength of grasp are all embraced in it. Prayer is not an incident or a performance but a passion of soul. It is not a want or half-needed desire but a sheer necessity.

Mighty Wrestling

The wrestling quality in unrelenting prayers does not spring from physical vehemence or fleshly energy. It is not an impulse of energy or a mere earnestness of soul; it is an embedded force, a faculty implanted and aroused by the Holy Spirit. Virtually, it is the intercession of the Spirit of God in us; in addition, the effectual prayer of the righteous is very powerful (James 5:16). The divine Spirit that illuminates every element within us with the energy of his own striving is the essence of the insistence that urges our praying at the mercy seat to continue until the fire falls and the blessing descends. This wrestling in prayer may not be boisterous or vehement but quiet, tenacious, and urgent. It may be silent when there are no visible outlets for its mighty forces.

Nothing distinguishes the children of God so clearly and strongly as prayer. It is the one infallible mark and test of being a Christian. Christian people are prayerful; worldly-minded people are prayerless. Christians call on God; carnal people ignore God and do not call on his name. But even the Christian needs to cultivate continual prayer.

Prayer must be habitual but much more than a habit. It is a duty but rises far above and goes beyond the ordinary implications of the term. It is the expression of a relationship to God, a yearning for divine communion. Prayer is the outward and upward flow of the inward life toward its original fountain – an assertion of the soul's paternity, a claiming of the sonship that links man to the eternal.

Prayer has everything to do with molding the soul into the image of God and enhancing and enlarging the measure of divine grace. It has everything to do with bringing the soul into complete communion with God by enriching, broadening, and maturing the soul's experience of God. The person who does not pray cannot possibly be called a Christian. By no possible pretext can he or she claim any right to the term or its implied significance.

If one does not pray, he or she is a sinner, pure and simple, for prayer is the only way in which the soul of people can enter into fellowship and communion with the source of all Christ-like spirit and energy. Hence, if one does not pray, he or she is not of the household of faith.

In this study however, we turn our thought to one phase of prayer – that of persistence – the pressing of our desires upon God with urgency and perseverance, the praying with that tenacity and tension that neither relaxes nor ceases until its plea is heard and its cause is won.

Those who have clear views of God and a scriptural perception of the divine character, who appreciate their privilege to approach God, and who understand their inward need of all that God has for them will be zealous, outspoken, and unrelenting. In Holy Scripture, the duty of prayer is advocated in terms that are barely stronger than those in which the necessity for its urgency is set forth.

The praying that influences God is declared to be from the fervent, effectual outpouring of a righteous man. That is to say, influential prayer is on fire with no feeble, flickering flame, no momentary flash, but shining with a vigorous and steady glow.

Examples from the Faithful

The repeated intercessions of Abraham for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah present an early example of the necessity for and the benefit from pleading prayer. Jacob, wrestling all night with the angel, gave significant emphasis to the power of a dogged perseverance in praying and showed how persistence succeeds in spiritual things as effectively as it does in matters relating to time and sense.

As we have noted elsewhere, Moses prayed forty days and forty nights and sought mercy from the wrath of God against Israel, and his example and success are a stimulus to present-day faith in its darkest hour. Elijah repeated and pled his prayer seven times before the rain cloud appeared above the horizon, heralding the success of his prayer and the victory of his faith. On one occasion Daniel, though faint and weak, pressed his case three weeks before the answer and the blessing came.

The blessed Savior spent many nights during his earthly life in prayer. In Gethsemane, he presented the same petition three times with unabated, urgent, yet submissive persistence that involved every element of his soul and produced tears and bloody sweat. His life crises were distinctly marked, and his life victories all won in hours of persistent and urgent prayer. And the servant is not greater than his Lord.

The parable of the persistent widow is a classic example of insistent prayer. This would be a good point in our study to refresh our memory of it:

And he spoke a parable unto them to this end, that it behooves us always to pray and not faint, saying, There was in a city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man; and there was a widow in that city, and she came unto him, saying, Defend me from my adversary.

And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, Though I do not fear God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will do her justice, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge says. And shall not God avenge his own elect who cry day and night unto him though he bears long regarding them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. (Luke 18:1-8)

This parable stresses the central truth of persistent and urgent prayer. The widow pressed her case until the unjust judge yielded. If this parable does not teach the necessity for persistence, it has neither point nor instruction in it. Take this one thought away from it, and you have nothing left worth recording. Beyond all objections, Christ intended it to stand as an evidence of the need that exists for insistent prayer.

We have the same teaching emphasized in the incident of the Syrophenician woman, who came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter, as we discussed in chapters 2 and 4. Here she demonstrated persistence, not as stark impertinence but with the persuasive attire of humility, sincerity, and fervency. We are given a glimpse of a woman's clinging faith, a woman's bitter grief, and a woman's spiritual insight. The Master went over into that Sidonian country so that this truth might be mirrored for all time. There is no plea so effective as unrelenting prayer and none to which God surrenders himself so fully and so freely.

The insistence of this distressed mother won her the victory and materialized her request. Yet, instead of being an offense to the Savior, it drew from him a word of wonder and glad surprise.

Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou desire. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (Matthew 15:28)

Persistence Is Everything

The one who does not press his or her plea is the one who does not pray at all. Cold prayers have no claim on heaven and no hearing in the courts above. Fire is the life of prayer, and heaven is reached by flaming persistence rising in an ascending scale.

Going back to the case of the persistent widow, we see that her widowhood, her friendlessness, and her weakness counted for nothing with the unjust judge.

Persistence was everything. Because this widow troubles me, he said, I will do her justice, lest by her continual coming she weary me. Solely because the widow imposed on the time and attention of the unjust judge, she won her case.

God waits patiently as day and night his elect cry to him. He is moved by their requests a thousand times more than this unjust judge was. The persistent praying of his people sets a limit to his tarrying, and the answer is richly given. God finds faith in his praying child – the faith that stays and cries – and he honors it by permitting its further exercise to the point that it is strengthened and enriched. Then he rewards it by granting the burden of its plea in plenitude and finality.

The case of the Syrophenician woman is a notable instance of successful persistence, one which is eminently encouraging to all who would pray successfully. It was a remarkable example of insistence and perseverance to ultimate victory in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles and hindrances. But the woman overcame them all by heroic faith and persistent spirit that were as remarkable as they were successful.

Jesus had gone over into her country and desired that no man know of it (Mark 7:24). But she broke through his purpose, violated his privacy, attracted his attention, and poured out to him a poignant appeal of need and faith. Her heart was in her prayer.

At first, Jesus appeared to pay no attention to her agony and ignored her cry for relief. He gave her neither eye, nor ear, nor word. Silence, deep and chilling, greeted her impassioned cry. But she was not turned aside or disheartened. She held on. Offended at her unseemly clamor, the disciples asked the Lord to send her away, but the Lord wouldn't even speak so many words to her. The disciples were silenced by the Lord's declaration that the woman was entirely outside the scope of his mission and his ministry.

But neither the failure of the disciples to gain her a hearing nor the devastating knowledge that she was barred from the benefits of his mission daunted her. They served only to lend intensity and increased boldness to her approach to Christ. She came closer, fell at his feet, worshipped him, and made her daughter's case her own when she cried with pointed brevity, Lord, help me!

This last cry won her case; her daughter was healed in that very hour. Hopeful, urgent, and unwearied, she stayed near the Master, insisting and praying until the answer was given. What a study in urgency, earnestness, and persistence that promoted and propelled under conditions that would have disheartened any but a heroic and constant soul.

The Proportion of Faith

In these parables of persistent praying, our Lord set forth the serious difficulties that stand in the way of prayer for our information and encouragement. At the same time, he taught that persistence conquers all problematic circumstances and attains a victory over a whole host of hindrances. He taught that an answer to prayer is conditional upon the amount of faith that goes to the petition. To test this, he delayed the answer. The one who prays superficially subsides into silence when the answer is delayed. But the person of prayer hangs on and on. The Lord recognizes and honors his or her faith and gives a rich and abundant answer to the faith-evidencing, persistent prayer.
Chapter 7

Prayer and Perseverance

Two thirds of the praying we do is for that which would give us the greatest possible pleasure to receive. It is a sort of spiritual self-indulgence in which we engage and, as a consequence, is the exact opposite of self-discipline. God knows all this and keeps his children asking. In process of time – his time – our petitions take on another aspect, and we take another spiritual approach. God keeps us praying, until in his wisdom, he deigns to answer. And no matter how long it may be before he speaks, it is, even then, far earlier than we have a right to expect or hope to deserve. – Anonymous

The tenor of Christ's teaching is to declare that men are to pray fervently – to pray with an earnestness that cannot be denied. Heaven has listening ears only for the wholehearted and the deeply earnest. Energy, courage, and persistent perseverance must back the prayers that heaven respects and God hears. All these qualities of soul, so essential to effectual praying, are brought out in the parable of the man who went to his friend for bread at midnight. This man went on his errand with confidence. Friendship promised him success. His plea was pressing, and he believed he would not go back empty-handed. The flat refusal displeased and surprised him. Here, even friendship failed!

But there was still something to be tried – stern resolution, set, fixed determination. He would stay and press his demand until his friend opened the door and granted the request. He proceeded to do this, and by strength of persistence, he secured what an ordinary appeal had failed to obtain.

The success of this man, achieved in the face of a flat denial, was used by the Savior to illustrate the necessity for insistence in appealing to the throne of heavenly grace. When the answer is not immediately given, the praying Christian must gather courage at each delay and advance in urgency until the answer that is assured comes – if he only has the faith to press his petition with vigorous confidence.

Pressing on in Faith

Laxity, faintheartedness, impatience, and timidity will be fatal to our prayers. Awaiting the onset of our pleading and insistence is the Father's heart, the Father's hand, the Father's infinite power, and the Father's infinite willingness to hear and give to his children.

Persistent praying is the earnest, inward movement of the heart toward God. It is the throwing of the entire force of the spiritual man into the exercise of prayer. Isaiah lamented that no one stirred himself to take hold of God. Much praying was done in Isaiah's time, but it was too easy, indifferent, and complacent. There were no mighty movements of souls toward God. There was no array of sanctified energies focused on reaching and grappling with God to draw the treasures of God's grace from him. Forceless prayers have no power to overcome difficulties and no power to win marked results or gain complete victories. We must win God before we can win our plea.

Isaiah looked forward with hopeful eyes to the day when belief would flourish and when there would be times of real praying. When those times came, the watchmen would not lessen their vigilance, but they would cry day and night, and those who were the Lord's officials would give him no rest. Their urgent, persistent efforts would keep all spiritual interests engaged and make increasing drafts on God's exhaustless treasures.

