 
The   
Power of Prayer and the Prayer of Power

And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. – Matthew 21:22

Reuben A. Torrey

Contents

Introduction

Ch. 1: The Power of Prayer

Ch. 2: The Definite and Desirable Results of Definite and Determined Prayer

Ch. 3: What Prayer Can Do for Churches, for the Nation, and for All Nations

Ch. 4: How to Pray

Ch. 5: What God Looks for in Us

Ch. 6: Praying in the Name of Jesus Christ

Ch. 7: The Prayer of Faith

Ch. 8: Praying Through, and Praying in the Holy Spirit

Ch. 9: Hindrances to Prayer

Ch. 10: Prevailing Prayer and Real Revival

R. A. Torrey – A Brief Biography

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Introduction

The great need of the church today, and of human society as a whole, is a genuine, God-sent revival. It is either revival or revolution, and if it is a revolution, it will plunge human society and civilization into chaos and utter confusion. We are living in a time of widespread apostasy. This may be the last apostasy from which we will be saved by the return of our Lord Jesus to this earth to take the reins of government into His own thoroughly competent hands. That would, of course, be the greatest and most glorious of all revivals, and it would be a revival that would never end.

However, we do not know that this is the final apostasy. There have been more complete and appalling apostasies in the past than this one is at the present hour. The apostasy in England in the time of the Wesleys, and in America at the time of Jonathan Edwards, was far more complete than the present apostasy is. The apostasy in this country at the opening of the nineteenth century was far more appalling, at least as regarding university life, than the apostasy of today. It was the revival under the Wesleys and their associates that saved the church and saved civilization in their day. Even as thorough a rationalist as the historian William Lecky admits that it was the revival under the Wesleys that saved civilization in England. It was the Great Awakening under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards and others that saved the church in America.

Our greatest need today is a deep, thorough, Spirit-wrought, God-sent revival. Such revivals, as far as our human role is concerned, always come in one way – by prayer. It was Jonathan Edwards' Call to Prayer that brought the Great Awakening. It was the city missionary Jeremiah Lanphier stirring the Christians of New York City to prayer that brought the wondrous revival of 1857. It was the prayer of the four humble Christians of Kells, Ireland, and the prayers of others, that brought the marvelous Ulster revival of 1859-60.

At the request of D. L. Moody late in the nineteenth century, I wrote a book entitled How to Pray, and God used that book to stir many thousands to pray. The great work in Australia and New Zealand in 1902, extending over to England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales (the great Welsh revival in 1904), and to India and many other lands, resulting in the conversion of hundreds of thousands of souls, was the direct outcome of the publication of that book.

The present book is much fuller and more complete than How to Pray, and it covers the whole subject of prayer, not only in its relation to revivals, but in its relation to the various departments of Christian life and activity. The various chapters are composed largely of the addresses on prayer that I have given as I have gone around the world preaching the gospel. The addresses have grown through the more than twenty-two years that I have been engaged in this work. In their present completed form, they were delivered to my own people in the Church of the Open Door, Los Angeles, and they were all heard over the radio by perhaps a hundred thousand people (some say far more) who were listening in Sunday after Sunday in places from one mile to three thousand miles away, in the autumn, winter, and spring of 1923 and 1924.

As I write this preface, I am in the midst of a revival in Winnipeg, Canada, where last night 5,000 people crowded into a rink that only seats 4,100, and many were unable to get in. Very many men, women, and children made a public confession of having trusted in Christ in that hour. Will we have a revival of great power extending over many lands? I believe we will. God grant that this book may hasten it!

R. A. Torrey
Chapter 1

The Power of Prayer

You do not have because you do not ask. (James 4:2)

I bring you a message from God contained in nine short words. Eight of the nine words are one-syllable words, and the remaining word has only two syllables and is one of the most familiar and most easily understood words in the English language. Yet there is so much in these nine short, simple words that they have transformed many lives and have brought many inefficient Christian workers into a place of great power.

I spoke on these nine words some years ago at a Bible conference in central New York. Some months after the conference, I received a letter from the man who had presided at the conference. He is one of the best-known ministers of the gospel in America. He wrote, "I have been unable to get away from the nine words upon which you spoke at Lake Keuka; they have been with me day and night. They have transformed my ideas, transformed my methods, transformed my life, and, I think I have a right to add, transformed my ministry."

The man who wrote those words has since been the pastor of what is probably the most widely known of any evangelical church in the world. I hope that the words may sink into some of your hearts today as they did into his on that occasion, and that some of you will be able to say in future months and years, "I have been unable to get away from those nine words; they have been with me day and night. They have transformed my ideas, transformed my methods, transformed my life, and transformed my service for God."

You will find these nine words in James 4:2. They are the last nine words of the verse: You do not have because you do not ask. These nine words contain the secret of the poverty and powerlessness of the average Christian, of the average minister, and of the average church.

"Why is it," many Christians ask, "that I make such poor progress in my Christian life? Why do I have so little victory over sin? Why do I win so few souls to Christ? Why do I grow so slowly into the likeness of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?" God answers in the words of our text: "It is because of neglect of prayer. You do not have because you do not ask."

"Why is it," many ministers ask, "that I see so little fruit from my ministry? Why are there so few conversions? Why does my church grow so slowly? Why are the members of my church so little helped by my ministry and built up so little in Christian knowledge and life?" Again God replies, "It is because of neglect of prayer. You do not have because you do not ask."

"Why is it," ministers and churches ask, "that the church of Jesus Christ is making such slow progress in the world today? Why does it make so little headway against sin, against unbelief, and against error in all its forms? Why does it have so little victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil? Why does the average church member have such a low standard of Christian living? Why does the Lord Jesus Christ get so little honor from the state of the church today?" Again God replies, "It is because of neglect of prayer. You do not have because you do not ask."

When we read the only inspired church history that was ever written, the history of the church in the days of the apostles as it is recorded by Luke (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) in the Acts of the Apostles, what do we find? We find a story of constant victory and perpetual progress.

We read, for example, such statements as this in Acts 2:47: The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. We read such statements as this in Acts 4:4: Many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand. We read this in Acts 5:14: All the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number. We read this in Acts 6:7: The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

And so we go on, chapter after chapter, through the twenty-eight chapters of the book of Acts, and in every one of the twenty-seven chapters after the first we find the same note of victory. I once went through the Acts of the Apostles marking the note of victory in every chapter, and without one single exception, the triumphant shout of victory rang out in every chapter.

How different the history of the church as here recorded is from the history of the church of Jesus Christ today. Take for example, that first statement, The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. Nowadays, if we have a revival once a year with fifty or sixty members being added, and spend all the rest of the year slipping back to where we were before, we think we are doing pretty well. But in those days there was a revival all the time, and people were added every day who were born again, baptized by the Holy Spirit, and going on to bear fruit.

Why this difference between the early church and the church of Jesus Christ today? Someone will answer, "Because there is so much opposition today." Ah, but there was opposition in those days, and it was most bitter, most determined, and most relentless opposition. In comparison with what most of us experience today, ours is but child's play. But the early church went right on beating down all opposition, surmounting every obstacle, and conquering every foe, always victorious, continuing without a setback from Jerusalem to Rome in the face of the most firmly entrenched and most mighty heathenism and unbelief.

I repeat the question, Why this difference between the early church and the church of Jesus Christ today? If you will turn to the chapters from which I have already quoted, you will get your answer. Turn, for example, to the first chapter from which I quoted, Acts 2, and read verse 42: They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

That is a very brief, but very suggestive, picture of the early church. It was a praying church. It was a church in which they prayed not just occasionally, but where they continually devoted themselves to prayer. They all prayed, not only a select few, but the whole membership of the church – and they all prayed continuously with steadfast determination. They devoted themselves to prayer. This "devoting" is the same Greek word as translated in Acts 6:4: We will devote ourselves to prayer.

That is the rest of your answer: We will devote ourselves to prayer. That is a picture of the apostolic ministry. It was a praying ministry – a ministry that gave themselves continually to prayer, or, to translate that Greek word as it is translated in the former passage (Acts 2:42), They were continually devoting themselves to . . . prayer. They had a praying church and a praying ministry! Ah, such a church and such a ministry can achieve anything that ought to be achieved. It will go steadily on beating down all opposition, surmounting every obstacle, and conquering every foe – just as much today as it did in the days of the apostles.

There is nothing else in which the church of today and the ministry of today, or, to be more clear, in which you and I, have departed more notably and more lamentably from apostolic precedent than in this matter of prayer. We do not live in a praying age. A very considerable portion of the membership of our evangelical churches today do not believe even theoretically in prayer; that is, they do not believe in prayer as bringing anything to pass that would not have come to pass even if they had not prayed. They believe in prayer as having a beneficial reflex influence; that is, they view prayer as benefiting the person who prays – a sort of lifting yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps – but as for prayer bringing anything to pass that would not have come to pass if we had not prayed, they do not believe in it. Many of them openly say so, and even some of our modern ministers say so.

And with that part of our church membership that does believe in prayer theoretically – and thank God I believe it is still the majority in our evangelical churches – even they do not make the use of this mighty instrument that God has put into our hands, as one would naturally expect.

As I said, we do not live in a praying age. We live in an age of hustle and bustle, of human effort and determination, of confidence in ourselves and in our own power to achieve things. It is an age of human organization, human machinery, human push, human scheming, and human achievement – which in the things of God means no real achievement at all. I think it would be perfectly safe to say that the church of Christ was never in all its history so fully, so skillfully, so thoroughly, and so perfectly organized as it is today.

Our machinery is wonderful. It is just perfect, but sadly it is machinery without power. When things do not go right, instead of going to the real source of our failure – our neglect to depend upon God and to look to Him for power – we look around to see if there is not some new organization we can start or some new wheel that we can add to our machinery. We have altogether too many wheels already. What we need is not so much some new organization or some new wheel, but the Spirit of the living creature in the wheels we already possess (Ezekiel 1:20).

I suspect that the devil stands and looks at the church today and laughs in his sleeve as he sees how its members depend upon their own scheming and powers of organization and skillfully devised machinery. "Ha, ha," he laughs, "you can have your YMCAs, and YWCAs, your Woman's Christian Temperance Unions, Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, and Baptist Young People's Unions. You can have your Boy Scouts, your costly church buildings, your fifty-thousand dollar church organs, your brilliant university-bred preachers, your high-priced choirs, your gifted sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses, and your musical entertainment. You can even have your immense men's Bible classes, your Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and your special evangelistic services. You can have them all, and it does not bother me in the least, if you will only leave out of them the power of the Lord God Almighty sought and obtained by the earnest, persistent, believing prayer that will not take no for an answer."

However, when the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end.

Prayer has as much power today, when men and women are themselves on praying ground and meeting the conditions of prevailing prayer, as it ever has had. God has not changed. His ear is just as quick to hear the voice of real prayer as it has always been, and His hand is just as long and strong to save as it ever was. Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear (Isaiah 59:1-2).

Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouses of God's infinite grace and power. All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer; but we must use the key. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and since God can do anything, prayer is omnipotent. No one can stand against the person who knows how to pray, who meets all the conditions of prevailing prayer, and who really prays. The Lord God Omnipotent works for him and through him.

Prayer will promote our personal holiness as nothing else except the study of the Word of God

We have been dealing in generalities, but now let us get down to the definite and specific. What, specifically, will prayer do? The Word of God very plainly answers the question.

In the first place, prayer will promote our personal piety, our individual holiness, and our individual growth into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as almost nothing else – as nothing else but the study of the Word of God. These two things, prayer and study of the Word of God, always go hand in hand, for there is not true prayer without study of the Word of God, and there is no true study of the Word of God without prayer.

Other things being equal, our growth into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be in exact proportion to the time and to the heart we put into prayer. Please note exactly what I say: our growth into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be in exact proportion to the time and to the heart we put into prayer. I say it in that way because there are many who put a great deal of time into praying, but they put so little heart into their praying that they do very little praying during the long time they spend at it. There are others, though, who may not put as much time into praying, but who put so much heart into their praying that they accomplish vastly more by their praying in a short time than the others accomplish by their praying a long time. God Himself has told us in Jeremiah 29:13, You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

We are told in the Word of God, in Ephesians 1:3, that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. That is to say, Jesus Christ by His atoning death and by His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father has obtained for every believer in Jesus Christ every possible spiritual blessing. There is no spiritual blessing that any believer enjoys that cannot be yours. It belongs to you now. Christ purchased it by His atoning death, and God has provided it in Him. It is there for you, but it is your duty to claim it – to put out your hand and take it. God's appointed way of claiming blessings – putting out your hand and appropriating to yourself the blessings that have been obtained for you by the atoning death of Jesus Christ – is by prayer. Prayer is the hand that takes to ourselves the blessings that God has already provided in His Son.

You can go through your Bible and find it definitely stated that every conceivable spiritual blessing is obtained by prayer. For example, it is in answer to prayer, as we learn from Psalm 139:23-24, that God searches us and knows our hearts, tries us and knows our thoughts, and brings to light the sin that there is in us and delivers us from it. It is in answer to prayer, as we learn from Psalm 19:12-13, that we are cleansed from secret faults and why God keeps us back from presumptuous sins. It is in answer to prayer, as we learn from verse 14 of the same psalm, that the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart are made acceptable in God's sight.