Persistent praying never faints or grows weary; it is never discouraged; it never yields to cowardice but is buoyed up and sustained by a hope that knows no despair and a faith that will not let go. Persistent praying has patience to wait and strength to continue. It never prepares itself to quit praying, and it declines to rise from its knees until an answer is received.

The familiar yet heartening words of that great missionary Adoniram Judson is the testimony of a man who was unrelenting in prayer. He said, "I was never deeply interested in any object and never prayed sincerely and earnestly for it, but that it came at some time, no matter how distant the day. Somehow, in some shape, probably the last I would have devised, it came."

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. (Matthew 7:7)

Ask, Seek, Knock

These are the ringing challenges of our Lord related to prayer and his indication that true praying must stay and advance in effort and urgency, until the prayer is answered and the blessing sought is received.

In the order in which our Lord places the three words ask, seek, knock, he urges the necessity of persistence in prayer. Asking, seeking, and knocking are ascending rungs in the ladder of successful prayer. No principle is more definitely enforced by Christ than that prevailing prayer must have the quality that waits and perseveres, the courage that never surrenders, the patience that never tires, and the resolution that never wavers.

In this respect, a most significant and instructive lesson is outlined in the parable preceding that of the friend at midnight. Resolute courage, ceaseless tenacity, and security of purpose are chief among the qualities included in Christ's estimate of the highest and most successful form of praying.

Supplication is made up of intensity, perseverance, patience, and persistence. The seeming delay in answering prayer is the ground and the demand of supplication. In the book of Matthew, in the first recorded instance of a miracle performed on one who was blind, we have an illustration of the way our Lord appeared to not listen to those who sought him. But the two blind men continued their crying and followed him with their continual petition, saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us (Matthew 9:27). But he passed into the house and did not answer them. Yet the needy ones followed him and finally gained their eyesight and their plea.

The case of blind Bartimaeus is a notable one in many ways. It is especially remarkable for the show of persistence that this blind man exhibited in appealing to our Lord. He seemed to first cry as Jesus entered into Jericho, and then he continued until Jesus came out of the place. This makes a stronger illustration for the necessity of persistent prayer and the success that comes to those who stake their all on Christ – those who give him no peace until he grants them their heart's desire.

Mark puts the whole incident graphically before us. At first Jesus seemed to not hear. The crowd rebuked the noisy clamor of Bartimaeus. Despite the seeming unconcern of our Lord, however, and despite the rebuke of an impatient and quick-tempered crowd, the blind beggar still cried and increased the loudness of his cry, until Jesus was impressed and moved. Finally, the crowd, as well as Jesus, listened to the beggar's plea and declared in favor of his cause. He gained his case. His persistence won even in the face of apparent neglect on the part of Jesus and despite opposition and rebuke from the surrounding populace. His persistence won where half-hearted indifference would surely have failed.

Claiming the Blessing

Faith has its domain in connection with prayer and its inseparable association with persistence. But the latter quality drives the prayer to the believing point. A persistent spirit brings a person to the place where faith takes hold, and it claims and appropriates the blessing.

The imperative necessity of persistent prayer is plainly set forth in the Word of God, and it needs to be stated and restated today. We are apt to overlook this vital truth. Love of ease, spiritual laziness, and religious slothfulness all operate against this type of petitioning. Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency that will not be denied and a courage that never fails.

We also have need to give thought to that mysterious fact of prayer – the certainty that there will be delays, denials, and seeming failures in connection with its exercise. We are to prepare for these, to accept them, and to not cease in our urgent praying. Like a brave soldier who, as the conflict grows sterner, exhibits a superior courage than in the earlier stages of the battle when he faced delay and denial. As a praying Christian, he has learned to increase his earnest asking and does not cease until prayer prevails.

Moses furnishes an illustrious example of persistence in prayer. Instead of allowing his nearness to God and his intimacy with him to dispense with the necessity for persistence, he regards them as preparation for the exercise of it. When Israel set up the golden calf, the wrath of God grew fierce against them, and Jehovah, determined to execute justice, said to Moses when revealing what he planned to do, Let Me alone (Exodus 32:10).

But Moses would not leave him alone. He threw himself down before the Lord in an agony of intercession on behalf of the sinning Israelites, and for forty days and nights he fasted and prayed. What a season of persistent prayer that was!

Jehovah was also angry with Aaron, who had acted as leader in this idolatrous business of the golden calf. But Moses prayed for Aaron as well as for the Israelites; if he had not, both Israel and Aaron would have perished under the consuming fire of God's wrath.

That long season of pleading before God left its mighty impression on Moses. He had been in close relation with God before that, but never did his character achieve the greatness that marked it in the days and years following this long season of persistent intercession.

There can be no doubt that persistent prayer moves God and heightens human character! If we were more with God in this great ordinance of intercession, our face would shine more brightly, and life and service would be more richly endowed with the qualities that earn the good will of humanity and bring glory to the name of God.
Chapter 8

Prayer and Character

General Charles James Gordon, the hero of Khartoum, was a truly Christian soldier. Shut up in the Sudanese town, he gallantly held out for one year but finally was overcome and slain. On his memorial in Westminster Abbey are these words, "He gave his money to the poor, his sympathy to the sorrowing, his life to his country, and his soul to God." – Homer W. Hodge

Prayer governs conduct, and conduct makes character. Conduct is what we do; character is what we are. Conduct is the outward life. Character is the life unseen, hidden within, yet evidenced by what is seen. Conduct is external – seen from without; character is internal – operating within. In the economy of grace, conduct is the offspring of character. Character is the state of the heart, and conduct is its outward expression. Character is the root of the tree, conduct is the fruit it bears.

Prayer is related to all the gifts of grace, and to character and conduct, it is that of a helper. Prayer helps to establish character and build conduct, and both depend on prayer for their successful continuance. There may be a certain degree of moral character and conduct independent of prayer, but there cannot be anything like distinctive spiritual character and Christian conduct without it. Prayer helps where all other aids fail. The more we pray, the better we are, and the purer and better our lives.

Christ expects devout character and Christian conduct. This is Jesus:

Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a people of his own, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:14)

In Christ's teaching, he not only insists on works of charity and deeds of mercy but also on inward spiritual character. This much is demanded, and nothing short of it will suffice.

Holiness and Righteousness

In the study of Paul's epistles, one thing stands out clearly and unmistakably – the insistence on holiness of heart and righteousness of life. Paul does not seek so much to promote what is called personal work, nor is the leading theme of his letters deeds of charity. The condition of the human heart and the blamelessness of the personal life form the burden of the writings of the apostle Paul.

Elsewhere in the Scriptures, character and conduct are made preeminent. The Christian religion deals with people who are devoid of spiritual character and unholy in life; it aims to change them in such a way that they become holy in heart and righteous in life. It aims to convert the heart; it deals with inward badness and works to change it into inward goodness. Only here can prayer enter and demonstrate its wonderful effectiveness and fruit.

Prayer drives toward this specific end. In fact, without prayer no such supernatural change in moral character can ever be brought about. For the change from badness to goodness is not accomplished by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to God's mercy, which saves us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). And this marvelous change happens through earnest, persistent, faithful prayer. Any alleged form of Christianity that does not bring about this change in the hearts of men and women is a delusion and a snare.

The church is presumed to be righteous, and it should be engaged in turning people to righteousness. The church is God's factory on earth, and a primary duty is to create and foster righteousness of character. This is its very first business.

Primarily, the church's work is not to acquire members, amass numbers, collect money, or engage in deeds of charity and works of mercy but convert souls and direct all converts to deny the flesh and walk according to the spirit (Romans 8).

Faithful Living

A product reflects and partakes of the character of the factory that makes it. A righteous church with a righteous purpose makes righteous men. Prayer produces cleanliness of heart and purity of life. It can produce nothing else. Unrighteous conduct is born of prayerlessness; the two go hand in hand. Prayer and sinning cannot keep company with each other. One or the other must stop. Get men and women to pray, and they will quit sinning, because prayer creates a distaste for sinning and works upon the heart, so that doing evil becomes distasteful, and the entire nature is lifted to a reverent meditation on high and holy things.

Prayer is based on character. What we are with God gauges our influence with him. The inner character, not the outward appearance, allowed men such as Abraham, Job, David, Moses, and others to have great influence with God in the days of old. And today it is not so much our words but what we really are that weighs with God.

Conduct affects character, of course, and counts for much in our praying. At the same time, character affects conduct to a greater extent and has a superior influence over prayer. Our inner life not only gives color to our praying but gives form as well. Bad living means bad praying and in the end no praying at all. We pray feebly because we live feebly. The stream of prayer cannot rise higher than the fountain of living. The force of the inner chamber is made up of the energy that flows from the confluent streams of living, and the weakness of living grows out of the shallowness and shoddiness of character.

Feebleness of living reflects its debility and lethargy in the praying hours. We simply cannot talk to God strongly, intimately, and confidently unless we are living for him faithfully and truly. The prayer closet cannot become sanctified to God when the life is alien to his precepts and purpose. We must learn this lesson well – that righteous character and Christ-like conduct give us a peculiar and preferential standing in prayer before God. His holy Word gives special emphasis to the role conduct has in imparting value to our praying when it declares:

Then shalt thou call, and thou shalt hear the LORD; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity. (Isaiah 58:9)

The wickedness of Israel and their heinous practices were definitely cited by Isaiah as the reason for God turning his ear away from their prayers:

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; likewise, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood. (Isaiah 1:15)

The same sad truth was declared by the Lord through the mouth of Jeremiah:

Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me in their trouble. (Jeremiah 11:14)

Here it is plainly stated that unholy conduct is a hindrance to successful praying, just as it is clearly suggested that in order to have full access to God in prayer, there must be a total abandonment of conscious and premeditated sin.

Pure Motives

We are instructed to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and strife (1 Timothy 2:8), and we must pass the time of our dwelling here in a rigorous abstaining from evil if we are to retain our privilege of calling upon the Father. We cannot divorce praying from conduct by any process.

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. (1 John 3:22)

James declares outright that men ask and don't receive because they ask inappropriately and seek only the gratification of selfish desires.

Our Lord's command, watch ye therefore and pray always (Luke 21:36), is to cover and guard our conduct, so we may come to our inner chamber with all its force secured by a vigilant guard kept over our lives. Scripture says:

And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with excess and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. (Luke 21:34)

Quite often Christian experience shipwrecks on the rock of conduct. Beautiful theories are marred by ugly lives. Because it is the most impressive, the most difficult thing about piety is to be able to live it. Our life is what counts, and our praying suffers from bad living, as do other phases of our religious experience.

In primitive times, preachers were charged to preach by their lives or not to preach at all. In the same way today, Christians everywhere ought to be charged to pray by their lives or not to pray at all. The most effective preaching is not that which is heard from the pulpit but that which is proclaimed quietly, humbly, and consistently; it exhibits its qualities in the home and in the community.

Example preaches a far more effective sermon than principle. Even in the pulpit, the best preaching is that which is fortified by godly living in the preacher himself. The most effective work done by the pew is preceded by and accompanied with holiness of life, separation from the world, and turning from sin. Some of the strongest appeals are made with mute lips by godly fathers and saintly mothers around the fireside, by those who fear God, love his cause, and daily exhibit to their children and others around them the beauties and qualities of Christian life and conduct.

The best-prepared, most eloquent sermon can be marred and rendered ineffective by questionable practices in the preacher. The most active church worker can have the labor of his hands invalidated by worldliness of spirit and inconsistency of life. Men and women preach by their lives, not by their words, and sermons are delivered not so much in and from a pulpit as in tempers, actions, and the thousand-and-one incidents that crowd the pathway of daily life.

Submission to Divine Will

Of course, the prayer of repentance is acceptable to God. He delights in hearing the cries of penitent sinners. But repentance involves not only sorrow for sin but the turning away from wrongdoing and learning to do right. A repentance that does not produce a change in character and conduct is a mere sham, which should deceive nobody. Old things must pass away; all things must become new.

Praying that does not result in right thinking and right living is a farce. We have missed the whole function of prayer if it fails to purge character and rectify conduct. We have failed entirely to comprehend the virtue of prayer if it doesn't bring about the revolutionizing of the life. In the very nature of things, we must quit praying or quit our bad conduct. Cold, formal praying may exist side by side with bad conduct, but in the estimation of God, such praying is no praying at all. Our praying advances in power only as far as it rectifies the life. Growing in purity and devotion to God will be a more prayerful life.

The character of the inner life is a condition of effective praying. As is the life, so will the praying be. An inconsistent life obstructs praying and neutralizes what little praying we may do. According to James 5:16, the prayer of the righteous man is what always avails much. Indeed, one may go further and assert that only the prayer of the righteous will avail anything at all – at any time. To have an eye to God's glory, to be possessed by an earnest desire to please him in all our ways, to possess hands busy in his service, and to have feet swift to run in the way of his commandments – these give weight and influence and power to prayer and secure an audience with God. The forces of evil in our lives often break the force of our praying and frequently are like doors of brass in the face of prayer.

Praying must come from a cleansed heart; it must be presented and urged with the lifting up of holy hands, as Scripture states in 1 Timothy 2:8. It must be fortified by a life always aiming to obey God, to attain conformity to the divine law, and to come into submission to the divine will.

The Fruit of Praying

Let's not forget that while life is a condition of prayer, prayer is also the condition of righteous living. Prayer promotes righteous living and is the one great aid to uprightness of heart and life. The fruit of real praying is right living. Praying sets the one who prays to the great responsibility to work out your own saving health with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12); it spurs us to watch our temper and conversation and conduct and causes us to walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time (Ephesians 5:15-16). It enables us to walk worthy of the vocation with which ye are called, with all humility and meekness (Ephesians 4:1-2). It gives us a high incentive to pursue our pilgrimage consistently by "shunning every evil way, and walking in the good."

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 From a Charles Wesley hymn.
Chapter 9

Prayer and Obedience

An obedience discovered itself in Fletcher of Madeley, which I wish I could describe or imitate. It produced in him a ready mind to embrace every cross with alacrity and pleasure. He had a singular love for the lambs of the flock and applied himself with the greatest diligence to their instruction, for which he had a peculiar gift. . . . All his intercourse with me was so mingled with prayer and praise that every employment and every meal was, as it were, perfumed therewith. – John Wesley

Under the Mosaic law (the Ten Commandments), obedience was looked upon as being better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams (1 Samuel 15:22). Moses represented the words of Almighty God, who declared himself in a manner that left no doubt as to the importance he placed on the exercise of obedience. Referring to the waywardness of his people, God said through Moses:

I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee; they have well said all that they have spoken. O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always that it might be well with them and with their children for ever! (Deuteronomy 5:28-29)

Prayer Soldiers

Unquestionably, obedience is a high virtue, a soldier quality. To obey belongs preeminently to the soldier. It is his first and last lesson, and he must learn how to practice it all the time without question and without complaining. Obedience is faith in action and is the outflow and the very test of love.

He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. (John 14:21)

Furthermore, obedience is the sustainer of love and the life of love. Jesus said:

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. (John 15:10)

What a marvelous statement of the relationship created and maintained by obedience! The Son of God is held in the bosom of the Father's love by virtue of Jesus' obedience! And the factor that enables the Son of God to forever abide in his Father's love is revealed in his own statement:

And he that sent me is with me: the Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please him. (John 8:29)

The gift of the Holy Spirit in full measure and in richer experience depends upon loving obedience. The Master's word is:

If ye love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever. (John 14:15-16)

Obedience to God is a condition of spiritual prudence, inward satisfaction, and stability of heart. If ye are willing and hearken, ye shall eat the good of the land (Isaiah 1:19). Obedience opens the gates of the Holy City and gives access to the tree of life.

Blessed are those who do his commandments that their power and authority might be in the tree of life and they may enter in through the gates into the city. (Revelation 22:14)

What is obedience? It is doing God's will; it is keeping his commandments. How many of the commandments constitute obedience? To keep half of them but to break the other half – is that real obedience? To keep all the commandments but one – is that obedience? On this point, James the apostle is most explicit. For whosoever shall have kept the whole law, he declares, and then offends in one point is made guilty of all (James 2:10).

All or Nothing

The spirit that prompts a man to break one commandment is the spirit that may move him to break them all. God's commandments are a unit, and to break one strikes at the principle that underlies and runs through the whole. The person who does not hesitate to break a single commandment would probably break them all under the same stress and surrounded by the same circumstances.

God demands universal obedience. Nothing short of implicit obedience will satisfy God, and the keeping of all his commandments is the demonstration of obedience that God requires. But can we keep all of God's commandments? Can a person receive moral ability that would enable him or her to obey every one of them? Certainly he or she can. By every token, through prayer people can obtain the ability to do this very thing.

Does God give commandments that people cannot obey? Is he so arbitrary, so severe, and so unloving as to issue commandments that cannot be obeyed? The answer is that in all the records of Holy Scripture, not a single instance is recorded of God having commanded any person to do a thing that was beyond his power. Is God so unjust and so inconsiderate as to require of people something they are unable to render? Surely not. To infer it is to slander the character of God.

Obedience Is Not Impossible

Let's ponder this thought a moment: do earthly parents require duties of their children that they cannot perform? Where is the father who would even think of being so unjust and so tyrannical? Is God less kind and just than faulty, earthly parents? Are they better and more just than a perfect God? How utterly foolish and illogical such a thought is!

In principle, obedience to God is the same quality as obedience to earthly parents. It implies in a general way the giving up of one's own way and following that of another – the surrendering of the will to the will of another. Obedience is the submission of oneself to the authority and requirements of a parent. Commands, either from our heavenly Father or from our earthly father, are love-directed, and all such commands are in the best interest of those who are commanded.

God's commands are issued in neither severity nor tyranny. They are always issued in love and in our interests, so it behooves us to heed and obey them. In other words, appraised at its lowest value, God has issued his commands to us in order to promote our good, and therefore, it pays to be obedient. Obedience brings its own reward. God has ordained it this way, and since he has, even human reason can realize that he would never demand anything is out of our power to render.

Obedience Equals Love

Obedience is love fulfilling every command, love expressing itself. Obedience, therefore, is not a hard demand made on us any more than the service a husband renders to his wife is or the service a wife renders to her husband. Love delights to obey and please the one it loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be requirements but no annoyance. There are no impossible tasks for love.

With such simplicity and in a matter-of-fact way, the apostle John says, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight (1 John 3:22).

This is obedience running ahead of every command. It is love obeying by anticipation. Those who declare that people are bound to commit iniquity, because of environment, heredity, or tendency, greatly err and even sin. God's commands are not grievous. Their ways are ways of pleasantness and their paths peace. The task that falls to obedience is not a hard one. He says, For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:30).

Far be it from our heavenly Father to demand impossibilities of his children. It is possible to please him in all things, for he is not hard to please. He is neither a hard master nor a strict lord like the one mentioned in Matthew 25:24 whom the servant described as reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not scattered.

Thank God, it is possible for every child of God to please his heavenly Father! It is really much easier to please him than to please men. In addition, we may know when we please him. This is the witness of the Spirit – the inward divine assurance given to all the children of God that they are doing their Father's will, and that their ways are pleasing in his sight.

God's commandments are righteous and founded in justice and wisdom. So the law is truly holy, and the commandment holy and just and good (Romans 7:12) and just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints (Revelation 15:3). God's commandments can be obeyed by all who seek supplies of grace that enable them to obey. These commandments must be obeyed. God's government is at stake. God's children are under obligation to obey him, for disobedience cannot be permitted.

Christ Made a Way for Obedience

The spirit of rebellion is the very essence of sin. Refusal of God's authority is what God cannot tolerate. He never has done so, and a declaration of his attitude was part of the reason the Son of the Highest was made manifest among men:

For that which was impossible to the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4)

If anyone would complain that after the fall humanity is too weak and helpless to obey these high commands of God, the appropriate reply is that through the atonement of Christ, man is enabled to obey. The atonement is God's enabling act. That which God works in us in regeneration and through the assistance of the Holy Spirit gives enabling grace that is sufficient for all he requires of us under the atonement.

This grace is furnished without measure in answer to prayer, so that even though God commands, at the same time he stands pledged to give us all necessary strength of will and grace of soul to meet his demands. This being true, people are without excuse for their disobedience and extremely culpable for refusing or failing to secure the necessary grace by which they may serve the Lord with reverence and with godly fear.

There is one important consideration that those who declare it is impossible to keep God's commandments strangely overlook; that is the vital truth, which declares that through prayer and faith, man's nature is changed, and he is made a partaker of the divine nature. It declares that all reluctance to obey God is taken out of us, and that our natural inability to keep God's commandments, which grows out of our fallen and helpless state, is gloriously removed.

By this radical change that is formed in our moral nature, we receive power to obey God in every way and to yield full and willing allegiance. Then we can say, I delight to do thy will, O my God (Psalm 40:8). Not only is the rebellion in our nature removed, but we blessedly receive a heart that gladly obeys God's Word.