It is in answer to prayer, as we learn from Psalm 25:4-5, that God shows us His ways, teaches us His path, and guides us in His truth. It is in answer to prayer, as we learn from the prayer our Lord Himself taught us, that we are kept from temptation and delivered from the power of the wicked one (Matthew 6:13). It is in answer to prayer, as we learn from Luke 11:13, that God gives us His Holy Spirit. We could go through the whole list of spiritual blessings, and we would find that every one of them is obtained by asking for it. Indeed, our Lord Himself has said in Matthew 7:11, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

One of the most instructive and suggestive passages in the entire Bible that shows the mighty power of prayer to transform us into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Himself is found in 2 Corinthians 3:18: But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror [reflecting as a mirror] the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. The thought here is that the Lord is the sun, and you and I are mirrors. Just as a mischievous boy on a bright sunshiny day will catch the rays of the sun in a piece of broken mirror and reflect them into your eyes with almost blinding power, so we as mirrors, when we commune with God, catch the rays of His moral glory and reflect them out upon the world from glory to glory. That is, each new time we commune with Him, we catch something new of His glory and reflect it out upon the world.

You remember the story of Moses. It is not folklore, but it is actual history. Moses went up into the mount and stayed there alone for forty days with God, gazing upon that indescribable glory. He caught so much of the glory in his own face that when he came down from the mount, though he himself did not know it, his face so shone that he had to put a veil over it to hide the blinding glory of it from his fellow Israelites (Exodus 34:29-35).

When we go up into the mount of prayer, away from the world, alone with God, and remain a long while alone with God, we catch the rays of His glory. When we come down to our fellow men, not so much our faces shine (though I do believe that sometimes even our faces shine), but our characters shine with the glory that we have been beholding. Then we reflect out upon the world the moral glory of God from glory to glory. Each new time of communion with Him catches something new of His glory to reflect out upon the world. This is the secret of becoming much like God: remain a long while alone with God. If you won't stay long with Him, you won't be much like Him.

One of the most remarkable men in Scotland's history was John Welch, son-in-law of John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. John Welch is not as well known as his famous father-in-law, but in some respects he was a far more remarkable man than John Knox himself. Most people have the idea that it was John Knox who prayed, "Give me Scotland or I die." It was not; it was John Welch, his son-in-law. John Welch said before he died that he considered the day poorly spent if he did not spend seven or eight hours in secret prayer.

After John Welch died, an old Scotchman who had known him from his boyhood said of John Welch, "John Welch was a type of Christ." Of course that was an inaccurate use of language, but what the old Scotchman meant was that Jesus Christ had stamped the imprint of His character upon John Welch. When had Jesus Christ done it? In those seven or eight hours of daily communion with Himself.

I do not suppose that God has called many of us, if any of us, to put seven or eight hours a day into prayer, but I am confident God has called most of us, if not everyone of us, to put more time into prayer than we now do. That is one of the great secrets of holiness. Indeed, it is the only way in which we can become really holy and continue to be holy.

Some years ago we often sang a hymn called "Take Time to be Holy." I wish we sang it more in these days. It takes time to be holy. One cannot be holy in a hurry, and much of the time that it takes to be holy must go into secret prayer. Some people express surprise that professing Christians today are so little like their Lord, but when I stop to think how little time the average Christian today puts into secret prayer, the thing that astonishes me is not that we are so little like the Lord, but that we are as much like the Lord as we are when we take so little time for secret prayer.

Prayer will bring the power of God into our work

Not only will prayer promote our personal holiness as almost nothing else, but prayer will also bring the power of God into our work. We read in Isaiah 40:31: Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.

It is the privilege of every child of God to have the power of God in their service. The verse just quoted tells us how to obtain it, and that is by waiting upon the Lord. Sometimes you will hear people stand up in a Christian meeting, not so frequently perhaps in these days as in former days, and say, "I am trying to serve God in my poor, weak way." Well, if you are trying to serve God in your poor, weak way, quit it. Your duty is to serve God in His strong, triumphant way.

You say that you have no natural ability; then get supernatural ability. The religion of Jesus Christ is a supernatural religion from start to finish, and we should live our lives in supernatural power – the power of God through Jesus Christ, and we should perform our service with supernatural power – the power of God ministered by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ.

You say that you have no natural gifts. Then get supernatural gifts. The Holy Spirit is promised to every believer in order that he may obtain the supernatural gifts that qualify him for the particular service to which God calls him. The Holy Spirit distributes to each one individually just as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11). We can have the power of God if we will only seek it by prayer, in any and every area of service to which God calls us.

Are you a mother or a father? Do you desire power from God to bring your own children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord? God commands you to do it, and especially commands the father to do it. God says in Ephesians 6:4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

God never commands the impossible, and since He commands fathers (and the mothers also) to bring up our children in the discipline and instruction (or the nurture and admonition) of the Lord, it is possible for us to do it.

If any one of your children is not saved, the first blame lies at your own door. Paul said to the jailer in Philippi, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household (Acts 16:31). Yes, it is the solemn duty of every father and mother to have every one of their children saved – but we can never accomplish it unless we are much in prayer to God for power to do it.

In my first pastorate, I had as a member of my church a most excellent Christian woman, but she had a little boy of six who was one of the most incorrigible youngsters I ever knew in my life. He was the terror of the community. He was the most difficult boy, I think, I ever knew. One Sunday at the close of the morning service his mother came to me and said, "You know my son."

"Yes," I replied, "I know him." Everybody in town knew him.

Then she said, "You know he is not a very good boy."

"Yes," I replied, "I know he is not a very good boy." Indeed, that was a decidedly understated way of putting it; in point of fact he was the terror of the neighborhood.

Then this heavy-hearted mother asked, "What can I do?"

I replied, "Have you ever tried prayer?"

"Why," she said, "of course I pray."

"Oh," I said, "that is not what I mean. Have you ever asked God specifically to regenerate your boy and expected Him to do it?"

"I do not think I have ever been as specific as that."

"Well," I said, "you go right home and be just as specific as that."

She went home, and she was just as specific as that; and I think it was from that very day, certainly from that week, that boy was a transformed boy and grew up into fine young manhood.

Oh, mothers and fathers, it is your privilege to have every one of your children saved. But it costs something to have them saved. It costs your spending much time alone with God, being much in prayer. It also costs your making those sacrifices and straightening out those things in your life that are wrong. It costs fulfilling the conditions of prevailing prayer.

If any of you have unsaved children, get alone with God today and ask Him to show you what it is in your own life that is responsible for the present condition of your children. Then straighten it out at once and get down alone before God and hold on to Him in earnest prayer for the definite conversion of each one of your children. Do not rest until, by prayer and by putting forth every effort, you know beyond question that every one of your children is definitely and positively converted and born again.

Are you a Sunday school teacher? Do you want to see every one of your Sunday school scholars converted? That is primarily what you are a Sunday school teacher for – not merely to teach Bible geography and Bible history, or even Bible doctrine – but to get every student in your class saved. Do you want power from on high to enable you to get them saved? Ask God for it.

When Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in Sydney, Australia, the meetings were held in the town hall, which seated about five thousand people. The crowds were so large, though, that some days we had to divide the crowds and have only women in the afternoon and only men at night.

One Sunday afternoon the Sydney town hall was packed with women. I gave out the invitation, asking those to stand who would accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, surrender to Him as their Lord and Master, begin to confess Him as such before the world, and strive to live every day from then on to please Him in every way. Over on my left, a whole row of young women of about twenty years of age stood to their feet. There were eighteen women in all. As I saw them stand side by side, I said to myself, "That is someone's Bible class." They afterward came forward with the other women who came to make a public confession of their acceptance of Jesus Christ. When the meeting was over, a young lady came to me, her face filled with a smile. She said, "That is my Bible class. I have been praying for their conversion, and every one of them has accepted Jesus Christ today."

When we were holding meetings in Bristol, England, a prominent manufacturer in Exeter had a Bible class in that city. Twenty-two men were in the class. The manufacturer invited all of them to go to Bristol with him and hear me preach. Twenty-one of them agreed to go. At that meeting, twenty of them accepted Christ. The twenty-first man accepted Christ in the train on the way home, and then they all, on their return, gathered around the remaining one who would not go, and he also accepted Christ.

That man had been praying for the conversion of the members of his class, and he was willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get his prayers answered. What a revival we would have here in this city if every Sunday school teacher would start praying the way they should for the conversion of every student in the class!

Are you in work that is more public, a preacher perhaps, or a speaker from the public platform? Do you desire power in that work? Ask for it. If we would spend more nights before God on our faces in prayer, there would be more days of power when we faced our people!
Chapter 2

The Definite and Desirable Results of Definite and Determined Prayer

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. (James 5:16)

All we have to say in this chapter is based on James 5:16: The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. These words of God set forth prayer as a working force – as something that brings things to pass that would not come to pass if it were not for prayer. This comes out even more clearly in the Revised Version: The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working. This translation is not only a more accurate translation, but it is also a more suggestive one. It tells us that prayer is something that works, and that it avails much because of its working. Yes, prayer certainly does work.

A contrast is often drawn by many between praying and working. I knew a man once who was an officer in a Sunday school in Brooklyn, and the Sunday school superintendent one day called on him to pray. He arose and said, "I am not a praying Christian. I am a working Christian." But praying is working. It is the most effective work that anyone can do; that is, we can often bring more to pass by praying than we can by any other form of effort we might put forth. Furthermore, prayer, if it is real prayer, the kind of prayer that avails much with God, is often harder work than any other kind of effort. It takes more out of a person than any other kind of effort.

When Mr. Alexander and I went to Liverpool for our second series of meetings there, Musgrave Brown, from one of the leading Church of England parishes in the city, was chairman of our committee. His health gave out the very first week of the meetings, and he was ordered to Switzerland by his doctor. Soon after reaching Switzerland, he wrote to me saying, "I hoped to be of so much help in these meetings and anticipated so much from them, but here I am, way off here in Switzerland, ordered here by my doctor, and now all I can do is to pray." Then he added, "But after all, that is the greatest thing anyone can do, is it not?" Then he still further added, "And real prayer takes more out of a person than anything else, does it not?"

Yes, it often does. Real praying is a costly exercise, but it pays far more than it costs. It is not easy work, but it is the most profitable of all work. We can accomplish more by putting time and strength into prayer than we can by putting the same amount of time and strength into anything else.

You will notice that in the Revised Version, the word "supplication" is substituted for the word "prayer." The reason for this is that there are a number of Greek words that are translated "prayer," and they have different shades of meaning – sometimes very significant shades of meaning. The Greek word that is translated as "prayer" in this passage is a very significant word: it sets forth prayer as the definite expression of a deeply felt need. Indeed, the primary meaning of the word is "need." Therefore, our text teaches that definite and determined prayer to God avails much.

The Greek word translated "avails" is also a very expressive and significant word. Its primary meaning is "to be strong," "to have power or force," and then "to exercise power." So the thought of our text is that definite and determined prayer exerts much power in its working. It achieves great things.

In the verses that immediately follow James 5:16, we are told of the astounding things Elijah brought to pass by his prayers, how he closed the rains of heaven for three years and six months so that there was not a drop of rain for that long period. The Old Testament account tells us that not only was there not a drop of rain, but furthermore, there was not a drop of dew (1 Kings 17:1). Then when the proper time had come, Elijah prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit (James 5:18). As Mr. Moody used to put it in his graphic way, "Elijah locked up heaven for three years and six months and put the key in his pocket."

There is no particular need that we know of why we should stop the rain for three years and six months, or, for that matter, for three days; but there is a most imperative need that we should bring some other things to pass, and there is no other way in which we can bring them to pass except by praying for them – by definite and determined prayer. So we are brought face-to-face with the tremendously important question: What are some of the definite things that are greatly to be desired at the present time that prayer will bring to pass?

In the previous chapter, we saw two immeasurably important things that prayer will accomplish. First, it will promote our own personal piety, our individual holiness, our individual growth into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Second, it will bring the power of God into our work. Now we will discover from a study of the Bible some other very important things that the right kind of praying will bring to pass.

Prayer Will Save Others

Turn to 1 John 5:16: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death.

This is one of the most remarkable statements in the whole Bible on the subject of prayer and its amazing power. The statement of this verse is not only most remarkable, but it is also most encouraging. God tells us here that prayer will not only bring blessing to the one who prays, but it will bring the greatest of all blessings – the blessing of eternal life – to others, to those for whom we pray. It tells us that if we see someone sinning a sin not unto death (that is, committing any sin except the one unpardonable sin), we can go to God in prayer for that person, and in answer to our prayer, God will give life, eternal life, to this one for whom we have prayed.

This passage, of course, is often taken to teach divine healing. It is often interpreted as if the "life" here spoken of were mere natural or physical life, and that by our prayer we could get physical life for one who was sick because of his sinning, but who had not sinned the sin that would result in his being removed from this world. This is not only an incorrect interpretation, but it is an impossible interpretation. The apostle John in his writings uses two different Greek words for "life." One of them signifies physical life, and the other signifies spiritual or eternal life. The word used for eternal or spiritual life is never used of natural or physical life. I have looked up every passage where John uses this word in his Gospel, in his epistles, and in the book of Revelation, and not in one single instance does he use the word for anything but spiritual or eternal life.