If we claim that the unregenerate man, with all the disabilities of the fall upon him, cannot obey God, there will be no denial. But to declare that this person cannot obey God after he or she is renewed by the Holy Spirit, received a new nature, and become a child of the King is to assume a ridiculous attitude and display a lamentable ignorance of the work and implications of the atonement.

Implicit and perfect obedience is the state to which the person of prayer is called. Lifting up holy hands, without wrath and strife is the condition of obedient praying. Here inward faithfulness and love, together with outward cleanness, are put down as companions of acceptable praying.

Keep His Commandants

John gives the reason for answered prayer in the passage previously quoted: whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight (1 John 3:22).

Because the keeping of God's commandments is set forth here as the reason he answers prayer, it is to be reasonably assumed that we can keep God's commandments, and we can do those things that are pleasing to him. Do you think God would make the keeping of his commandments a condition of effective prayer if he knew we could not keep his statutes? Surely, surely not!

Obedience can ask with boldness at the throne of grace, and those who exercise it are the only ones who can ask in that way. The disobedient people are timid in their approach and hesitant in their supplication. They are stopped by reason of their wrongdoing. The requesting but obedient child comes into the presence of his father with confidence and boldness. His very consciousness of obedience gives him courage and frees him from the dread born of disobedience.

To do God's will without doubt is the joy and the privilege of the successful praying person. The one who has clean hands and a pure heart can pray with confidence. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in the heavens. (Matthew 7:21)

To this great deliverance another may be added, which we have mentioned before:

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. (John 15:10)

"The Christian's trade is prayer," said Martin Luther. But the Christian has another trade to learn before he proceeds to learn the secrets of the trade of prayer. He must learn the trade of perfect obedience to the Father's will. Obedience follows love, and prayer follows obedience. The business of real observance of God's commandments inseparably accompanies the business of real praying.

One who has been disobedient may pray. He may pray for pardoning mercy and the peace of his soul. He may come to God's footstool with tears, with confession, and with penitent heart, and God will hear him and answer his prayer. However, this kind of praying does not belong to the child of God but to the penitent sinner who has no other way by which to approach God. This type of prayer is the prayer of the unjustified soul, not of the one who has already been saved and reconciled to God.

An obedient life helps prayer. It speeds prayer to the throne. God cannot help hearing the prayer of an obedient child. He always has heard his obedient children when they have prayed. Unquestioning obedience matters in the sight of God at the throne of heavenly grace. It acts like the confluent tides of many rivers and gives volume and fullness of flow as well as power to the prayer chamber.

Perfect Obedience

An obedient life is not simply a reformed life. It is not the old life primed and painted anew, a church-going life, or a good veneer of activities. Neither is it an external conformation to the dictates of public morality. Far more than all this is combined in a truly obedient, Christian, God-fearing life.

A life of full obedience and settled on the most intimate terms with God, where the will is in full conformity to God's will and the outward life shows the fruit of righteousness, offers no obstruction to the inner chamber. Rather, like Aaron and Hur, it lifts up and sustains the hands of prayer.

If you have an earnest desire to pray well, you must learn how to obey well. If you have a desire to learn to pray, then you must have an earnest desire to learn how to do God's will. If you desire to pray to God, you must first have a consuming desire to obey him. If you would have free access to God in prayer, then every obstacle in the nature of sin or disobedience must be removed. God delights in the prayers of obedient children. Requests coming from the lips of those who delight to do his will reach his ears with great speed and persuade him to answer them with promptness and abundance.

In themselves, tears are not admirable, but they have their uses in prayer. Tears should baptize our place of supplication. The one who has never wept about his or her sins has never really prayed over their sins. Sometimes tears are a penitent person's only plea. But tears are for the past – for the sin and the wrongdoing. There is another step and stage waiting to be taken. It is that of unquestioning obedience, and until it is taken, prayer for blessing and continued sustenance will be of no use.

Everywhere, Holy Scripture represents God as disapproving disobedience and condemning sin, and this is as true in the lives of his elect as it is in the lives of sinners. Nowhere does he tolerate sin or excuse disobedience. God always puts the emphasis upon obedience to his commands. Obedience to them brings blessing; disobedience meets with disaster. This is true in the Word of God from its beginning to its close. It is because of this that the men of prayer in Holy Scripture had such influence with God. Obedient people have always been the closest to God. The ones who have prayed well and have received great things from God are the ones who have brought great things to pass.

Obedience to God counts tremendously in the realm of prayer. This fact cannot be emphasized too much or too often. To plead for a religious faith that tolerates sinning is to cut the ground from under the feet of effective praying. To excuse sinning by the plea that obedience to God is not possible to unregenerate people is to discount the character of the new birth and to place people where effective praying is not possible. At one time, Jesus broke out with a very pertinent and personal question, striking right to the core of disobedience when he said, And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? (Luke 6:46).

Holy Living Promotes Holy Praying

The one who would pray must obey. Anyone who would get anything out of his or her prayers must be in perfect harmony with God. Prayer puts a spirit of obedience into those who sincerely pray; the spirit of disobedience is not of God and does not belong to God's praying hosts.

An obedient life is a great help to prayer. In fact, an obedient life is a necessity to prayer that accomplishes things. The absence of an obedient life makes prayer an empty performance, a mere misnomer. A penitent sinner seeks pardon and salvation and has an answer to his prayers, even with a past life stained and corrupted with sin. But God's royal intercessors come before him with royal lives. Holy living promotes holy praying. God's intercessors lift up holy hands, the symbols of righteous, obedient lives.
Chapter 10

Prayer and Surrender

Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within my four score years. But one equal to John Fletcher – one so inwardly and outwardly obedient and devoted to God – I have not known. – John Wesley

It is worthy to note that the praying to which such supreme position is given, and to which we can attribute great results, is not simply the saying of prayers but holy praying – the prayers of the saints, the prayers of the holy people of God. Behind such praying, giving it energy and flame, are the men and women who are wholly devoted to God, entirely separated from sin, and fully set apart unto God. These are the ones who always give energy, force, and strength to praying.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was preeminent in praying because he was preeminent in saintliness. An entire dedication to God, a full surrender that carries with it the whole being in a flame of holy consecration, gives wings to faith and energy to prayer. It opens the door to the throne of grace and brings strong influence to bear on Almighty God.

A Whole Life Surrendered

The lifting up of holy hands is essential to Christ-like praying. It is not, however, a holiness that only dedicates a closet to God or merely sets aside an hour for him, but it is a consecration that takes hold of the entire person and dedicates the whole life to God.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners (Hebrews 7:26), had full liberty of approach and ready access to God in prayer. He had this free and full access because of his unquestioning obedience to his Father. Throughout his earthly life, his supreme care and desire was to do the will of his Father. This fact and the consciousness of having ordered his life in this way gave him confidence and assurance, which enabled him to draw near to the throne of grace with unbounded confidence, born of obedience, and promising acceptance, audience, and answer.

Loving obedience puts us where we can ask anything in his name with the assurance that he will do it. Loving obedience brings us into the prayer realm and makes us beneficiaries of the wealth of Christ and the riches of his grace through the coming of the Holy Spirit who will abide with us and dwell in us. Cheerful obedience to God qualifies us to pray effectively.

This obedience, which not only qualifies but precedes prayer, must be loving and constant, always doing the Father's will, and cheerfully following the path of God's commands.

In the instance of King Hezekiah, it was a potent plea that changed God's decree that the king should die. The stricken ruler called upon God to remember that he had walked before him in truth and with a perfect heart. With God, this counted. The Lord listened to the petition, and as a result, death found its approach to Hezekiah blocked for fifteen years.

Jesus learned obedience in the school of suffering, and at the same time, he learned prayer in the school of obedience. Just as the prayer of a righteous person avails much, righteousness is obedience to God. A righteous person is an obedient person, one who can pray effectively and accomplish great things when he takes himself to his knees.

Prayer Is Obedience

Remember, true praying is not mere sentiment, poetry, or eloquent utterance. Nor does it consist of saying in flowing rhythms, "Lord, Lord." Prayer is not a mere form of words; it is not just calling upon a name. Prayer is obedience. It is founded on the firm rock of obedience to God. Only those who obey have the right to pray. Behind the praying must be the doing, and the constant doing of God's will in daily life is what gives prayer its potency, as our Lord plainly taught:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in the heavens.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:21-23)

No name, however precious and powerful, can protect and give efficiency to prayer that is unaccompanied by the doing of God's will. Neither can the doing, without the praying, protect from divine disapproval. If the will of God does not master the life, the praying will be nothing but sickly sentiment. If prayer does not inspire, sanctify, and direct our work, then self-will enters to ruin both the work and worker.

How great and diverse are the misconceptions of the true elements and functions of prayer! Many who earnestly desire to obtain an answer to their prayers go unrewarded and unblessed. They fix their minds on some promise of God and then endeavor by force of dogged perseverance to summon enough faith to grasp and claim it.

This fixing of the mind on some great promise may benefit in strengthening faith, but the persistent prayer that expects and waits until faith increases beyond measure must be added to this holding on to the promise. And who is able and competent to do such praying except the person who readily, cheerfully, and continually obeys God?

Faith in its highest form is the attitude as well as the act of a soul surrendered to God and in whom his Word and his Spirit dwells. It is true that faith must exist in some form in order to prompt praying, but in its strongest form and in its largest results, faith is the fruit of prayer. The faith that increases the ability and the efficiency of prayer is true, but it is also true that prayer increases the ability and efficiency of faith. Prayer and faith work and act and react with each other.

Obedience to God, implicit recognition of the validity and the dominion of the divine commands, helps faith as no other attribute possibly can. When obedience happens, faith ceases to be an almost superhuman task. It requires no straining to exercise it. Obedience to God makes it easy to believe and trust God.

Where the spirit of obedience fully permeates the soul, where the will is perfectly surrendered to God, and where there is a fixed, unalterable purpose to obey God, faith almost believes itself. Faith then becomes almost involuntary. After obedience, faith is naturally the next step, and it is easily and readily taken. The difficulty in prayer is not with faith but with obedience, which is faith's foundation.

We must look fully to our obedience, to the secret springs of action and to the loyalty of our heart to God if we want to pray well and desire to get the most from our praying. Obedience is the groundwork of effective praying; this is what brings us near to God.

The lack of obedience in our lives hinders our praying. Quite often, one's life is in rebellion, and this places us where praying is almost impossible, unless it is prayer for pardoning mercy. Disobedient living produces mighty poor praying. Disobedience shuts the door of the inner chamber and bars the way to the Holy of Holies. No one can pray – really pray – who does not obey.