This is the word John uses in this passage, and the thought of this passage, then, is not that one may obtain physical life or deliverance from natural death by praying for one who has sinned, but that he can obtain eternal life, salvation in its fullest sense, for the one who has sinned, but who has not sinned unto death. It is a wonderful thought and a thought full of comfort and encouragement.

We can accomplish more for the salvation of others by praying for them than we can in any other way. I do not mean by this that when we feel our responsibility for the salvation of someone else we should merely pray for them and do nothing else. That is what many people do; they are not willing to do their duty and go to them and speak to them about Christ, and so they only go to God in prayer. After they have prayed for the person's salvation, they flatter themselves that they have done their whole duty, and thus make their prayer an excuse for their cowardice, laziness, and neglect of duty. That kind of praying is a mockery. It is simply an attempt to cover up and excuse our neglect of duty, and God will pay no attention whatever to prayers of that kind.

God never gave us the wonderful privilege of prayer as a substitute to cover up our laziness and neglect of duty. If we are willing for God to use us to answer our own prayers, willing to do anything that God may guide us to do to secure the salvation of those for whom we are praying, willing to do anything in our power to bring about the salvation of those for whom we pray, then we can accomplish far more for their salvation by praying for them than in any other way.

Did you ever think how our Lord Jesus Himself accomplished things by praying that even He could not accomplish in any other way? Take, for example, the case of Simon Peter. He was full of self-confidence, and therefore was in imminent danger. Our Lord tried by His teachings and by His warnings to deliver Peter from his self-confidence. He told Peter clearly about his coming temptation and of his fall, but Peter, filled with self-confidence, replied, Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away (Matthew 26:33). He said, I will lay down my life for You (John 13:37).

The teaching failed and the warning failed, and then our Lord took to prayer. He said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22:31-32). Satan got what he asked. He got Simon into his sieve and sifted him, and oh, how poor Simon was battered and bruised against the edges of Satan's sieve! But all the time Satan sifted, our Lord Jesus prayed, and Simon was perfectly safe even though he was in Satan's sieve. All Satan succeeded in doing with him was to sift some of the chaff out of him, and Simon came out of Satan's sieve purer wheat than he ever was before.

It was our Lord's prayer for him that transformed the Simon who denied his Lord three times, who denied Him with oaths and curses in the courtyard of Annas and Caiaphas, into Peter, the man of rock, who faced the very court that sentenced Jesus to death and hurled defiance in their teeth and said, Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead – by this name this man stands here before you in good health (Acts 4:8-10).

Prayer will reach down into the deepest depths of sin and ruin and take hold of men and women who seem lost beyond all possibility or hope of redemption, and will lift them up until they are made ready for a place beside the Son of God upon the throne.

Many years ago in Chicago, in the early days of Mr. Moody's work in that city, there was a very desperate man who used to attend the meetings and try to disturb them. He was a Scotchman who had been reared in a Christian home by a godly mother, but he had wandered far from the teachings of his childhood. He was a man dreaded even by other wicked men in Chicago.

One night he stood outside the old Tabernacle with a pitcher of beer in his hand, offering a free drink to everybody who came out of the Tabernacle. At other times he would come into the meetings and the after-meetings and try and disturb the workers. One night Major Whittle was dealing with two young men about their souls, and this desperate Scotchman stood near mocking until Major Whittle turned to the young men and said, "If you place any value upon your souls, I advise you not to have anything to do with that desperate man." The Scotchman just laughed.

But his old mother over in Scotland was praying, and one night he went to bed just as wicked and godless as ever, and in answer to his mother's prayer, God awakened him in the middle of the night and brought to his mind a text of Scripture that he had forgotten was in the Bible. The verse was Romans 4:5: To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. That verse of Scripture went home to his heart, and he accepted Christ without getting out of bed. He became one of the most active and most useful members of Moody's church. When I was pastor of the church, he was one of the elders. He later visited people for the church, and he was used by God to lead many to Christ.

Sometime after his own conversion, he went to Scotland to visit his old mother. He had a brother in Glasgow in business, and this brother was trying to be an agnostic. But the godly mother and converted son prayed for this brother. He was converted and gave himself up to God's work, went to the Free Church College to prepare for foreign missionary work, and for thirty years was a medical missionary in India under the Free Church of Scotland Missionary Board.

But there was still another brother, a wanderer on the face of the earth. They did not know where he was, though they supposed he was somewhere on the high seas. The godly mother and converted brother knelt and prayed for this wandering son and brother. As they prayed, that son, unknown to them, was on the deck of a vessel on the other side of the globe, in the Bay of Bengal, not far from Calcutta. The Spirit of God fell upon that son on the deck of that vessel, and he was converted. He was for many years a member of the Moody Church when I was pastor there, and when I went out to Los Angeles, he followed me and became a member of our church there, where he died a triumphant death. Prayer had reached halfway around the world and saved instantly a man who seemed utterly beyond hope.

When I was in England holding meetings in the city of Manchester, one of the leading businessmen came to me and asked me to pray for the conversion of his son. He said, "My son is a graduate of Cambridge University and is a bright lawyer. He has a wife and two children, but he has left them, and we do not know where he is. Will you pray for his conversion?" I promised him that I would.

Some months later this man came to me at the Keswick Convention and said, "I have learned where my son is. He is in Vancouver, British Columbia. Do you know any minister in Vancouver whom I could contact?" I told him the name of a friend who was a minister of the gospel in Vancouver, and he sent a message to him. The next day he came to me and said, "We were too late. The bird has flown, and he has left Vancouver. Will you continue to pray for him?" I said I would.

At the close of the same year, when we began our second series of meetings in Liverpool, this son had returned to England and was in Liverpool, although his father did not know. The son came to our very first Sunday afternoon meeting and was one of the first ones to accept Christ, and he immediately began to study to become a minister under the bishop of Liverpool.

Let me tell you one more instance of the power of prayer to save, when everything else fails. Very soon after my own conversion, God laid a certain man upon my heart, my own brother, whom I greatly loved, and I began to pray every day for his conversion. After having prayed for him for some time, I thought to myself, "I will spend a whole night in prayer for his conversion." I spent the night on my knees, though I must confess that while the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak (Matthew 26:41), and part of the night I fell asleep on my knees.

The next morning I thought, "You spent the night in prayer. Now write to him." I was in New Haven and he was in New York, and I wrote to him, urging him to accept Christ. Very soon I got a letter from him making fun of me for what I was doing. Then the devil tempted me to give up. He said, "Here you spent the night in prayer for him, and this is the only result. What is the use of praying?" But for once, at least, the devil did not succeed in deceiving me or discouraging me, and I kept on praying for him. I prayed for him every day for fifteen years. In the meantime, he had moved to Chicago, and so had I. I called upon him at the old Sherman House where he was living, but he was more profane than usual – just to hurt my feelings. I ceased speaking to him about God, but I kept on praying.

The very first winter that I was in Chicago, as I was praying for him one morning, God said to me, "You do not need to pray any longer. I have heard your prayer, and he will be converted." I never asked God again for his conversion, but every morning I looked up to God and said to Him, "Heavenly Father, I thank You that You have heard my prayer, and now I am waiting to see it."

About two weeks passed by. My brother had been confined to his bed by rheumatism, and I had called on him at his home. Now he was up, and he came over to our home for dinner. After dinner, I invited him to stay all night. He replied, "Well, I think I will. I am just up from rheumatism, and it is damp out tonight. I am afraid to go out. Yes, I will stay all night."

When he awoke the next morning, his rheumatism was back to the extent that his feet were so swollen that he was unable to get his shoes on, and he was shut up in my house for two weeks. My day of opportunity had come. I did not speak directly to him about accepting Christ, but the children running in and out of his room seemed to speak more about the Lord Jesus than usual, although they always loved to talk about Him. My friends who came into our home and saw him there in the house of the minister took it for granted that he was a Christian, and they seemed to talk more than usual about Jesus Christ.

After two weeks, he was able to get his shoes on, and after breakfast he started down La Salle Avenue with me, intending to go to his own home when I went to my office.

We had walked about half a block when he turned to me suddenly and said, "Archie, I am thinking of going into temperance work. How do you begin?"

I replied, "The only way that I know to begin temperance work is by first of all becoming a Christian yourself."

"Why," he replied, "I always supposed I was a Christian."

I said, "You have the strangest way of showing it of any person I ever knew in my life."

He asked, "How do you become a Christian?"

I answered, "Come over to my office and I will tell you."

He went over to my office, and as Mr. Moody was away, I took him up to Mr. Moody's office. We sat down, and I explained to him the way of life. He was nearly eight years older than I, yet I explained to him the way of life just as I would have explained it to a child. Like a child, he listened and acted, and he knelt down then and there and accepted Jesus Christ. He was preaching within a year. He preached almost up to the end of his life.

He was supplying a Presbyterian pulpit forty miles from Chicago. I had been down East visiting old friends of his and mine. I came back to Chicago and heard that he was not doing well, so I took the train and went out to see him. I found that he had not preached the day before, though he had preached the Sunday before that. I began to talk to him about old friends of ours in New York State. "Oh," he said, "never mind that. Let's have a time of prayer." I spent the whole day with him. I was going south the next day to a convention of students from southern universities, and I slept that night at the Bible Institute in order to take an early train.

Very early in the morning, before I was up, there came a knock at my door. I went to the door, and one of my students stood there with a telegram in his hand. I opened it and read, "Your brother passed away at two o'clock this morning." Again I hurried out to the place where he had been supplying the pulpit, and as I went into that quiet room and turned back the white sheet from the face of my brother as he lay there silent in death, I thanked God that for fifteen long years I had believed in a God who answered prayer.

Oh, men and women, do you have loved ones who are unsaved? There is a way to reach them. That way is by the throne of God. By the way of the throne of God, you can reach out to the uttermost parts of the earth and get hold of your loved ones of whom you have lost all track. God knows where they are, and God hears and answers prayer.

At the close of a meeting in a certain city, a lady came to me and said, "I have a brother who is more than sixty years old. I have been praying for his salvation for years, but I have given up. I will begin again."

Within two weeks, she came to me and said, "I have heard from my brother, and he has accepted Christ."

Yes, yes, yes: The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much, and if we would only pray more and be more sure that we had met the conditions of prevailing prayer, we would see multitudes more of men and women flocking to Jesus Christ. Oh, that we might pray as we should, as intelligently as we should, as specifically as we should, and as earnestly and determinedly as we should, for the salvation of the men, women, and children whom we know are unsaved.

Prayer Will Bring Blessing and Power to Ministers of the Word

Now turn to Ephesians 6:17-20:

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

Here Paul urgently requests the earnest prayers of the believers in Ephesus for himself, that in answer to their prayers he may preach the gospel with boldness and with power. Paul made a similar request of every church to which he wrote, with one striking exception. That one exception was the church in Galatia. That church was a backsliding church, and he did not care to have a backsliding church praying for him.

In every other case, he urged the church to pray for him. Here we see the power of prayer to bring blessing, boldness, and efficiency to ministers of the gospel. A minister can be made a man of power by prayer, and he can be unmade and deprived of power by people failing to pray for him. Any church can have a mighty man of God for its pastor if it is willing to pay the price – and that price is not a big salary, but great praying.

Do you have a pastor whom you do not like, a pastor that may be inefficient, or perhaps a pastor who does not clearly know nor preach the truth? Do you want a new minister? I can tell you how to get him. Pray for the one you have until God makes him new.

Many years ago in one of the Cornish parishes of the Church of England, the vicar was not even a converted man. He had little interest in the real things of God. His interest was largely in restoring old churches and in matters of ritual. There were a great many godly people in that parish, and they began to pray to God to convert their minister. Then they would go to church every Sunday and watch for the answer to their prayers. One Lord's Day when he rose to speak, he had not uttered many sentences before the people of spiritual discernment realized that their prayers had been answered. A cry arose all over the church: "The parson's converted, the parson's converted" – and it was true. He was not only converted, but he was endued with power from on high. For many years after, God used that man all over England for the conversion of sinners, for the blessing of all saints, and for the awakening of churches, as almost no other man in the Church of England.

There was a church in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, that had a very brilliant man for its pastor, but he was not sound in doctrine. There were three godly men in that church who realized that their pastor was not preaching the truth, but they did not go around among the congregation stirring up dissatisfaction with the pastor. They agreed to meet together every Saturday night to pray long into the night for their minister. Saturday night after Saturday night they met in earnest and prolonged prayer, and then Sunday morning they would go to church and sit in their places and watch for an answer to their prayers.

One Sunday morning when the minister rose to speak, he was just as brilliant and just as gifted as ever, but it soon became evident that God had transformed his ideas and transformed the man. Dr. Theodore Cuyler affirmed that God sent the city of Hartford the greatest revival that city ever had, through that minister who was transformed by the prayers of his members. Oh, if we would talk less to one another against our ministers, and more to God on their behalf, we would have far better ministers than we have now.

Do you have you a minister whom you do like? Do you want him to be even better and far more effective than he is today? Pray for him until God gives him new wisdom and clothes him with new power.

Have you ever heard how Dwight L. Moody became a worldwide evangelist? After the great fire in Chicago, Mr. Moody stayed in Chicago long enough to get money together to feed the poor and to provide a new building for his own work, and then he went to England for a rest. He did not intend to preach at all, but intended to hear some of the great preachers on the other side of the water, such as Charles Spurgeon, George Müller, and others.

Moody was invited to preach one Sunday in a Congregational church in the north of London, of which a Mr. Lessey was the pastor. He accepted the invitation. Sunday morning as he preached, he had great difficulty. As he told the story to me many years afterward, he said, "I had no power, no liberty; it seemed like pulling a heavy train up a steep grade, and as I preached I said to myself, 'What a fool I was to consent to preach. I came here to hear others, and here I am preaching.' As I drew to the close of my sermon, I had a sense of relief that I was so near through, and then the thought came to me, 'Well, I've got to do it again tonight.'

"I tried to get Mr. Lessey to release me from preaching that night, but he would not consent. I went to the evening service with a heavy heart. But I had not been preaching long when it seemed as if the powers of an unseen world had fallen upon that audience. As I drew to the close of my sermon, I got courage to draw the net. I asked all who would then and there accept Christ to rise, and about five hundred people arose to their feet. I thought there must be some mistake, so I asked them to sit down. Then I said, 'There will be an after-meeting in the vestry, and if any of you will really accept Christ, meet the pastor and me in the vestry.'

"There was a door at each side of the pulpit into the vestry, and people began to stream through these doors into the vestry. I turned to Mr. Lessey and said, 'Mr. Lessey, who are these people?'

"He replied, 'I do not know.' He said that some of the people went to his church, and he did not think they were Christians.

"We went into the vestry and I repeated the invitation in a stronger form. They all rose again. I still thought that there must be some mistake, and I asked them to be seated again. I repeated the invitation in a still stronger form, and again they all arose. I still thought there must be some mistake. I said to the people, 'I am going to Ireland tomorrow, but your pastor will be here tomorrow night. If you really mean what you have said tonight, meet him here.'

"After I reached Ireland, I received a telegram from Mr. Lessey saying, 'Mr. Moody, there were more people out on Monday night than on Sunday night. A revival has broken out in our church, and you must come back and help me.'"

Mr. Moody hurried back from Dublin to London and held a series of meetings in Mr. Lessey's church that added hundreds of people to the churches of North London, and that was what led to the invitation that took him over to England later for the great work that stirred the whole world.

After Mr. Moody had told me that story, I said, "Mr. Moody, somebody must have been praying."

"Oh," he said, "did I not tell you that? That is the point of the whole story. There were two sisters in that church, one of whom was bedridden; the other one heard me that Sunday morning. She went home and said to her sister, 'Who do you suppose preached for us this morning?'

"The sister replied, 'I do not know.' Then she said, 'Guess,' and the sister guessed all the men whom Mr. Lessey was in the habit of having preach for him, but her sister said 'No.'

"Then her sister asked, 'Who did preach for us this morning?'

"She replied, 'Mr. Moody of Chicago.'

"No sooner had she said it than her sister turned pale as death and said, 'What! Mr. Moody of Chicago! I have read of him in an American paper, and I have been praying to God to send him to London and to send him to our church. If I had known he was to preach this morning, I would not have eaten breakfast, but would have spent the whole morning in fasting and prayer. Now, sister, go out, lock the door, do not let anyone come to see me, and do not let them send me any dinner. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in fasting and prayer.'"

And pray she did, and God heard and answered. God is just as ready to hear and answer you as He was to answer that bedridden saint. To whatever church you belong, and whoever your pastor is, you can make him a man of power. If he is a man of power already, you can make him a man of even greater power.

Will you bear with me while I give you a page out of my own experience? When I went to Chicago, it was not to take the pastorate of a church, but it was to be superintendent of the Bible Institute and of the Chicago Evangelization Society. After I had been there four years, the pulpit of the Moody Church became vacant, and Mr. Moody and I asked them to call a very gifted preacher from Aberdeen, Scotland, which they did. While we waited to hear from him as to whether he would accept the call, I filled the pulpit, and God so blessed the preaching of His Word that quite a number of the people were praying that the minister from Scotland would not accept the call, and he did not.

Then they called me to the pastorate. I could not see how I could take it. My hands were full with the Institute, the lectures, the correspondence, and other duties. But Mr. Moody urged me to accept the call. He said, "That is what I have been wanting all the time. If you will only accept the call, I will give you all the help that you ask for, and I will provide men to help you in the Institute," so I accepted the call.

The first sermon that I preached after taking the pastorate of the church was about prayer, and in it I said some of the things that I have said here. As I drew toward the close of my sermon, I said, "How glad your new pastor would be if he knew that some of you men and women of God sat up late Saturday night, or rose early Sunday morning, to pray for your new pastor," and many of those dear saints of God took me at my word. Many of them stayed up late Saturday night praying for me, and many of them rose early Sunday morning to pray for me; and God answered prayer.

When I took the pastorate, the church building would seat twenty-two hundred people – twelve hundred on the floor and one thousand in the gallery; but in the preceding years only the floor of the church was filled, and the gallery only opened on special occasions, such as when Mr. Moody was there or something of that kind. Almost immediately it became necessary to open the gallery, and then in the evening service every inch of standing room would be taken, until we packed twenty-seven hundred people into that building by actual count, and the authorities required us to no longer allow people to sit on the stairs or stand in the aisles. Then we had an overflow meeting in the rooms below that would seat eleven hundred, and often flowed into the Institute's lecture hall also.

But that was not the best of it. There were conversions every Sunday. Indeed, there were conversions in and about the church practically every day of the week. The great majority of those who were converted did not unite with the Moody Church. They were strangers passing through the city, or people who came from other churches. It got to be quite the custom for some ministers to send their people over to our church to have them converted, and then they would go back and join the churches to which they properly belonged. So only a comparatively small proportion of those converted united with our church, yet the smallest number that we ever received into the church in any one of the eight years that I remained there as active pastor was two hundred fifty. In those eight years, I had the joy of giving the right hand of fellowship to more than two thousand new members.

It continued that same way the four years that I was only nominally pastor and not at the church at all, under the different men who came there and whom the people prayed into power. It went on the same way under Dr. Dixon's pastorate.

It was not so much the men who were preaching as it was the people behind them who were praying that accomplished such great things for God. Then when I started around the world, those people still followed me with their prayers. After I returned, it was reported by someone who claimed to know, that there were over 102,000 people who made a definite profession of accepting Christ in the different places I visited in those months that I was away.

After I came back after my first eighteen months' absence, Dr. Dixon met me one day, and he said to me (this was before he became pastor of the church), "Torrey, when we heard the things that were done in Australia and elsewhere, we were all surprised. We didn't think it was in you." He was perfectly right about that; it wasn't in me. Then he added, "But when I went out and supplied your church for a month and heard your people pray for you, I understood it."

Oh, any church can have a minister who is a man of power, a minister who is baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, if they are willing to pay the price. The price is prayer, much prayer, much real prayer, prayer in the Holy Spirit.

* * *

 Temperance work was Christian work promoting abstinence from alcohol.
Chapter 3

What Prayer Can Do for Churches, for the Nation, and for All Nations

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:18)

My subject in this chapter is what prayer can do. You will find the text in Ephesians 6:18: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

What a tremendous emphasis Paul puts here upon the importance and power of prayer, and upon the imperative need of intense earnestness and never-wearying persistence in prayer. Listen to the text again: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

We have already seen in our studies some of the things of the greatest importance that are brought about by prayer and that cannot be brought to pass in any other way. We have seen that true prayer will promote our own personal piety, our individual holiness, and our individual growth into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as almost nothing else except the study of the Word of God.

We have seen that prayer will bring power into our work, and that it is the privilege of every child of God to have the power of God manifested in his work in whatever line of service God calls him to – and that this power is obtained in no other way except by prayer. We have seen that prayer avails mightily for others as well as for ourselves, and that we can accomplish more for the salvation of others by praying for them than we can in any other way. We have seen that prayer avails for the salvation of men and women who are so sunken in sin, and so far from God, that there seems no possible hope of redemption for them. We have seen furthermore that prayer brings power to the minister of the gospel, that any church that is willing to pay the price can have a man of power for its pastor, and that the price is not a big salary, but big praying.

We will make other discoveries now of the wonderful things, and things that are greatly to be desired, that can be brought to pass by prayer and that can be brought to pass in no other way.

Andrew Murray has said, "God's child can conquer everything by prayer. Is it any wonder that Satan does his utmost to snatch that weapon from the Christian or to hinder him in the use of it?" Well, if the devil is doing "his utmost to snatch that weapon from the Christian or to hinder him in the use of it," I want to do my utmost to restore that mighty weapon to the hands of the church and to stir you up to use this weapon in mighty and victorious onslaught on Satan and his forces.

It is true that we have a terrific fight on hand, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12), but we can win this fight by prayer. Prayer brings God on the field, and the devil is no match for Him. I say we can win this fight, as terrible as it is and as mighty and cunning as our enemies are, by praying, and we cannot win it in any other way.

People are constantly appearing who claim to have discovered some new way of defeating the devil by some cunning scheme that they have devised – by the social gospel, for example, or by some other humanly devised method. But there is no new way that will win. The old way, the Bible way, the way of definite, determined, and persistent prayer in the Holy Spirit, will win every time.

Prayer Will Bring Blessing to Churches

Let us now look at something else in addition to the important things already mentioned that prayer will do. Turn to 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13: Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you; so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.

In our last study, we saw the church praying for Paul. In this passage, we see Paul praying for the church. Prayer will bring blessing – definite, rich, and immeasurable blessing – to the church. Praying will do more to make the church what it ought to be than anything else we can do. Prayer will do more to root out heresy than all the heresy trials that were ever held. Prayer will do more to straighten out tangles and misunderstandings and unhappy complications in the life of a church than all the councils and conferences that were ever held. Prayer will do more to bring a deep, lasting, and sweeping revival – a revival that is real and lasting and altogether of the right kind – than all the organizations that were ever devised by man.

The history of the church of Jesus Christ on earth has been largely a history of revivals. When you read many of the church histories that have been written, the impression that you naturally get is that the history of the church of Jesus Christ here on earth has been very largely a history of misunderstandings, disputes, doctrinal differences, and bitter conflicts. But if you will study the history of the living church, you will find it has been very largely a history of revivals.

Humanly speaking, the church of Jesus Christ owes its very existence today to revivals. Time and time again, the church has seemed to be on the verge of utter shipwreck; but just then God sent a great revival and saved it. If you will study the history of revivals, you will find that every real revival in the church has been the child of prayer. There have been revivals without much preaching, and there have been revivals with absolutely no organization, but there has never been a mighty revival without mighty praying.

Take the great revival that so marvelously blessed our whole nation in 1857. How did that revival come about? A humble city missionary in the city of New York, named Jeremiah Lanphier, became greatly burdened because of the state of the church. He got hold of two other men who were likeminded, and they began to pray for a revival. Then they opened a daily, noon meeting for prayer and invited others.

These meetings were very poorly attended at first. On one occasion, if I remember correctly, there were only two people present. I think that on another occasion the only person present was this humble city missionary himself, this very obscure man, Lanphier, whose sisters I afterward knew well and whose cousin was a member of the first church of which I was pastor. Soon, though, the interest began to deepen and large crowds began to flock to the meetings for prayer. Such throngs came that it became necessary to appoint other prayer meetings. I have been told, and I think correctly, that after a while, prayer meetings were held every hour of the day and night in New York City. Not only the churches were used for prayer meetings, but theaters and other public places were also used, and these places were crowded with praying men and praying women.

The revival of prayer spread from New York to Philadelphia and to other cities, and then swept over the entire country. A young man came into one of the meetings in Chicago on one occasion and said that he had just come back from a trip out west, and that at every place where he had stopped on the way back to Chicago, prayer meetings were being held.

In New York City, at one of the Presbyterian ministers' meetings, Dr. Gardiner Spring, who was perhaps at that time the most prominent minister in New York, said to the assembled brethren, "It is evident that a revival has come to us, and we ministers must preach."

Someone replied, "Well, if anyone must preach, you must preach the first sermon, for you are the best qualified to do it of any man in the city."

So it was announced that on a certain day Dr. Gardiner Spring would preach, but no more people came out to hear the preaching than came out to the prayer meetings, so they stopped the preaching and went on praying. The whole emphasis was on prayer, and this whole nation was shaken by the power of God as it had never been shaken before, and perhaps has never been shaken since.

That is the kind of a revival I am longing to see here in our city, throughout our whole land, and throughout the world. I do not want a revival where there is great preaching and marvelous singing and all kinds of entertaining antics by preachers or singers, or skillful managers or manipulators, but I want a revival where there is mighty praying and wonderful displays of the convicting, converting, and regenerating power of the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer.

Don't come to me and tell me what this man or that man, or this woman or that woman, is doing that you think is wrong or that you think is right. Go to God and tell Him if you like, but it is far more important that you pray to Him. Pray, pray, pray for Him to bless this church and to bless other churches of this city, and to bless the whole land – yes, and to bless every land.

The news of what God was doing in 1857 in America spread to the north of Ireland, and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland sent a commission to America to study the work and to come back and report. When they came back, they gave the next General Assembly a very glowing report of what was being done in America. People began to pray that Ireland would also have a similar visitation from God.