A Surrender of the Will

As a primary condition of all successful praying, the will must be surrendered to God. Everything around us gets its coloring from our inmost character. The will makes character and controls conduct; therefore, it plays an important part in successful praying. There can be no praying in its richest implication and truest sense when the will is not fully surrendered to God. This unswerving loyalty to God is an utterly indispensable condition of the best, the truest, the most powerful praying. We simply must "trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust, and obey."

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 Hymn lyrics for Trust and Obey by John Henry Sammis (1846-1919). 
Chapter 11

Prayer and Vigilance

David Brainerd was pursued by unearthly adversaries, who were resolved to rob him of his guerdon. He knew he must never quit his armor, but lie down to rest with his corselet laced. . . . The stains which marred the perfection of his lustrous dress, the spots of rust on the gleaming shield . . . are almost imperceptible to our duller vision; but they [were, to him, the source of much] sorrow...and ardency of yearning. – The Life of David Brainerd

The description of the Christian soldier given by Paul in the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians is compact and comprehensive. He is depicted as being always in a conflict that has many fluctuating seasons – seasons of prosperity and adversity, light and darkness, victory and defeat. He is to pray in all seasons and with all prayer – this added to the armor in which he is to go forth to battle. At all times, he is to have the full array of prayer.

If he fights to win, the Christian soldier must pray much. Only by this means is he enabled to defeat his long-standing enemies – the devil and the evil one's abundant agents. Praying always, with all prayer is the divine direction given to him (Ephesians 6:18). This covers all seasons and embraces all manner of praying.

Christian soldiers, fighting the good fight of faith, have access to a place of retreat where they continually retire for prayer. Praying always with all prayer is a clear statement of the imperative need for much praying and of many kinds of praying by the one who, fighting the good fight of faith, would win out in the end over all his or her foes.

Scripture puts it this way:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching in this with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth with confidence, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. (Ephesians 6:18-20)

Prayer is Warfare

It cannot be stated too frequently that the life of a Christian is a warfare, an intense conflict, and a lifelong contest. In addition, it is a battle waged against invisible foes who are always alert and always seeking to entrap, deceive, and ruin the souls of people. The life to which Holy Scripture calls people is no picnic or free vacation. It is no pastime and no pleasure jaunt. It involves effort, wrestling, and struggling; it demands putting forth the full energy of the spirit in order to frustrate the enemy and to come out more than conqueror in the end. It is no primrose path and no rose-scented flirtation.

From start to finish, the Christian life is war. From the hour in which he first draws sword to that in which he removes his harness, the Christian warrior is compelled to work hard as a good soldier (1 Timothy 2:3).

What a misconception many people have of the Christian life! How little the average church member appears to know of the character of the conflict and its demands upon him or her! How ignorant they seem to be of the enemies they must encounter if they engage in serving God faithfully and so succeed in getting to heaven and receive the crown of life! They seem to scarcely realize that the world, the flesh, and the devil will oppose their onward march and will utterly defeat them, unless they give themselves to constant vigilance and unceasing prayer.

The Christian soldier wrestles not against flesh and blood, but against . . . spiritual wickedness in the heavens (Ephesians 6:12). Or, as notes on Scripture read, "wicked spirits in high places." What a fearful array of forces are set against those who would make their way through the wilderness of this world to the portals of the Celestial City!

Armor for Battle

Paul understood the character of the Christian life well and was thoroughly informed of the malevolence and number of the foes that the disciple of the Lord must encounter, so he carefully and plainly urged us to put on the whole armor of God and pray always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18). The present generation would be wise, filled with a great wisdom, if all professors of our faith could be persuaded to realize this all-important and vital truth, which is so indispensable to a successful Christian life.

It is at this point in much of what present-day Christians profess that one may find its greatest defect. There is little or nothing of the soldier element in it. The discipline, self-denial, spirit of hardship, and determination that are so prominent in, and belonging to, the military life are largely wanting. Yet the Christian life is warfare all the way.

All of Paul's directions to the Christian soldier, who is fixed on thwarting the devil and saving his or her soul alive, are comprehensive, pointed, and striking. First, one must possess a clear idea of the character of the life he or she has entered. Then, one must know something of his or her foes, the adversaries of the immortal soul – their strength, their skill, and their malignity. Therefore, knowing something of the character of the enemy and realizing the need to prepare to overcome them, this person is prepared to hear the apostle's decisive conclusion:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand firm against the wiles of the devil... Therefore, take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and stand fast, all the work having been finished. (Ephesians 6:10-11, 13)

All these directions end in a climax, and that climax is prayer. How can the brave warrior for Christ be made even braver? How can the strong soldier be made even stronger? How can the victorious battler be made even more victorious? Here are Paul's explicit directions to that end:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching in this with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:18)

Power on the Battlefield

Prayer, and more prayer, adds to the fighting qualities and the more certain victories of God's good fighters. The power of prayer is most forceful on the battlefield amid the noise and strife of the conflict. Paul was preeminently a soldier of the cross. For him, life was no flowery bed of ease. He was no dress parade, holiday soldier, whose only business was to don a uniform on certain occasions.

His was a life of intense conflict, the facing of many adversaries, the exercise of sleepless vigilance, and constant effort. At its close – in sight of the end – he chanted his final song of victory – I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). Reading between the lines, we see that he was more than conqueror!

In his epistle to the Romans, Paul indicated the nature of his soldier life and gave us some views of the kind of praying needed for such a career. He wrote:

But I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the charity of the Spirit, that ye help me with prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from the disobedient in Judaea and that the offering of my service to the saints in Jerusalem may be accepted. (Romans 15:30-31)

Paul had foes in Judaea – enemies who harassed and opposed him in the form of the disobedient and this, added to other weighty reasons, led him to urge the Roman Christians to help him with his prayers. The King James Version says, strive together with me in prayer. That word strive indicated wrestling and putting forth great effort. This is the kind of effort and the sort of spirit that must possess the Christian soldier.

Here is a great soldier, a captain general in the great struggle, faced by malicious forces who seek his ruin. His power is nearly spent. What reinforcements can he count on? What can give help and bring success to a warrior in such a pressing emergency? It is a critical moment in the conflict. What force can be added to the energy of his own prayers? The answer is in the prayers of others, even the prayers of his brethren who were at Rome. He believes these will bring him additional aid, so he can win his fight, overcome his adversaries, and, ultimately prevail.

Prayer is Victory

The Christian soldier is to pray at all seasons and under all circumstances. His praying must be arranged to cover his times of peace as well as his hours of active conflict. It must be available in his marching and his fighting. Prayer must diffuse all effort, permeate all ventures, and decide all issues.

Christian soldiers must be as intense in their praying as in their fighting, for their victories will depend much more on their praying than on their fighting. Fervent supplication must be added to steady resolve; prayer and supplication must supplement the armor of God. The Holy Spirit must aid the supplication with his own strenuous plea, and the soldier must pray in the Spirit. In this, as in other forms of warfare, eternal vigilance is the price of victory, and thus, watchfulness and persistent perseverance must mark every activity of the Christian warrior.

The soldier prayer must reflect its profound concern for the success and well-being of the whole army. The battle is not altogether a personal matter; victory cannot be achieved for self alone. There is a sense in which the entire army of Christ is involved. The cause of God, his saints, their woes and trials, and their duties and crosses should all find a voice and a petitioner in the Christian soldier when he or she prays. Soldiers should not dare to limit their praying to themselves. Nothing dries up spiritual sap so certainly and completely, nothing poisons the fountain of spiritual life so effectively, and nothing acts in such deadly fashion as selfish praying.

Note carefully that the Christian's armor will not benefit him or her in any way, unless prayer is added. This is the pivot, the connecting link of the armor of God. This holds it together and renders it effective. God's true soldier plans his or her campaigns, arranges battle forces, and conducts battles with prayer. It is all-important and absolutely essential to victory that prayer would so permeate the life that every breath will be a petition, every sigh a supplication. The Christian soldier must always be fighting. He or she should, of sheer necessity, always be praying.

Watch and Pray

The Christian soldier is compelled to constant picket duty. He or she must always be on guard. The soldier is faced by a foe who never sleeps, who is always alert, and ever prepared to take advantage of the fortunes of war. Watchfulness is a cardinal principle with Christ's warrior; watch and pray forever sounds in his or her ears. The soldier cannot dare to be asleep at his or her post. Such a lapse brings one not only under the displeasure of the captain of his salvation but exposes him to added danger. Watchfulness, therefore, imperatively constitutes the duty of the soldier of the Lord.

In the New Testament, three different words are translated watch. The first means "absence of sleep" and implies a wakeful frame of mind as opposed to listlessness; it is a command to keep awake, cautious, attentive, constant, and vigilant. The second word means "fully awake" – a state induced by some rousing effort. It is the sense that is roused to attention and interest; it is active and cautious in case some destructive calamity should suddenly evolve through carelessness or sluggishness. The third word means "to be calm and collected in spirit," dispassionate, untouched by slumberous or concealed influences, and a wariness against all pitfalls and distractions.

All three definitions are used by Paul. Two of them are employed in connection with prayer. Intensified watchfulness is a requisite for prayer. Watchfulness must guard and cover the whole spiritual person and equip him or her for prayer. Everything resembling unpreparedness or non-vigilance is death to prayer.

In Ephesians, Paul gives prominence to the duty of constant watchfulness – watching in this with all perseverance and supplication (Ephesians 6:18). Watch, he says, watch, WATCH!

Jesus said to his disciples, And what I say unto you, I say unto all: Watch (Mark 13:37).

Sleepless wakefulness is the price one must pay for victory over his or her spiritual foes. Rest assured that the devil never falls asleep. He forever seeks whom he may devour. Just as a shepherd must never be careless and unwatchful in case the wolf would devour his sheep, so the Christian soldier must always have his or her eyes wide open, implying possession of a spirit that neither slumbers nor grows careless. The inseparable companions and safeguards of prayer are vigilance, watchfulness, and a mounted guard. In writing to the Colossians, Paul bracketed these inseparable qualities together: Persevere in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving (Colossians 4:2).

Stay Spiritually Awake

When will Christians more thoroughly learn the twofold lesson that they are called to a great warfare, and in order to get the victory, they must give themselves to unsleeping watchfulness and unceasing prayer?

Be temperate and vigilant because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:7)

This army is composed of individual soldiers of the cross, and the armor of God is needed for its defense. Prayer must be added as the thing that crowns the whole.

Stand then in his great might,

With all his strength endued;

But take, to arm you for the fight,

The panoply of God.