Four young men in the little town of Kells, in the north of Ireland, met together every Saturday night to pray for a revival, and they spent the whole night in prayer. They were humble men. One was a farmer, one was a blacksmith, one was a schoolteacher, and I do not recall what the fourth was, but I know he was in some humble sphere of life. When Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in London, and God was working there in great power, one of these four men, at that time living in Glasgow, sent his grandson down to London to consult with us and to observe the work and bring back a report to him as to whether it was a real work of God or not.

After these young men had been praying for a while, they went out to try and preach, but their attempt was a failure, so they went back and kept on praying. God heard their prayer. The work went on in such marvelous power in some parts of Ireland that courts adjourned because there were no cases to try, jails were closed because there were no prisoners to incarcerate, and in some places even the grain stood unharvested in the fields because people were so taken up with things of God and of eternity that they had no time to attend even to the things that ordinarily are so necessary. Many of the most notorious, hardened, and hopeless sinners in the land were converted and thoroughly transformed.

Let me tell you how the revival came to Coleraine, Ireland. I know something about that, because when Mr. Alexander and I were in Belfast in 1903, they were about to celebrate at Coleraine the forty-third anniversary of how the revival came to Coleraine. They sent a committee down to Belfast to invite Mr. Alexander and me to go up and celebrate the anniversary of the coming of the revival to Coleraine sixty-three years before. We were unable to go, but I read very carefully the account of the revival as it was given by William Gibson, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for 1860, in his book, The Year of Grace.

It was reported that on a certain day in Coleraine, three young men were coming that evening to hold an open-air meeting in the marketplace. At the appointed hour, the ministers of the city went down to the marketplace out of curiosity to see what was being done. To their amazement, they saw the people pouring into the marketplace from every quarter, until there were no less than fifteen thousand people gathered together in the marketplace. The ministers looked at one another in bewilderment and dismay and said, "We must preach. These young men can never deal with a vast crowd like this."

The ministers put up four pulpits at the four corners of the marketplace, and a preacher ascended each pulpit. They had not been preaching long when a very solemn awe fell upon the entire crowd. Soon in one section of the marketplace there was a loud cry, and a man fell to the ground under such overwhelming conviction of sin that he could not stand on his feet. He was carried out to the town hall that had not yet been completed.

Soon a cry arose in another part of the marketplace, and another man fell under the power of conviction of sin, and he, too, was taken to the town hall. Then another, and another, and another person fell in different parts of the marketplace, until conviction became so general that the meeting broke up and the ministers adjourned to the town hall to deal individually with afflicted souls.

The Presbyterian minister who tells the incident says that he was in the town hall all night dealing with souls overwhelmed with deep conviction of sin. This minister says that when the morning dawned, he started for his home, but as he went up the street he found people standing on their doorsteps waiting for him to pass, because there were people under conviction of sin in their homes, and they wanted to invite him in to deal with them. He went into one home after another, and there were so many people to deal with that the sun had set before he reached his own home.

The whole town of Coleraine was so transformed and so impressed that in completing the town hall, they put in an inscribed tablet dedicating the hall to the memory of the revival, and for every year of the forty-three years up to that time they were commemorating the coming of the revival to Coleraine. I think they have kept up the commemoration annually to this present day, making sixty-three years in all.

I think it was at the close of the week of prayer in January 1901 that Miss Strong, superintendent of women of the Bible Institute of Chicago, came to me and said, "Why not keep up these prayer meetings at least once a week after the week of prayer is over, and pray for a worldwide revival?" This suggestion was approved by the faculty, and we appointed a prayer meeting every Saturday night from 9-10 p.m. (after the popular Bible class was over) at which people could gather to pray for just one thing – a worldwide revival.

Three or four hundred people gathered every Saturday night for that purpose, and God gave us great liberty and great expectation in prayer. Soon we began to hear of the working of God in Japan and other lands, and yet the work was not as general as we wanted to see. People would come to me and to my colleague who was most intimately associated with me in the conduct of the meetings, and ask, "Has the revival come?"

We replied, "No, not as far as we know."

"When is it coming?"

"We do not know."

"How long are you going to keep praying?"

"Until it comes."

After we had been praying for some months, two men from faraway Australia appeared in our lecture room. After they had been attending the lectures for some time, they asked for a private conversation with me. They told me that in leaving Australia, they had been commissioned to go to England, to Keswick and other places, and to gatherings in America, and select someone to invite to Australia to conduct an evangelistic campaign. They said further that they had both agreed upon me. They asked if I would go.

I replied, "I do not see how I can leave Chicago. I have the Bible Institute to look after, and also the Chicago Avenue Church (the Moody Church), and I do not see how I can possibly get away from Chicago."

"Well," they said, "you are coming to Australia."

Some months passed by, and I was in a Bible conference in St. Louis. I received a letter from Australia asking me to cable my acceptance of their invitation, and that they would at once cable me the money to come. I laid the matter before the conference and asked them to pray over it, and then I withdrew from the conference in order to be alone in prayer. God made it clear that I should go, and so I cabled them.

When Mr. Alexander and I reached Australia, we found that there was a group of about ten or twelve men who had been praying for years for a great revival in Australia. They had joined together to pray for "the big revival," as they called it in their prayers, and to pray for the revival no matter how long it took. The group was led by John McNeil (author of The Spirit-Filled Life), but he had died before we reached Australia. A second member of the group, Allan Webb, died the first week of our meetings in Melbourne. He had come to Melbourne to assist in the meetings, and he died on his knees in prayer. A third member of the group, even before we had been invited to Australia, had been given a vision of great crowds flocking to Exposition Hall, and of people hanging on to the loaded street cars wherever they could. When that vision was fulfilled, he came a long distance to Melbourne just to see with his own eyes what God had revealed to him before.

We also found that a lady in Melbourne had read a book on prayer and had been very deeply impressed by one short sentence in the book: "Pray through." She had gone to work and had organized prayer meetings all over the city before we reached the place. Indeed, when we reached Melbourne, we found that there were 1,700 neighborhood prayer meetings being held every week in Melbourne.

We remained in that city four weeks. During the first two weeks, the meetings were held by many different pastors and evangelists in some forty or fifty different centers throughout the city, though meetings for the whole city were held at one o'clock, two o'clock, and three o'clock each day in the town hall. The last two weeks, the meetings were all concentrated in Exposition Hall, which seated about eight thousand people.

At the very first meeting in Exposition Hall, the crowd was so large that they swept by the police before them and packed the building far beyond its proper capacity, and there were large crowds still who could not get in. During those four weeks, 8,642 people made a definite profession of having accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. When we went back to Melbourne some months later and held a meeting of the converts, six thousand of them were present at that meeting, most of whom had already joined the church, and almost all those who had not united with the church yet promised to do so at once.

The report of what God had done in Melbourne spread not only all over Australia, but to India, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and resulted in a wonderful work of God in the leading cities of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The whole worldwide work was the outcome of the prayer meetings held in Chicago and of the prayers of the little group of men in Australia.

The great Welsh revival in 1904, of the beginning of which I was an eyewitness, came in a similar way. Mr. Alexander and I had been invited to Cardiff, Wales, for a month's mission. The announcement that we were going there was made about a year before we went, and prayer began to go up all over England, Scotland, and Wales that God would send a revival not only to Cardiff, but to all Wales.

When we reached Cardiff, we learned that a prayer meeting had been held for almost a year from six to seven every morning in Penarth, a suburb of Cardiff. The people had been praying for a great revival. For the first two weeks or so of our time there, things dragged. Large crowds came and there was great enthusiasm in the singing, but we could not get the people to do personal work. Then we appointed a day of fasting and prayer, and the day was observed in other parts of Wales as well as in Cardiff.

In one place, Seth Joshua, who was afterward so greatly used in the revival, was the leading figure and had charge of the meeting. He wrote me a most glowing and cheering account of what God had done in that place on that day. I think it was on that very day that he was kneeling beside Evan Roberts, and as he prayed, the power of God fell upon Evan Roberts.

The power of God came down in Cardiff in such a wonderful way that when Mr. Alexander and I were compelled to leave at the end of the month in order to keep an engagement in Liverpool, the meetings went right on without us – and they went on for a whole year. There were meetings every night for a whole year, and multitudes were converted!

From Cardiff, the revival spread up and down the valleys of Wales. Soon after we had reached Liverpool, the next city that we visited, I received a letter from the minister who was secretary of our mission in Cardiff. He wrote that his assistant had gone out the preceding Sunday night up one of the valleys of Wales, and as he preached, the power of God fell on him – and one hundred people were converted while he was preaching. The revival spread over the entire country under Evan Roberts and others, and it is said that over one hundred thousand souls were converted in twelve months!

Oh, that is what we need more than anything else today, in our own land and in all lands – a real, mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God!

The most fundamental trouble with most of our present-day so-called revivals is that they are man-made and not God-sent. They are worked up (I had almost said faked up) by man's cunningly devised machinery – not prayed down. Oh, for an old-time revival, a revival that is really and not spuriously of the Pentecostal pattern – for that revival was born of a fourteen-day prayer meeting. Let us not merely talk of it, but let us cry out for it. Let us cry out to God, cry out long and loud if need be, and then it will surely come.

Prayer Will Bring Blessing and Victory to Foreign Missions

Now turn to Matthew 9:36-38: Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest."

Here we see from our Lord's own teaching that prayer will bring blessing to foreign missions. It will get the needed men and women, and the right kind of men and women, for the work in all the fields that are now white for the harvest in many lands. It will also bring blessing and power to the men and women who go to the field. The greatest need of foreign missions today is prayer.

It is true that people are greatly needed, and it is true that money is needed, but prayer is far more needed. When we pray as we should, the men and the women will come, and the money will come. Even though people come in crowds, without prayer they would be of no use. They will be of no use whatsoever unless they are backed by prayer.

We have had men of great force of character and mind in this country who have greatly stirred the students of this country to an interest in foreign missions and who have gathered large numbers of men and women for the foreign field without much prayer. These men and women, though gifted, and some of them greatly talented, have often been an actual curse to the work. It is my conviction, founded upon much observation, that the work of foreign missions would be far better off today if these men had gone into secular work and let missions alone. The results of their work have been most harmful.

I have seen much of it with my own eyes in China and elsewhere, and I am convinced that one of the most discouraging problems that faces foreign mission work in China today has arisen from the large number of men and women who have gone into the foreign work not because they were sent of God in answer to prayer, but because they were stirred up by a man of attractive personality and rare power.

What we have said of people is just as true of money. No matter how much money may be put into foreign missions, the money will be of no real use unless the men and women whom the money sends out are backed by prayer. Indeed, without prayer, the money will be a curse rather than a blessing. Probably no other missionary society in all this world's history has ever accomplished as much good, all things considered, that is of real and lasting value, as the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor. This is because this mission was born of so much prayer and was backed by so much prayer.

But what should we pray for in connection with foreign missions?

First of all, we should pray for Christians to work in the fields of harvest, just as the words of our Lord Jesus command us to pray. Listen to our Lord's words again: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.

It is not so much a large number of men and women who are needed as it is the right kind of men and women. A large number of men and women are needed, no question about that. The fields were never so white for the harvest as they are today, and the laborers are indeed few; but the greatest need is the right kind of men and women.

Missions in China and elsewhere would be far better off today if many of the men and women who have gone out had remained at home. Earnest-minded men and women from this country who visit China and are brought into close contact with some of the young men and women who are being poured into China by certain missionary societies are appalled at the thought that men and women of this type should be sent out for foreign mission work. Many of the older missionaries who have made great sacrifices for the work, and by much effort and prayer have gathered together bodies of believers who really know the Lord, tremble as they think what the influence of this type of missionary will be upon the doctrine and life of the Chinese converts. Many of the Chinese Christians themselves feel that they must protest against the teaching and the manner of life of these would-be missionaries.

In the second place, we should pray for the missionaries who have already gone out. We have already seen how much prayer does to make a minister of the gospel what he ought to be. If possible, it is even more effective in making missionaries what they ought to be. The neglect of prayer on the part of the people at home has much to do with the comparative failure of many of the missionaries on the field. Every Christian at home should have some specific missionaries in the field for whom he is praying specifically, constantly, persistently, and intensely. The man or woman at home who prays often has as much to do with the effectiveness of the missionary on the field, and consequently with the results of his labors, as the missionary himself.

In the third place, we should pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on different fields. Oh, how much genuine revivals of religion in the power of the Holy Spirit are needed in the various missionary fields of the world! Revivals on the foreign field come in exactly the same way we have just seen revivals come at home – in answer to prayer. That could be proved by many illustrations.

Mr. Finney tells of a mighty man of prayer who was interested not only in the work at home, but also abroad. After his death, his diary was found. In examining it, it was noticed that on certain days it was recorded that he had a great burden of prayer for some specific foreign missionary field. Upon inquiry, it was found that in each instance, revivals on the foreign field had followed this man's persistent intercession, and it was followed in the exact order of his petitions as recorded in his diary.

Many of us are tempted to criticize the foreign work because of the meagerness of the results, but should not our criticism begin with ourselves? May it not be that the meagerness of the results is the consequence of the meagerness of our own prayer? At any event, we can increase the blessed and glorious results of the work in foreign fields by giving more time to real prayer here at home.