Prayer is too simple and too evident a duty to need definition. Necessity gives being and shape to prayer. Its importance is so absolute that the Christian soldier's life, in all the breadth and intensity of it, should be one of prayer. The entire life of a Christian soldier – its being, its intention, implication and action – are all dependent on its being a life of prayer. Without prayer, no matter what else he or she has, the Christian soldier's life will be feeble and ineffective, and it will cause him or her to be easy prey for spiritual enemies.

Fortified to Win

Christian experience will be sapless, and Christian influence will be dry and arid, unless prayer has a high place in one's life. Without prayer, the Christian graces will wither and die. Without prayer, preaching is edgeless; it is an ineffective thing, and the gospel loses its wings and its direction.

Christ is the lawgiver of prayer, and Paul is his apostle of prayer. Both declare its superiority and importance, and they demonstrate the truth of its necessity. Their prayer directions cover all places, include all times, and comprehend all things.

How then, can the Christian soldier hope or dream of victory, unless he or she is fortified by its power? How can one fail if in addition to putting on the armor of God, he is watching unto prayer at all times and seasons?

* * *

 Jonathan Edwards, From the Life of David Brainerd, 1749.

 From the hymn "Soldiers of Christ, Arise" by Charles Wesley.
Chapter 12

Prayer and the Word of God

How constantly in the Scriptures do we encounter such words as field, seed, sower, reaper, seed-time, harvest! Employing such metaphors interprets a fact of nature by a parable of grace. The field is the world and the good seed is the Word of God. Whether the Word be spoken or written, it is the power of God unto salvation. In our work of evangelism, the whole world is our field, every creature the object of effort, and every book and tract a seed of God. – David Fant Jr.

God's Word is a record of prayer – praying people and their achievements, the divine assurance of prayer, and the encouragement given to those who pray. No one can read the instances, commands, examples, and multiform statements that pertain to prayer without realizing that the cause of God and the success of his work in this world is committed to prayer; they realize praying people have been God's ministers on earth, and prayerless people have never been used by him.

A reverence for God's holy name is closely related to a high regard for his Word. This hallowing of God's name, the ability to do his will on earth as it is done in heaven, and the establishment and glory of God's kingdom are as much involved in prayer as they were when Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer. The idea that men ought always to pray and not faint, is as fundamental to God's cause today, as it was when Jesus Christ enshrined that great truth in the immortal settings of the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1).

Founded on the Word

As God's house is called the house of prayer because prayer is the most important of its holy functions, by the same token, the Bible may be called the Book of Prayer. Prayer is the great theme and content of its message to mankind.

God's Word is the basis and the directory of the prayer of faith. Let the word of the Christ dwell in you in abundance in all wisdom, Paul said, teaching you and exhorting you one to another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with grace singing in your hearts unto the Lord (Colossians 3:16).

As this word of Christ dwelling in us richly is transformed and assimilated, it releases prayer. Faith is composed of the Word and the Spirit, and faith is the body and the substance of prayer.

In many of its aspects, prayer is dependent upon the Word of God. Jesus said:

If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. (John 15:7)

The Word of God is the fulcrum upon which the lever of prayer is placed and by which things are mightily moved. God has committed himself, his purpose, and his promise to prayer. His Word becomes the basis or the inspiration of our praying; there are circumstances under which, by persistent prayer, we may obtain an addition or an enlargement of his promises. It is said of the old saints that they obtained promises through faith. In prayer there would seem to be the capacity for going even beyond the Word and getting beyond his promise into the very presence of God himself.

Jacob wrestled not so much with a promise as with the Promiser. We must take hold of the Promiser, otherwise the promise would prove to be unimportant. Prayer may be defined as that force which vitalizes and energizes the Word of God by taking hold of God himself. By taking hold of the Promiser, prayer reaffirms the promise and makes it personal.

"There is no one who motivates himself or herself to take hold of me" is God's sad lament. "Let them take hold of my strength that they may make peace with me" is God's recipe for prayer.

Specific Requests Bring Definite Answers

By scriptural authorization, prayer may be divided into the petition of faith and that of submission. The prayer of faith is based on the written Word, for faith comes by hearing, and the ear to hear by the word of God. It inevitably receives its answer – the very thing for which it prays.

The prayer of submission is without a definite word of promise but takes hold of God with a lowly and contrite spirit and asks and pleads with him for that which the soul desires. Abraham had no definite promise that God would spare Sodom. Moses had no definite promise that God would spare Israel; on the contrary, there was the declaration of his wrath and his purpose to destroy. But the devoted leader gained his appeal with God when he interceded for the Israelites with incessant prayers and many tears.

Daniel had no definite promise that God would reveal to him the meaning of the king's dream, but he prayed specifically, and God answered definitely.

The Word of God is made effective and operative by the process and practice of prayer. The Word of the Lord came to Elijah, Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth (1 Kings 18:1). Elijah showed himself to Ahab, but the answer to his prayer did not come until he had pressed his fiery prayer upon the Lord seven times.

Paul had the definite promise from Christ that he would be delivered from the people and the Gentiles in Acts 26:17, but we find him exhorting the Romans in the urgent and solemn manner concerning this very matter:

I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the charity of the Spirit, that ye help me with prayers to God for me. (Romans 15:30)

The Word of God is a great help in prayer. If it is lodged and written in our hearts, it will form an outflowing current of prayer, full and irresistible. Promises stored in the heart are to be the fuel from which prayer receives life and warmth, just as the coal that is stored in the earth ministers to our comfort on stormy days and wintry nights. The Word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong. Prayer, like man, cannot live by bread alone.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

Unless the vital forces of prayer are supplied by God's Word, the prayer is flabby, lifeless, and void, even though it may be earnest in its urgency and reality. The absence of vital force in praying can be traced to the absence of a constant supply of God's Word to repair the waste and renew the life. The one who would learn to pray well must first study God's Word and store it in his or her memory and thought.

The Limitless Effect of Prayer

When we consult God's Word, we find that no duty is more binding or more exacting than that of prayer. On the other hand, we discover that no privilege is more exalted, and no habit more richly owned of God. No promises are more radiant, more abounding, more explicit, or more often reiterated than those that are attached to prayer. All things, whatsoever are received by prayer, because all things whatsoever are promised.

There is no limit to the provisions included in the promises of prayer and no exclusion from its promises. Every one that asks, receives. Our Lord says of this limitless effect, If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it (John 14:14).

Here are some of the comprehensive statements in the Word of God about prayer – the things to be taken in by prayer and the strong promise made in answer to prayer:

Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

Persevere in prayer (Colossians 4:2)

Constant in prayer (Romans 12:12)

In everything by prayer . . . let your requests be made known unto God (Philippians 4:6)

Always to pray and not faint (Luke 18:1)

In every place, pray (1 Timothy 2:8)

Praying always with all prayer and supplication (Ephesians 6:18)

What clear and strong statements we find in the divine record; they furnish us with a sure basis of faith, and they urge, constrain, and encourage us to pray! How wide the range of prayer is given to us in the divine revelation! How these Scriptures motivate us to seek the God of prayer with all our wants and with all our burdens!

In addition to these statements left on record for our encouragement, the sacred pages teem with facts, examples, incidents, and observations that stress the importance and the absolute necessity of prayer; they emphasize its all-prevailing power.

Rich Promises in God's Will

We should humbly receive and put to the test the utmost reach and full benefit of the rich promises of the Word of God. The world will never receive the full benefits of God until this is done. Neither Christian experience nor Christian living will be what they ought to be until these divine promises have been fully tested by those who pray. By prayer, we bring these promises of God's holy will into the realm of the actual and the real.

If anyone asks what should be done in order to render God's promises real, the answer is that we must pray until the rich garments of fulfilment clothe the words of the promise.

God's promises are altogether too large to be mastered by haphazard praying. When we examine ourselves, too often we discover that our praying does not rise to the demands of the situation. It is so limited that it is little more than a mere oasis amid the waste and desert of the world's sin. Who of us, in our praying, measures up to this promise of our Lord:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes in me, the works that I do he shall do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. (John 14:12)

How comprehensive, how far reaching, how all-embracing! So much is here for the glory of God and so much for the good of man! So much for the manifestation of Christ's enthroned power and so much for the reward of abundant faith! The results that can accrue from the exercise of proportionate, believing prayer are great and gracious!

Look for a moment at another of God's great promises and discover how we may be undergirded by the Word as we pray, and how we may stand on firm ground on which to make our petitions to our 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. (John 15:7)

In these comprehensive words, God turns himself over to the will of his people. When Christ becomes our all-in-all, prayer lays God's treasures at our feet. Primitive Christianity had an easy and practical solution for the situation and got all that God had to give. That simple and terse solution is recorded in John's first epistle:

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. (1 John 3:22)

Prayer Gives Blessing

Coupled with loving obedience, prayer is the way to put God's promises to the test and to make prayer answer all conclusions and all things. Joined to the Word of God, prayer hallows and makes sacred all God's gifts. Prayer is not simply to get things from God but to make the things that we have already received from him holy. It is not merely to get a blessing but also to be able to give a blessing. Prayer makes common things holy and secular things sacred. It receives things from God with thanksgiving and hallows them with thankful hearts and devoted service.

In the first epistle to Timothy, Paul gave us these words:

For everything that God created is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it is received with thanksgiving. (1 Timothy 4:4)

That is a statement that gives a negative to mere self-denial. God's good gifts are to be holy, not only by God's creative power but also because they are made holy to us by prayer. We receive them, allocate them, and sanctify them by prayer.

Doing God's will and having his Word abiding in us is an imperative of effective praying. But we might ask how are we to know what God's will is? The answer is by studying his Word, hiding it in our hearts, and letting the Word dwell in us richly. The exposition of thy words gives light; it gives understanding unto the simple (Psalm 119:130).

To know God's will in prayer, we must be filled with God's Spirit, who makes intercession for the saints and in the saints, according to the will of God. To be filled with God's Spirit and to be filled with God's Word is to know God's will. It is to be put in such a frame of mind and found in such a state of heart as will enable us to correctly read and interpret the purposes of the infinite. Such filling of the heart with the Word and the Spirit gives us an insight into the will of the Father and enables us to rightly discern his will; it puts within us a disposition of mind and heart to make it the guide and compass of our lives.