In the fourth place, we should pray for the native converts. It is difficult for us to realize how many and how great the obstacles are that stand in the way of a native convert being able to stand steadfast in the new life. There are great difficulties that lie in the way of his living such a life as a Christian ought to live in the atmosphere that he daily breathes.

Many of the converts in many fields are men and women of an unusually high type of character. My son has told me that some of the Chinese Christians he knows intimately put him to shame by their clearness of understanding the deep things of God and by the Christlikeness and devotion of their lives. But while this is true, we should never forget that it is far more difficult for someone converted in a heathen land to lead the life a Christian ought to live than it is for someone converted in this land. Therefore, the converts greatly need our prayers, and our prayer avails much in its working in the lives of those who are won to Christ in the foreign field.

In the fifth place, we should pray for the native churches. We should not only pray for the converts as individuals, but we should also pray for the churches as organizations. Every church has its specific problems. Take, for example, the church of Christ in Korea. It is difficult for anyone who has not visited that land, so wonderfully favored of God in missionary work, and at the same time so amazingly resisted by the devil in various ways, to realize how much the church of Christ in Korea needs the prayers of those in the homeland who believe in Christ and in prayer. So also do the churches in China, Africa, India, and elsewhere greatly need our prayers here at home.

In the sixth place, we should pray for the secretaries and official members of the various mission boards here at home.

In the seventh place, we should pray for money. Many of the boards and missionary societies are in extreme distress for funds today. This is true even of boards and councils of whose loyalty to the faith there is no question; they are in great need of increased gifts. The way to get the money is to pray for it. Not just those who are immediately responsible for the money should pray for it, but all of us should pray for it. Very likely, if we pray as we should, God will show us that we ourselves should go down into our own pockets as we never have done to aid in answering our own prayers.

There are many other definite things, and things greatly to be desired, that specific and determined prayer will bring to pass. There is not time to speak on all of them now, but I want to focus your attention on these two things: first, prayer will bring blessing to the churches; and second, prayer will bring blessing and victory to foreign missions.

Oh, how much we need the blessing that includes all other blessings for the church – a great, deep, thorough, widespread revival! How much we need greater blessing and more thorough victory in the work of foreign missions! We can have both if we will pay the price; and the price is prayer – real prayer, determined prayer, prolonged prayer, heart-wringing prayer, crying to God in the power of the Holy Spirit!
Chapter 4

How to Pray

But prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. (Acts 12:5)

Our subject in this chapter is how to pray so as to get what you ask. I can think of nothing more important to discuss now than that. Suppose it had been announced that I was to tell the businessmen of Los Angeles how they could go to any bank in the city and get all the financial accommodation they desired any day of the year. Do you think that the businessmen of this city would consider that important? It would be difficult to think of anything that they would consider more important.

But praying is going to the bank, going to the bank that has the largest capital of any bank in the universe – the Bank of Heaven – a bank whose capital is absolutely unlimited. If I can show you how you can go to the Bank of Heaven any day of the year and any hour of the day or night and get from that bank all that you desire, that will certainly be of incalculable importance.

The Bible tells us that very thing. It tells us how we can go to the Bank of Heaven, how we can go to God in prayer any day of the year and any hour of the day or night and get from God the very things that we ask. What the Bible teaches along this line has been put to the test of practical experiment by tens of thousands of people, and has been found in their own experience to be absolutely true. That is what we are to discover now from a study of God's own Word.

In the twelfth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we have the record of a most remarkable prayer. It is remarkable because of what was asked for, and it is remarkable because of the results of the asking. King Herod had killed James, the brother of John. This greatly pleased the Jews (Acts 12:3), so he proceeded to arrest the leader of the entire apostolic group – the apostle Peter – with the intention of killing him also.

But the arrest was during Passover week, the holy week of the Jews; and while the Jews were perfectly willing and eager to have Peter assassinated, they were not willing to have their holy week desecrated by his violent death. So Peter was cast into prison to be kept until the Passover week was over, and then he would be executed.

The Passover week was nearly over. It was the last night of the Passover week, and early the next morning Peter was to be taken out and beheaded. There seemed to be little hope for Peter. Indeed, there seemed to be no hope at all. He was in a secure dungeon, an impregnable fortress. He was guarded by sixteen soldiers and was chained by each wrist to a soldier who slept on either side of him.

There appeared to be no hope whatsoever for Peter, but the Christians in Jerusalem undertook to get Peter out of his perilous position and to completely deliver him. How did they go at it? Did they organize a mob and storm the castle? No. There was no hope whatsoever of success that way. The castle was impregnable against any mob, and furthermore, it was protected by trained Roman soldiers who would be more than a match for any mob.

Did they circulate a petition and have the leading Christians in Jerusalem sign it to present to Herod, asking that he would release Peter? No. That might have had a little influence, for the Christians in Jerusalem at that time were numbered by the thousands, and among them were some influential people. A petition signed by so many people and by some people of such importance would have had influence with a shrewd politician such as Herod. But they did not attempt that method of deliverance.

Did they take up a collection and gather a large amount of money from the believers in Jerusalem to bribe Herod to release Peter? Quite likely that might have proved successful, for Herod was open to that method – but they did not do that.

What did they do? They held a prayer meeting to pray Peter out of prison. Was anything more seemingly useless and ridiculous ever undertaken by a company of fanatics? Did they really think that they could pray a man so securely incarcerated, and so near his execution, out of prison? If the enemies of Peter and the church had known of that attempt, they undoubtedly would have been greatly amused and would have laughed at the thought of these fanatical Christians trying to pray Peter out of prison. They undoubtedly would have said to one another, "We'll see what will become of the prayers of these foolish Christians."

But the attempt to pray Peter out of prison was entirely successful. Apparently Peter himself had no fears, but was calmly resting in God, for he was fast asleep on the very night before his proposed execution. While Peter was sound asleep, guarded by sixteen soldiers, chained to a soldier sleeping on either side of him, suddenly there shone in the prison a light – a light from heaven. There was an angel of the Lord standing by Peter. The angel struck Peter's side and woke him up, saying, "Get up quickly." And his chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, "Gird yourself and put on your sandals." And he did so. And he said to him, "Wrap your cloak around you and follow me" (Acts 12:7-8).

Peter, dazed and wondering, thought he was dreaming, but he was wise enough to obey God, even in his sleep. He went out and followed the angel, even though he thought he was seeing a vision (Acts 12:9). The soldiers were all asleep, and they passed the first guard and the second guard and came to the strong iron gate that led into the city. Moved by the finger of God, the gate opened for them by itself (Acts 12:10). They went out and silently passed through one street.

Now Peter was safe, and the angel left him. Standing there in the cold night air, Peter came to himself and realized that he was not dreaming. He said, Now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth His angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting (Acts 12:11).

Stopping for a few moments to reflect, he said to himself, "There is a prayer meeting going on. It must be at Mark's mother's house. I will go there." Soon those praying people were startled by a heavy pounding at the outside gate of Mark's mother's home. There was a little servant girl named Rhoda kneeling among those praying. Instantly she sprang to her feet and rushed to the gate, saying to herself, "That's Peter! That's Peter! I knew God would hear our prayers. God has delivered him, and he is at the gate."

Reaching the gate, she excitedly cried, "Is that you, Peter?"

"Yes."

Forgetting to even open the gate, and leaving Peter standing outside, she dashed back and said to the startled people, "Our prayers are answered – Peter is at the gate!"

"Oh, Rhoda, you are crazy," cried the suddenly doubtful company.

"No," Rhoda said, "I am not crazy. It is Peter. God has answered our prayers. I know his voice. I knew he would come, and he is here."

Then they all cried, "It is not Peter. It is his ghost. He has been killed in the night, and his ghost has come around and is knocking at the gate."

But Peter kept on knocking, and they opened the gate. There Peter stood, the living evidence that God had answered their prayer.

By the way, have you ever noticed that among all the people who were present at that prayer meeting, only one person is mentioned by name, and that one person was only a servant girl, Rhoda? Undoubtedly, the bishops and elders of the church in Jerusalem were there, but not a single name of theirs has been recorded. Probably some of the leading people of Jerusalem who had become Christians were there, but not a single name is mentioned. Rhoda, and Rhoda only. Why? Because Rhoda was the only one who really had faith, and she was, therefore, the only one worth mentioning, even though she was only a servant girl. "Rhoda" means rose, and this Rhoda was a rose that was very fragrant to God, even though she was only a servant girl, for there is no sweeter fragrance to God than the fragrance of faith.

If we can find out how these people prayed, then we will know just how we, too, can pray so as to get what we ask. In Acts 12:5, we are told exactly how they prayed: Prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. The whole secret of prevailing prayer, the prayer that gets what it asks, is found in four phrases in this brief description of their prayer. The first phrase is fervently, or "without ceasing." The second is by the church. The third phrase is to God. The fourth is for him.

Prayer to God

Let us look more closely at these four phrases and study them. We first take up the third phrase, for it is really the most important one: to God. The prayer that gets what it asks is the prayer that is to God.

But someone will say, "Is not all prayer unto God?" No. Comparatively few of the prayers that go up from this earth today are really to God. I sometimes think that not one prayer in a hundred is really to God. You ask, "What do you mean?" I mean exactly what I say, that not one prayer in a hundred is really to God.

"Oh," you say, "I know what you mean. You are talking about the prayers of the heathen to their idols and their false gods." No, I mean the prayers of people who call themselves Christians. I do not think that one in a hundred of them are really to God.

"Oh," you say, "I know what you mean. You are talking of the prayers of the Roman Catholics to the Virgin Mary and to the saints." No, I mean the prayers of people who call themselves Protestants. I do not believe that one in a hundred of the prayers of Protestant believers are really to God.

"What do you mean?" you ask. I mean exactly what I say.

Stop a moment and think. Is it not often the case when people stand up to pray in public, or kneel down to pray in private, that they are thinking far more of what they are asking for than they are of the great God who made heaven and earth, and who has all power, of whom they are asking it?

Is it not often the case that in our prayers we are not thinking much either of what we are asking for or of Him from whom we are asking it, but our thoughts are wandering off everywhere? We take the name of God upon our lips, but there is no real conscious approach to God in our hearts. We may actually be taking the name of God in vain while we think we are praying to Him.

If there is to be any power in our prayer, if our prayer is to get anything, the first thing to be sure of when we pray is that we have really come into the presence of God and are really speaking to Him. We should never utter one syllable of prayer, either in public or in private, until we are definitely conscious that we have come into the presence of God and are actually praying to Him. Oh, let those two words, to God, sink deep into your heart. From this time on, never pray – never utter one syllable of prayer – until you are sure that you have come into the presence of God and are really talking to Him.

Some years ago in our church in Chicago, before we began the great Saturday night prayer meetings to pray for a worldwide revival, a little group of us used to meet every Saturday night for prayer, to pray for God's blessing upon the work of the Lord's Day. Never more than a handful of people came, but we had wonderful times of blessing.

One night when we had gathered together, I arose to open the meeting. I said to those gathered there, "Now we are going to kneel in prayer, and I want every one of you to feel at perfect liberty to ask for what God puts into your heart to ask for; but be sure that you do not utter a word of prayer until you have really come into the presence of God and know that you are talking to Him." Then we knelt in prayer.

A friend of mine, a businessman, had come in just before I said that. I met him one day the following week, and he said to me, "Mr. Torrey, I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but that thought you threw out last Saturday night just before we knelt in prayer – that not one of us should utter a syllable of prayer until we had really come into the presence of God and knew that we were talking to Him – was an entirely new thought to me, and it has transformed my prayer life."

I could easily understand that, for I can remember when that thought transformed my prayer life. I was brought up to pray. I was taught to pray so early in life that I have not the slightest recollection of who taught me to pray. I have no doubt it was my mother, but I have no recollection of it. In my earliest days, the habit of prayer was so thoroughly ingrained into me that there has never been a single night of my life as far back as my memory goes that I have not prayed – with the exception of one night when I was carried home unconscious and did not regain consciousness until the next morning.

Even when I had wandered far from God and had definitely decided that I would not accept Jesus Christ, I still prayed every night. Even when I had come to a place where I doubted whether the Bible was the Word of God, whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and even whether there was a personal God, I still prayed every night. I am glad that I was brought up that way and that the habit of prayer was so instilled into me that it became habitual, for it was along that line that I came back out of the darkness of agnosticism and into the clear light of an intelligent faith in God and His Word.

Nevertheless, prayer to me was largely a mere matter of form. There was little real thought of God, and no real approach to God. Even after I was converted – yes, even after I had entered the ministry – prayer was largely a matter of form. But the day came when I realized what real prayer meant. I realized that prayer was having an audience with God, that prayer was actually coming into the presence of God and asking and getting things from Him. The realization of that fact transformed my prayer life.

Before that, prayer had been a mere duty to me, and sometimes a very irksome duty; but from that time on, prayer has been not merely a duty, but a privilege – one of the most highly esteemed privileges of life. Before that, the question that I had was, "How much time must I spend in prayer?" The thought that now possesses me is, "How much time may I spend in prayer without neglecting the other privileges and duties of life?"

Suppose some Englishman were summoned to Buckingham Palace to meet the king. He answers the summons and is waiting to be ushered into the presence of the king. What do you think that man would say to himself as he waited to be brought into the presence of the king? Do you think he would say, "I wonder how much time I must spend with the king"? No, indeed; he would rather think, "I wonder how much time the king will give me."