His Perfect and Complete Will

Epaphras prayed that the Colossians might stand perfect and fulfilled in all the will of God (Colossians 4:12). This is proof positive that we may not only know the will of God but that we may know all the will of God. And not only may we know all the will of God but we may do all the will of God. Furthermore, we may do all the will of God, not occasionally or by a mere impulse, but with a settled habit of conduct. Still further, it shows us that we may not only do the will of God externally but from the heart, doing it cheerfully without hesitation or secret reluctance or any drawing back or holding back from the intimate presence of the Lord.
Chapter 13

Prayer and Preaching

Some years ago, a man was travelling in the wilds of Kentucky. He had with him a large sum of money and was well armed. He put up at a log house one night but was much concerned with the rough appearance of the men who came and went from this abode. He retired early but not to sleep. At midnight he heard the dogs barking furiously and the sound of someone entering the cabin. Peering through a chink in the boards of his room, he saw a stranger with a gun in his hand. Another man sat before the fire. The traveler concluded they were planning to rob him and prepared to defend himself and his property. Presently the newcomer took down a copy of the Bible, read a chapter aloud, and then knelt down and prayed. The traveler dismissed his fears, put his revolver away, and lay down to sleep peacefully until morning light. And all because a Bible was in the cabin and its owner a man of prayer. – Rev. F. F. Shoup

Prayer has everything to do with the success of the preaching of the Word. Paul clearly taught this in that familiar and pressing request he made to the Thessalonians:

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you. (2 Thessalonians 3:1)

Prayer opens the way for the Word of God to run without impediment or hindrance and creates the atmosphere that is favorable for the Word accomplishing its purpose. Prayer puts wheels under God's Word and gives wings to the angel of the Lord having the eternal gospel that he might evangelize those that dwell on the earth and every nation and kindred and tongue and people (Revelation 14:6). Prayer greatly helps the Word of the Lord.

Receiving the Word

The parable of the sower is a notable study of preaching, and it shows its differing effects and describes the diversity of hearers. The wayside hearers are great in number. The soil lies all unprepared, either by previous thought or by prayer. As a consequence, the devil easily takes away the seed (which is the Word of God), and by dissipating all good impressions, it renders the work of the sower futile. No one believes for a moment that so much of present-day sowing would go fruitless, if only the hearers would prepare the ground of their hearts beforehand by prayer and meditation.

It is similar with the stony-ground hearers and the thorny-ground hearers. Although the Word lodges in their hearts and begins to sprout, all is still lost, mostly because there is no prayer or watchfulness or cultivation following this. The good-ground hearers profit by the sowing, simply because their minds have been prepared for the reception of the seed. By the exercise of prayer and after hearing, they have cultivated the seed sown in their hearts. All this gives peculiar emphasis to the conclusion of this striking parable: Take heed, therefore, how ye hear (Luke 8:18). In order for us to take heed how we hear, we need to give ourselves continually to prayer.

We have to believe that underlying God's Word is prayer, and its final success will depend upon prayer. In the book of Isaiah we read:

So shall my Word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall be prospered in that for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

In Psalm 19, David magnified the Word of God in six statements concerning it. It converts the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures forever, and is true and just. The Word of God is perfect, sure, right, pure. It is heart-searching and at the same time purifying in its effect. Therefore, it is no surprise that after considering the deep spirituality of the Word of God, its power to search the inner nature of man, and its deep purity, the psalmist closed his dissertation with this passage:

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

Keep back thy slave also from pride and arrogance; let them not have dominion over me; then I shall be perfect, and I shall be innocent of the great rebellion.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:12-14)

The Power of the Word

James recognized the deep spirituality of the Word and its inherent saving power in the following exhortation:

So then, leave all uncleanness and remains of malice and receive with meekness the word ingested within you, which is able to cause your souls to be saved. (James 1:21)

And Peter spoke similar words when describing the saving power of the Word of God:

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever. (1 Peter 1:23)

Not only did Peter speak of being born again by the incorruptible Word of God, but he informed us that to grow in grace we must be like newborn babies, desiring or feeding upon the rational milk of the word (1 Peter 2:2).

That is not to say, however, that the mere form of words as they occur in the Bible have in them any saving value. But remember, the Word of God is permeated with the Holy Spirit. And just as there is a divine element in the words of Scripture, so also the same divine element is to be found in all true preaching of the Word, which is able to save and convert the soul.

Prayer invariably produces a love for the Word of God and gets people to read it. Prayer leads people to obey the Word of God and puts an unspeakable joy into the heart that obeys. Praying people and Bible-reading people are the same sort of folk. The God of the Bible and the God of prayer are one. God speaks to man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer.

One reads the Bible to discover God's will; he or she prays in order to receive power to do that will. Bible reading and praying are the distinguishing traits of those who strive to know and please God. And just as prayer produces a love for the Scriptures and motivates people to read the Bible, prayer causes men and women to gather together to hear the Scriptures expounded.

Church-going is closely connected with the Bible, not so much because the Bible cautions us against forsaking our gathering together, as the manner of some is (Hebrews 10:25), but because ministers declares God's Word to dying people, explains the Scriptures, and enforces the teaching upon the hearers. Prayer sprouts a determination not to forsake the assembling together with others.

Prayer produces a church-going conscience, a church-loving heart, and a church-supporting spirit. The praying people are the ones who make it a matter of conscience to attend the preaching of the Word, delight in its reading and exposition, and support it with their influence and their wealth. Prayer exalts the Word of God and gives it preeminence in the appreciation of those who faithfully and wholeheartedly call on the name of the Lord.

Prayer Stands on Scripture

Prayer draws its very life from the Bible and has no standing outside of the warrant of the Scriptures. Its very existence and character is dependent on revelation made by God to mankind in his holy Word. Prayer, in turn, exalts this same revelation and directs people toward that Word. The nature, necessity, and all-comprehending character of prayer is based on the Word of God.

Psalm 119 is a directory of God's Word. With three or four exceptions, each verse contains a word that identifies or locates the Word of God. Often the writer breaks out into supplication, several times praying, teach me thy statutes. He is so deeply impressed with the wonders of God's Word and the need for divine illumination to see and understand the wonderful things recorded in it that he fervently prays: Open my eyes, and I shall behold the wonders of thy law (Psalm 119:18).

From the opening of this wonderful psalm to its close, prayer and God's Word are intertwined. This inspired writer touches on almost every phase of God's Word. The psalmist was so thoroughly convinced of the deep spiritual power of the Word of God that he made this declaration: Thy spoken word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee (Psalm 119:11). Here the psalmist found his protection against sinning. By having God's Word hidden in his heart, his whole being is thoroughly permeated with that Word and brought completely under its benign and gracious influence. He was enabled to walk back and forth on the earth, safe from the attack of the evil one and fortified against a proneness to wander out of the way.

Furthermore, we find that the power of prayer creates a real love for the Scriptures and puts within people a nature that will take pleasure in the Word. In holy delight he cries, O how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day (Psalm 119:97). And again, How sweet have been thy spoken words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103).

Do we desire an appreciation for God's Word? Then let's give ourselves continually to prayer. The one who would have a heart for the reading of the Bible must not – dare not – forget to pray. The person of whom it can be said His delight is in the law of the Lord is the one who can truly say, "I delight to visit the place of prayer" (Psalm 1:2).

No one loves the Bible, who does not love to pray. No one loves to pray, who does not delight in the law of the Lord.

Our Lord was a man of prayer, and he magnified the Word of God, quoting often from the Scriptures. Right through his earthly life, Jesus observed the Sabbath, gathering together and the reading of the Word of God, and he had prayer intermingled with them all:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day and stood up to read. (Luke 4:16)

The Essence of a Spirit-Filled Life

Let it be said that no two things are more essential to a Spirit-filled life than Bible reading and secret prayer; no two things are more helpful to growth in grace and getting the largest joy out of a Christian life. They establish one in the ways of eternal peace. The neglect of these all-important duties indicates leanness of soul, loss of joy, absence of peace, dryness of spirit, and decay in all that pertains to spiritual life. Neglecting these things paves the way for backpedaling and gives the evil one an advantage that he is not likely to ignore.

Reading God's Word regularly and praying habitually in the secret place of the Most High puts one where he or she is absolutely safe from the attacks of the enemy of souls and guarantees salvation and final victory through the overcoming power of the Lamb.
Chapter 14

Prayer and the House of God

And dear to me the loud "Amen,"

Which echoes through the blest abode;

Which swells, and sinks, then swells again,

Dies on the walls – but lives with God

Prayer stands related to places, times, occasions, and circumstances. It is related to God and with everything about God, and it has an intimate and special relationship to his house. A church is set apart from all unhallowed and secular uses for the worship of God. As worship is prayer, the house of God is set apart for worship. It is no common place; it is where God's people meet and he delights in the worship of his saints.

Prayer is always at home in the house of God. When prayer is a stranger there, it ceases to be God's house at all. Our Lord put peculiar emphasis on what the church was when he cast out the buyers and sellers in the temple, repeating the words from Isaiah, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves (Matthew 21:13). He makes prayer preeminent, that which stands out above all else in the house of God. Those who sidetrack prayer or seek to minimize it and give it a secondary place pervert the church of God and make it something less than it is ordained to be.

Prayer Is the Power of the Church

Prayer is perfectly at home in the house of God. It is no stranger, no mere guest; it belongs there. It has a peculiar affinity for the place and a divine right to be there, being set by divine appointment and approval.

The inner prayer chamber is a sacred place for personal worship. The house of God is a holy place for united worship. The prayer closet is for individual prayer. The house of God is for mutual prayer, concerted prayer, and united prayer. Yet even in the house of God, there is the element of private worship, since God's people are to worship him and pray to him personally, even during public worship. The church is for the united prayer of kindred yet individual believers.

The life, power, and glory of the church is prayer. The life of its members is dependent on prayer, and the presence of God is secured and retained by prayer. The very place is made sacred by its ministry. Without prayer, the church is lifeless and powerless. Without it, even the building is no different from any other structure. Prayer separates the church in spirit and in purpose from all other structures and gives a peculiar sacredness to the building, sanctifies it, sets it apart for God, and preserves it from all common and mundane affairs.

Though the house of God might lack everything else, with prayer it becomes a divine sanctuary. Likewise, the tabernacle that moved about from place to place became the Holy of Holies, because prayer was there. Without prayer, the building may be costly, perfect in all its appointments, beautiful for situation and attractive to the eye, but like the human with nothing divine in him, without prayer the church is on a level with all other buildings.

Without prayer, a church is like a body without spirit; it is a dead, inanimate thing. A church with prayer in it has God in it. When prayer is set aside, God is outlawed. When prayer becomes an unfamiliar exercise, then God himself is a stranger there.

The Church, a Sacred House

As God's house is a house of prayer, the divine intention is that people should leave their homes and go to meet him in his own house. The building is set apart especially for prayer, and as God has made special promise to meet his people there, it is their duty to go there for that specific purpose. Prayer should be a chief attraction for all spiritually minded churchgoers. While the preaching of the Word has an important place in the house of God, prayer is still its predominate, distinguishing feature. Not that all other places are sinful or evil in themselves or in their uses, but they are secular and human and have no special impression of God in them.