Prayer is having an audience with the King of kings, that eternal, omnipotent king in comparison with whom all earthly kings are as nothing. Would any intelligent person who realizes that fact ever ask himself, "How much time must I spend in prayer?" No. Our thought will be, "How much time may I spend in prayer? How much time will the King give me?"

So let these two words, to God, sink deep into your heart and govern your prayer life from this day on.

Whenever you kneel or stand in prayer, whether in public or in private, be absolutely sure, before you utter a syllable of prayer, that you have actually come into the presence of God and are really speaking to Him. Oh, it is a wondrous secret!

How can we come into the presence of God, and how can we be sure that we have come into the presence of God and that we are really talking to Him? Some years ago I was speaking upon this verse of Scripture in Chicago, and at the close of the address a very intelligent Christian woman, one of the most intelligent and deeply spiritual women I ever knew, came to me and said, "Mr. Torrey, I like that thought of to God, but how can we come into the presence of God, and how can we be absolutely sure that we have come into the presence of God and that we are really talking to Him?"

It was a wise question and one of great importance, and it is clearly answered in the Word of God. There are two parts to the answer.

The first part of the answer is found in Hebrews 10:19: Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus. That is the first part of the answer. We come into the presence of God by the blood of Jesus, and we can come into the presence of God in no other way.

Just what does that mean? It means that you and I are sinners (the best of us are great sinners) and God is infinitely holy, so holy that even the seraphim ("seraphim" means "burning ones"), burning in their own intense holiness, must veil their faces and their feet in His presence (Isaiah 6:2). But our sins have been laid upon another – upon the Lord Jesus when He died upon the cross of Calvary and made a perfect atonement for our sins. When He died there, He took our place, the place of rejection by God, the place of the curse. The moment we accept Him and believe God's testimony concerning His blood – that by His shed blood He made perfect atonement for our sin – and trust God to forgive and justify us because the Lord Jesus died in our place, that very moment our sins are forgiven and we are considered righteous. We then enter into a place above the seraphim, the place of God's only and perfect Son, Jesus Christ – and we do not need to veil our faces or our feet when we come into His presence, for we are made perfectly accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).

To enter the holy place, then, to come into the very presence of God by the blood of Jesus, means that when we draw near to God, we should give up any and every thought that we have any acceptability before God in ourselves. We must realize that we are miserable sinners, but we must also believe that every sin of ours has been atoned for by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore come with boldness and confidence into the very presence of God, into the holy place by the blood of Jesus.

The best man or woman on earth cannot for one moment come into the presence of God on the basis of any merit of his own, nor can he get anything from God on the basis of his own goodness – not even the smallest blessing. But on the basis of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the vilest sinner who ever walked this earth, who has turned from his sin and accepted Jesus Christ, trusting in His shed blood as the basis of his acceptance before God, can come into the presence of God any day of the year and any hour of the day or night, and with perfect boldness and confidence speak out every longing of his heart and get what he asks from God. Isn't that wonderful? Yes, and thank God it is true.

The Christian Scientist cannot really pray. What they call prayer is simply meditation or concentration of thought. It is not asking a personal God for a definite blessing. Indeed, Mary Baker Eddy denies the existence of a personal God, and she denies the atoning efficacy of the blood. She said that the blood of Jesus Christ, when it was shed on the cross of Calvary, did no more good than when it was running in His veins. So a Christian Scientist cannot really pray; he is not on praying ground.

Neither can a Unitarian really pray. Oh, he can take the name of God upon his lips, call Him Father, and say beautiful words, but there is no real approach to God. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me (John 14:6).

Some years ago I was on a committee in Chicago of three people, one of whom was one of the leading Unitarian ministers of the city. He was a charming man in many ways. One day at the close of our committee meeting, this Unitarian minister turned to me and said, "Brother Torrey, I often come over to your church to hear you."

I replied, "I am very glad to hear it."

Then he continued, "I specially love to go to your prayer meetings. Often on a Friday night I drop into your prayer meeting and sit down by the door, and I greatly enjoy it."

I replied, "I am glad that you do. But tell me something. Why don't you have a prayer meeting in your own church?"

"Well," he said, "you have asked me an honest question, and I will give you an honest answer. Because I can't. I have tried it, and it has failed every time."

Of course it failed, for they had no basis of approach to God – they denied the atoning blood.

But there are many supposedly orthodox Christians, and often in these days, even supposedly orthodox ministers, who deny the atoning blood. They do not believe that the forgiveness of our sins is solely and entirely on the basis of the shedding of Jesus' blood as an atonement for sin on our behalf on the cross of Calvary. Therefore, they cannot really pray. There are many who call the theology that insists upon the truth of the substitutionary character of Christ's death, and that we are saved by the shedding of His blood, which is so very clearly taught in the Word of God, a "theology of the shambles" (that is, of the butcher shop).

Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in the Royal Albert Hall in London. One day I received through the mail one of our hymnbooks that some man had taken from the meeting. He had gone through it and cut out every reference to the blood of Christ. A letter accompanied the hymnbook, and in this letter the man wrote, "I have gone through your hymnbook and cut out every reference to the blood in every place where it is found, and I am sending this hymnbook back to you. Now sing your hymns this way with the blood left out, and there will be some sense in them."

I took the hymnbook to the meeting with me that afternoon and displayed it. It was a sadly mutilated book. I read the man's letter, and then I said, "No, I will not cut the blood out of my hymnology, and I will not cut the blood out of my theology, for when I cut the blood out of my hymnology and my theology, I will have to cut all access to God out of my experience."

No, men and women, you cannot approach God on any other basis than the shed blood. Until you believe in the blood of Jesus Christ as a perfect atonement for your sins, and as the only basis upon which you can find forgiveness and justification, real prayer is an impossibility.

The second part of the answer to the question, How can we come into the presence of God and how can we be sure that we have come into His presence, is found in Ephesians 2:18: For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. Here we have the same thought that we have already had and that we have just been presenting – that it is through Him, through Jesus Christ, that we have our access to the Father.

We have an additional thought, also, that while we come into the presence of God through Jesus Christ, we come in the one Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Just what does that mean? It means that it is the work of the Holy Spirit, when you and I pray, to take us by the hand, as it were, and to lead us into the very presence of God, introducing us to Him and making God real to us as we pray.

The Greek word translated "access" is the exact equivalent in its etymology as the word "introduction," which is really a Latin word transliterated into English. When we pray, in order that we may really come into the presence of God and to be sure that we have come into His presence, we must look to the Holy Spirit to make God real to us as we pray.

Have you never had this experience, that when you knelt to pray it seemed as if there were no one there, as if you were just talking into the air or into empty space? What should we do at such a time as that? Should we stop praying and wait until some time when we feel like praying? No. When we least feel like praying, and when God seems the least real to us, that is the time we most need to pray.

What should we do then? We should simply be quiet and look up to God. Ask God to fulfill His promise and to send His Holy Spirit to lead us into His presence and to make Him real to us. Then wait and expect. He will come, and He will take us into God's presence. He will make God real to us.

I can testify today that some of the most wonderful seasons of prayer I have ever had have been times when I had no real sense of God when I first knelt to pray. There seemed to be no one there. It seemed as if I were talking into empty space. Then I just looked up to God and asked and trusted Him to send His Holy Spirit to teach me to pray, to lead me into His presence, and to make Him real to me – and the Spirit has come. He has made God so real to me that it almost seemed that if I opened my eyes I could see Him.

One night at the close of a sermon in Chicago in one of the churches on the south side, I went down the aisle to speak to different individuals. I stepped up to a middle-aged man and asked him, "Are you a Christian?"

"No," he replied, "I am an infidel. Did you ever see God?"

I quickly replied, "Yes, I have seen God."

The man was startled and silenced. Did I mean that I had seen God with these eyes of my body? No, but thank God, I have two pair of eyes. Not only does my body have eyes, but my spirit also has eyes. I pity the person who has only one pair of eyes, no matter how good those eyes are. I thank God I have two pair of eyes – these bodily eyes with which I see you, and the eyes of my spirit with which I see God. God has given me wonderful eyes for my body, that at sixty-seven years of age I have never had to wear glasses, and I do not know what it means to have my eyes weary or painful under any circumstances. But I will gladly give up these eyes rather than those other eyes that God has given me – the eyes with which I see God.

This, then, is the way to come into the presence of God and to be sure that we have come into His presence. First, we come by the blood of Jesus, and second, we come in the Holy Spirit, looking to Him to lead us into the presence of God and to make God real to us.

Praying with Intense Earnestness

Now let us consider another of the four phrases used in Acts 12:5 that contain the whole secret of prevailing prayer: fervently. Prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. The King James Version translates this as without ceasing. The Greek word is "ektenos," and it means literally "stretched-out-edly." The King James translators came to translate it without ceasing, for they thought of the prayer as stretched out a long time – unceasing prayer. But that is not the thought at all. The Greek word is never used in that sense anywhere in the New Testament, and I do not know of a place in Greek literature outside of the Bible where it is so used. The word is a pictorial word, as so many words are. It represents the soul stretched out in the intensity of its earnestness toward God.

Did you ever see a foot race? The racers are all by the line waiting for the starter to say "go" or to fire the revolver as a signal to start. As the critical moment approaches, everything about the runners becomes more and more tense, until the word "go" comes or the revolver fires, and then they go spinning down the track with every nerve and muscle stretched toward the goal. Sometimes the veins stand out on the forehead like whipcords – every runner wants to be the winner. That is the picture – the soul stretched out in intense earnestness toward God.

It is the same word that is used in the comparative mood in Luke 22:44, where we read, And being in agony He was praying very fervently [literally, "more stretched-out-edly"]; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. The thought is, as I have said, of the soul being stretched out toward God in intense earnestness of desire.

Probably the most accurate translation that could be given in a single word would be "intensely." "Prayer was made intensely by the church unto God for him." In fact, the word "intensely" is from the same root, only it has a different prefix. "Intensely earnest prayer was made by the church unto God for him" would be an even better way to word it.

It is the intensely earnest prayer to which God pays attention, and which He answers. This thought comes out again and again in the Bible. We find it even in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 29:13: You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. We discover here the reason why so many of our prayers are not heard by God. There is so little heart in them, so little intensity of desire for the thing asked, that there is no reason why God should pay any attention to them.

Suppose I would ask all of you if you prayed this morning. Undoubtedly, most of you would reply, "Yes, I did." Then suppose I would ask you, "For what did you pray this morning?" I fear that some of you would hesitate and think and then have to say, "Really, I forget what I prayed for this morning." Well, then, God will forget to answer.

But if I would ask some of you if you prayed this morning, you would say yes. Then if I asked you what you prayed for, you could tell me at once, for you always pray for the same thing. You have just a little ritual of prayer that you go through each morning or each night. You fall on your knees and go through your little prayer automatically, hardly thinking about what you are saying. In fact, often you do not think of what you are saying, but are thinking of a dozen other things while you are repeating your prayer. Such prayer is usually in vain.

When Mrs. Torrey and I were in India, she went up to Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, on the border of Tibet. I was unable to go because I was busy with meetings in Calcutta. When she came back, she brought with her a Tibetan praying wheel. Did you ever see one? It is a little round brass cup on the top of a stick, and the cup revolves when the stick is whirled. The Tibetan writes out his prayers, drops them into the cup, and then whirls the stick. The wheel goes around and the prayers are said.

That is just the way a great many Americans pray, only the wheel is in their head instead of being on the top of a stick. They kneel down and rattle through a ritual of prayer, day after day saying the same thing, with hardly any thought of what they are praying for. That kind of prayer has no power with God. It is a waste of time, or worse than a waste of time.

But if I would ask others of you what you prayed for this morning, you could tell me, for as you were in prayer, the Spirit of God came upon you, and with a great heartache of intensity of desire you cried to God for that thing that you must have. Well, God will hear your prayer and give you what you asked.

If we are to pray with power, we must pray with intense earnestness, throwing our whole soul into the prayer. This thought comes out again and again in the Bible. For example, we find it in Romans 15:30: I urge you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. The word translated "strive together" in this verse is "sunagonizo." "Agonizo" means to "contend, strive, wrestle, or fight." This verse could be properly translated, "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you wrestle together with me in your prayers to God for me."

We hear much these days about "the rest of faith," by which is usually meant that we should take things very calmly in our Christian life, and that when we pray we should simply come into God's presence like a little child and quietly and trustfully ask Him for the thing desired and count it ours, going away very calmly and considering our request answered.

There is much truth in that, but it is only one side of the truth; a truth usually has two sides. The other side of the truth is that there is not only the "rest of faith," but there is also the "fight of faith." The Bible has more to say about the "fight of faith" than it does about the "rest of faith."

The thought of wrestling or fighting in prayer is not the thought that we have to wrestle with God to make God willing to grant our prayers. No, our wrestling is against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12). Our wrestling is against the devil and all his mighty forces, and there is no place where the devil so much resists us as when we pray. Sometimes when we pray it seems as if all the forces of hell swept in between us and God. What should we do? Give up? No! A thousand times, No! Fight the thing through on your knees; wrestle in your prayer to God, and win.