The church is essentially religious and divine. The work belonging to other places is done without special reference to God. He is not specifically recognized or called upon.

In the church, however, God is acknowledged, and nothing is done without him. Prayer is the one distinguishing mark of the house of God. As prayer distinguishes Christian from unchristian people, so prayer distinguishes God's house from all other houses. It is a place where faithful believers meet with their Lord.

As God's house is preeminently a house of prayer, prayer should enter into and underlie everything that is done there. Prayer belongs to every sort of work pertaining to the church of God. As God's house is a house where the business of praying is carried on, so it is a place where the business of making praying people out of prayerless people. The house of God is a divine workshop where the work of prayer goes on. Or, the house of God is a divine schoolhouse where the lesson of prayer is taught – where men and women learn to pray and where they graduate from the school of prayer.

Any church calling itself the house of God but fails to magnify prayer and does not put prayer in the forefront of its activities does not teach the great lesson of prayer. It should change its teaching to conform to the divine pattern or change the name of its building to something other than a house of prayer.

Earlier we referred to the finding of the book of the law of the Lord that was given to Moses. We do not know how long that book had been there, but when news of its discovery was carried to Josiah, he tore his clothes and was greatly disturbed. He lamented the neglect of God's Word, and as a natural result, he saw the iniquity that abounded throughout the land.

Then Josiah thought of God and commanded Hilkiah, the priest, to go and inquire of the Lord. Such neglect of the Word of the law was too serious a matter to be treated lightly, and they needed to seek God and show repentance – both Josiah and the nation:

Go, enquire of the Lord for me and for the remnant of Israel and of Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do according to all the things that are written in this book. (2 Chronicles 34:21)

But that was not all. Josiah was determined to promote a revival of belief in his kingdom, so he gathered all the elders of Jerusalem and Judah together for that purpose. When they had come together, the king went into the house of the Lord and read in all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord.

With this righteous king, God's Word was of great importance. He valued it at its proper worth and considered a knowledge of it to be of such crucial importance that required him to consult God in prayer about it and warrant the gathering together of the notables of his kingdom, to be instructed from God's Book concerning God's law.

Prayer and the Word Bring Revival

When Ezra returned from Babylon and sought the reconstruction of his nation, the people themselves were mindful of the situation, and on one occasion, the priests, Levites, and people assembled themselves together as one unit before the water gate.

And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the plaza that was before the water gate, and they spoke unto Ezra, the scribe, to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel.

And Ezra, the priest, brought the law before the congregation, both of men and women and all that could hear with understanding . . . And he read in the book before the plaza that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. (Nehemiah 8:1-3)

This was Bible reading day in Judah – a real revival of Scripture study. The leaders read before the people whose ears were keen to hear what God had to say to them out of the book of the law. But it was not only a Bible reading day. It was a time when real preaching was done, as the following passage indicates:

So they read in the book in the law of God clearly and paid attention, and understood the reading. (Nehemiah 8:8)

Here then is the scriptural definition of preaching. No better definition can be given. To read the Word of God distinctly – to read it so that the people could hear and understand the words. They did not mumble the words or read it in a murmur or with indistinctness, but they read boldly and clearly; that was the method followed in Jerusalem on this promising day. Furthermore, the sense of the words was made clear in the meeting held before the water gate; the people were treated to a high type of expository preaching. That was true preaching – preaching of a sort that is greatly needed today, so that God's Word may affect the hearts of the people. This meeting in Jerusalem surely contains a lesson that all present-day preachers should learn and regard.

No one who has any knowledge of the existing facts will deny the comparative lack of expository preaching in the pulpit effort today. And we imagine none will do anything but lament the lack. Topical preaching, argumentative preaching, historical preaching, and other forms of sermonic output may have their rightful and appropriate uses. But expository preaching, the prayerful expounding of the Word of God, is preaching that is preaching – pulpit effort of highest quality.

Prayer Revival Starts with Leaders

For the successful accomplishment of preaching, a preacher must be a person of prayer. For every hour spent in his study chair, he will have to spend two on his knees. For every hour one devotes to wrestling with an obscure passage of Holy Scripture, he or she ought to have two hours of wrestling with God. Prayer and preaching; preaching and prayer! They cannot be separated. The ancient cry was, "To your tents, O Israel!"

The modern cry should be, "To your knees, O preachers, to your knees!"

* * *

 From hymn lyrics written by Rev. John William Cunningham (1780-1861).
E. M. Bounds – A Brief Biography

Edward McKendree Bounds was born in Shelby County, Missouri, on August 15, 1835, and died on August 24, 1913, in Washington, Georgia. He was admitted to the bar in 1854 at the age of nineteen, but left the profession five years later when he answered the call of God to the ministry. Beginning in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, he became the chaplain of the Fifth Missouri Regiment of the Confederacy.

Bounds married Miss Emmie Barnett of Eufaula, Alabama, in 1876. By this union, he became the father of two daughters, Celeste and Corneille, and a son, Edward, who died at the age of six. His wife Emmie died in 1886, and later Bounds married Miss Hattie Barnett, Emmie's cousin. Together they had six children: Samuel, Charles, Osborne, Elizabeth, Mary, and Emmie. However, Charles died at the age of one, so in the end, the family consisted of seven children.

After serving several important churches in St. Louis and other places to the south, Bounds became editor of the St. Louis Christian Advocate for eight years and, later, associate editor of The Nashville Christian Advocate for four years. The trial of his faith came while he was in Nashville, and he quietly retired to his home without even asking for a pension. His principal work in Washington, Georgia (his home), was rising at four o'clock in the morning and praying until seven o'clock. He filled a few engagements as an evangelist during the eighteen years of his life work in Washington, Georgia.

* * * *

While I was a pastor in Atlanta, in 1905, I was informed that there was an apostolic man of prayer in Georgia who would aid the church in attaining a high level in spiritual things. The next mail carried a letter asking that apostolic man – Mr. Bounds – to come to our convention for ten days of preaching. Naturally, we expected to see a man of imposing physique. But when he came, we discovered that he was only about five and a half feet tall, but in him, we met one of the greatest saints that, in our humble opinion, has appeared on the spiritual horizon in the last hundred years.

He spoke the first afternoon on prayer. No one seemed to be particularly impressed. The next morning at four o'clock, we were amazed to hear him engaged in the most wonderful prayer we have ever heard – a prayer that seemed to take in both heaven and earth. His sermons were all about prayer and heaven. Not one morning during his stay did he fail to make his prayers a great while before day (Mark 1:35). He didn't care when the other occupants of his room protested for waking them at that unheard-of hour. No man could have made more melting appeals for lost souls and backslidden ministers than did Bounds. Tears ran down his face as he pleaded for us in that room. I know of no other man on earth today who would have gone away defeated, if he had followed the same practice at the same place, in the same room. But Bounds was all powerful, all commanding, and all victorious, when once he knew his cause was just.

After that convention, we took him to our heart and never let him go. God sent him in answer to our prayer to settle and establish this writer in the things of God that are foremost and supreme – prayer, preaching, and the study of the Bible.

We were constantly with him in prayer and preaching for eight precious years. Not a foolish word did we ever hear him utter. He was one of the most intense eagles of God that ever penetrated the spiritual realm. He could not tolerate delay in rising or being late for dinner. He would often go with me to street meetings in Brooklyn, listen to the preaching, and sing those beautiful songs of Wesley and Watts with us, but reprimanded me for asking the unconverted to sing of heaven. He said, "They have no heart to sing; they do not know God, and God does not hear them. Quit asking sinners to sing the songs of Zion and the Lamb." To what mysterious order of men did Bounds belong, anyway? Have they disappeared from the world?

Few subjects create more interest in the mind of the fervent Christian reader than the subject Bounds has named: heaven – a state, a city, and a home. He was so full of the "heavenly manna" that God produced through him that the spiritual splendor shone out of every chapter of his wonderful books.

In 1912, I wrote to him to come to Brooklyn, New York, to pray for me and my church. Here are a few excerpts from his personal letters to us at this time, which show the depths of his thought for a home in heaven.

"Washington, July 1, 1912: I am thinking more of going to heaven than to New York. It is far better. But it is in God's will. I would enjoy being with you. God seems to have opened the way. I will have to wait on God for New York or heaven as I am now very weak. With all love and prayer."

"December 12 and 13, 1912: You will pray much. I am turning to you and Chilton. One of you must help me to do the work on my manuscripts that I want finished and published. I could go to you, and then you could help me in odd times by prayer and consultation. We would then be together as long as God lets me live for His great work. We can issue the books together, and you can keep them if necessary until I die – until God's fitting time to publish."

On January 6, 1913, he writes, "Dearly Beloved: A good time praying for you. Be at it early and late. Let your mind live in the spirit of prayer. The thought of heaven is sweet. I am very weak, but will strive to work on and wait for God's time for heaven."

He was growing weaker and nearing the other shore when he wrote this letter:

"April 21, 1913: God will manage our affairs if we will be filled with His affairs. I am trying to get matters in shape for my manuscripts. I am very weak. I want to live for God, and then depart and be with Christ. I have an unspeakable desire to know the future, to see it and enjoy it, and to be there – to see and enjoy. God bless you."

The following letters I call "dying messages to one whom he loved":

"Washington, May 10, 1913: With all love and longing and prayers. God bless and keep you until eternal life. With many trials and tears, I am pressing on. I am still weak, but by sleeping in the day I can get through. When He is ready, I long for the heavenlies through Christ."

"Washington, Georgia, May 22, 1913: Yours came. I have you in prayer – at it early and trying to be at it all the day. God bless you with eternal life and hasten the day. Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Bear your boys on your prayers to the doors of heaven. I am getting the book ready to send to England. Pray God will open the way for it – to His glory. In love and faithful prayer as my strength will allow."

He wrote one card dated June 26, 1913:

"Washington, Georgia: In prayerful sympathy and love. Hold to the old truth – double distilled (purified and concentrated)."

The above card was the last word written to us in his own hand. On August 9, shortly before he died, his wife writes: "He was glad to hear from you but soon forgets. My physician says he will never be well again. His last message to you is characteristic: 'Tell him he is on the right track; press it. Have a high standard and hold to it.'"

Then came the telegram announcing his home-going:

"Washington, Georgia, August 24, 1913: Doctor Bounds went home this afternoon; funeral here tomorrow afternoon. – Hattie Bounds."

– Homer W. Hodge

* * *

 Lyle Wesley Dorsett, E. M. Bounds: Man of Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), 30-39, 50.
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The Necessity of Prayer – E. M. Bounds

Revised Edition Copyright © 2018

First edition published 1907

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