Some years ago I was attending a Bible conference in Dr. James H. Brooks' old church in St. Louis. One of the most distinguished and gifted Bible teachers that America ever produced was speaking this day on "The Rest of Faith." In his address he said, "I challenge anybody to show me a single passage in the Bible where we are told to wrestle in prayer."

One speaker does not like to contradict another, but here was a challenge, and I was sitting on the platform and so felt obligated to accept the challenge. I said in a low tone of voice, "Romans 15:30, brother."

He was a good enough Greek scholar to know that I had him, and what is more rare, he was honest enough to own up to it on the spot. Yes, the Bible tells us to wrestle, or strive, in prayer, and it is the prayer in which we actually wrestle in the power of the Holy Spirit that wins out with God.

The word that is the root of the word translated "strive together," is "agone," from which our word "agony" comes. In fact, in Luke 22:44, to which I have already referred, this is the very word that is translated "agony": And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. Oh, that we might have more agonizing prayer!

Turn now to Colossians 4:12-13, and you will find the same thought again in other words: Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God. For I testify for him that he has a deep concern for you. Do you know what it means to labor in prayer – to labor with painful toil in prayer? Oh, how easily most of us take our praying! How little heart we put into it, how little it takes out of us, and how little it counts with God!

The mighty men of God, who throughout the centuries have wrought great things by prayer, are the men who have had much painful toil in prayer. Take David Brainerd for example, that physically feeble but spiritual mighty man of God. Trembling for years on the verge of tuberculosis, from which he ultimately died at an early age, David Brainerd felt led of God to labor among the North American Indians in the early days, in the untouched forests of northern Pennsylvania. Sometimes on a winter night he would go out into the forest and kneel in the cold snow when it was a foot deep and labor with God in prayer so thoroughly that he would be wringing wet with perspiration, even out in the cold winter night hours.

God heard David Brainerd and sent a mighty revival among the North American Indians such as had never been heard of before, as indeed had never been dreamed of. Not only did God send this mighty revival among the North American Indians in answer to David Brainerd's prayers, but also in answer to his prayers God transformed David Brainerd's father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, that mighty prince of metaphysicians, and probably the mightiest thinker that America has ever produced (the only American metaphysician whose name is in the American Hall of Fame), was transformed by God into Jonathan Edwards the mighty evangelist. Jonathan Edwards so preached in the power of the Holy Spirit on the subject of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in the church at Enfield that, as he preached, the strong men in the audience felt as if the very floor of the church were falling out and they were sinking into hell. They sprang to their feet, threw their arms around the pillars of the church, and cried to God for mercy. Oh, that we had more men who could pray like David Brainerd, for then we would have more men who could preach like Jonathan Edwards.

I once used this illustration about David Brainerd when I was speaking at a conference in New York State. Dr. Park, the grandson and biographer of Jonathan Edwards, was in my audience. He came to me at the close and said, "I have always felt that there was something abnormal about David Brainerd."

I replied, "Dr. Park, it would be a good thing for you and me if we had a little more of that kind of abnormality."

Indeed it would; and it would be a good thing if many of us had that kind of so-called "abnormality" that bows a man down with intensity of longing for the power of God that would make us pray the way David Brainerd prayed.

A very practical question arises at this point. How can we get this intense earnestness in prayer? The Bible answers the question very plainly and simply. There are two ways of having earnestness in prayer – a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is to work it up in the energy of the flesh. Have you ever seen it done? A man kneels down by a chair to pray. He begins very calmly, and then he begins to work himself up and begins to shout and scream and pound the chair, and he screams until your head is almost splitting with the loud uproar. That is the wrong way. That is false fire. That is the energy of the flesh, which is an abomination to God. If possible, that is even worse than the careless, thoughtless prayers of which I spoke a while ago.

But there is a right way to obtain real heart-stirring, heart-wringing, God-moving earnestness in prayer. The Bible tells us what that right way is in Romans 8:26-27: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

That is the right way: look to the Spirit to create the earnestness. The earnestness that counts with God is not the earnestness that you or I work up; it is the earnestness that the Holy Spirit creates in our hearts. Have you ever gone to God in prayer and found no earnestness in your prayer at all? Have you ever prayed and realized it was just words, words, words, a mere matter of form, and there seemed to be no real prayer in your heart?

What should we do at a time like that? Stop praying and wait until we feel more like praying? No. If there is ever a time when we need to pray, it is when we do not feel like praying. What should you do? You should be silent and look up to God to send His Holy Spirit, according to His promise, to move your heart to prayer and to awaken and create real earnestness in your heart in prayer. He will send Him, and you will pray with intense earnestness, very likely with groanings too deep for words.

I want to testify right here that some of the times of deepest earnestness that I have ever known in prayer have been when, at the outset, I seemed to have no prayer in my heart at all, and all attempt to pray was mere words and empty form. Then I looked up to God to send His Spirit according to His promise to teach me to pray, and I waited; and the Spirit of God has come upon me in mighty power, and I have cried to God – sometimes with groanings too deep for words.

I will never forget one night in Chicago. After the general prayer meetings for a worldwide revival had been going on for some time, the man who was most closely associated with me in leading these meetings came over to my house one night after the meeting was over and said, "Brother Torrey, what do you say to our having a time alone with God every Saturday night after the other meetings are over? I do not mean," he continued, "that we will actually promise to come together every Saturday night, but let us have it tonight anyway."

Oh, such a night of prayer we had that night! I will never forget that, but it was not that night that I am especially thinking of now. After we had been meeting for some weeks, he suggested that we invite a few others, which we did. Every Saturday night after the general prayer meeting was closed at ten o'clock, a few of us would gather in some secluded place where we would not disturb others, and we would pray together. There were never more than a dozen people present – usually about six or seven.

One night when we met to pray, before kneeling in prayer we told each other the things we desired especially to ask of God that night, and then we knelt to pray. A long silence followed. No one prayed. Then one of the members of the little group looked up and said, "I cannot pray. There seems to be something resisting me." Then another person raised his head and said, "Neither can I pray. Something seems to be resisting me." We went around the whole circle, and each one had the same story.

What did we do? Break up the prayer meeting? No. If we ever felt the need to pray, it was then. We all quietly bowed before God and looked to Him to send His Holy Spirit to enable us to pray to victory. Soon the Spirit of God came upon one person and then another, and I have seldom heard such praying as I heard that night. Then the Spirit of God came upon me and led me out in such a prayer as I had never dreamed of praying. I was led to ask God that He would send me around the world preaching the gospel, and that He would allow me to see thousands saved in China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, and Switzerland. When I finished praying that night, I knew I was going, and I knew, as well, that I would see conversions and hear the report of the mighty things that God had wrought. That prayer meeting sent me around the world preaching the gospel.

Oh, that is how we must pray if we want to get what we ask in prayer. We must pray with the intense earnestness that the Holy Spirit alone can inspire.

Prayer by the Church

Now let us look briefly at another one of the four phrases – the phrase by the church. The prayer that God particularly delights to answer is united prayer. There is power in the prayer of a single individual, and the prayer of individuals has worked great things – but there is far greater power in united prayer.

Our Lord Jesus taught this same great truth in Matthew 18:19: Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. God delights in the unity of His people, and He does everything in His power to promote that unity. He especially honors unity in prayer. There is power in the prayer of one true believer, but there is far more power in the united prayer of two believers, and there is even greater power in the united prayer of still more believers.

But it must be real unity. This is seen in the exact words our Lord uses. He says, If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. This is one of the most frequently misquoted and most constantly abused promises in the whole Bible. It is often quoted as if it said, "If two of you agree on earth to ask anything, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven." But it actually reads, If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.

Someone may say, "I do not see any essential difference." Let me explain it to you. Someone else has a burden on his heart, and he comes to you and asks you to unite with him in praying for this thing. You agree to do so, and you both pray for it. He asks for it because he intensely desires it; you ask for it simply because he asks you to ask for it. You are not at all agreed about the thing that you ask. But when God, by His Holy Spirit, puts the same burden on two hearts, and in the unity of the Spirit they thus pray for the same thing, there is not power enough on earth or in hell to keep them from getting it. Our Heavenly Father will do for them the thing that they ask.

Prayer for Others

Now let us look at the fourth phrase: for him. The prayer was specific prayer for a specific person, and that is the kind of prayer God answers – specific prayer. Oh, how general and vague many of our prayers are. They are very pretty, they sound nice, and they are charmingly worded, but they ask no definite, specific thing, and they get no definite, specific answer.

When you pray to God, have a very specific, clear-cut idea of just exactly what it is you want from God – and ask Him for that definite and specific thing. If you meet the other conditions of prevailing prayer, you will get that definite, specific thing that you asked. God's answer will be just as definite as your prayer.

In closing, let me call your attention to our dependence upon the Holy Spirit in all our praying if we are to accomplish anything by our prayers. It is the Holy Spirit, as we saw in our study of the first phrase, who enables us to really pray to God, who leads us into the presence of God, and who makes God real to us. It is the Holy Spirit again who gives us the intense earnestness in prayer that prevails with God. It is the Holy Spirit who brings us into unity so that we know the power of truly united prayer. It is the Spirit who shows us the definite things for which we should definitely pray.

To sum it all up, the prayer that God answers is the prayer that is to God the Father, that is based upon the atoning blood of God the Son, and that is under the direction and in the power of God the Holy Spirit.

* * *

 Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) was the founder of the Christian Science religion.
Chapter 5

What God Looks for in Us

Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. (1 John 3:22)

In the last chapter we looked at what God tells us in His Word as to how to pray so as to get what we ask. We now take up the subject of who can pray so as to get what they ask.

The impression that many people have is that all the promises in the Word of God in regard to God answering prayer are made to everybody, and that anybody can claim these promises; but this is very far from the truth. God's promises to answer prayer are made to certain specified people, and God is very careful in His Word to tell us just who these people are whose prayers He promises to answer.

One of the most common sources of misinterpretation of the Word of God is taking promises that are made to one class of people and applying them to an entirely different class. Of course, when people claim promises that were never to them, disappointment is the inevitable result. They do not get what they ask, and they think that God's promise has failed. But God's promise has not failed. Rather, someone has claimed the fulfillment of that promise who had no right to do so. God tells us in the plainest possible words, words that any intelligent person can understand, just whose prayers He promises to answer.

One of the most definite and plainest descriptions to be found in the Bible of whose prayers God will answer is found in 1 John 3:22: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

Have you ever noticed what a remarkable statement the apostle John makes in this verse? He says that whatever he asked of God, he got, Whatever we ask we receive from Him. John says that he never asked one single thing from God that he did not get. How many of us could say that whatever we ask of God, we get? Many of us doubtless could say that we get many of the things for which we ask. Others could say that we get some of the things for which we ask. Some of us would probably have to say that we do not know if we have ever gotten one thing that we have asked from God. But John says, "Whatever I ask of God, I get." Then John goes on to tell us why he could say this, and by telling us why, he tells us how we, too, can get into such a relationship with God that we can also say, "Whatsoever I ask, I get."

God Answers the Prayers of Those Who Keep His Commandments

Let us read 1 John 3:22 again: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. Whenever you find the word "because" in the Bible, or "wherefore" or "therefore," you should look at it very carefully, for these words point out the reason for things. John says here that the reason God gave him whatever he asked was because he, and the others whom he includes with himself in the word "we," keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

There are two parts to John's description of those whose prayers God always answers. The first part of the description is We keep His commandments. God hears the prayers of those who keep His commandments – those who study His Word each day to find out what His will is, and who, when they discover what His will is, do it every time they find it.

God demands reciprocity. He demands that we listen to His Word before He listens to our prayers. If we have a sharp ear for God's commandments, then God will have a sharp ear for our petitions; but if we turn a deaf ear to one of God's commandments, God will turn a deaf ear to all of our petitions. If we do the things that God asks us to do, then God will do the things that we ask Him to do; but if we do not pay close attention to God's Word, God will pay no attention whatsoever to our prayers. To put it all in a single sentence, if we want God to answer our prayers, we must study God's Word diligently each day to find out what the will of God is – and then we must do His will every time we find it.

Here we touch upon one of the most common reasons why prayers are not answered: those who pray are neglecting to read and study the Word of God, they are not studying it for the specific purpose of finding out what God's will is for them, or else they are not doing that will every time they find it out.

In my first pastorate there was a lady who was a consistent church attender, but she was not a member of the church. She was one of the most intelligent women in the community. One day someone told me that this lady had previously been a member of the church of which I was pastor. So one Sunday morning, as I was walking home from church, I walked along with this lady, who lived on the same street that I lived upon. When we reached my front gate and I was about to turn in, I said to her, "They tell me you were previously a member of this church of which I am pastor."

She replied, "Yes, I was."

"Well," I said, "why are you not a member now?"

She answered, "Because I do not believe the Bible."

I said, "You do not believe the Bible?"

"No," she said, "I do not believe the Bible."

I asked, "Why do you not believe the Bible?"

She replied, "Because I have tried its promises and found them untrue."

I asked, "Will you tell me one single promise in the Word of God that you ever tried and found untrue?"

She said, "Does it not say somewhere in the Bible that whatever things we desire when we pray, we will have them if we believe that we receive them?"

I said, "It says something that sounds a lot like that."

She said, "My husband was very sick. I prayed for his recovery and I fully believed that God would raise him up, but he died. Did not the promise fail?"

"No, not at all," I said.

"What?" she exclaimed. "The promise did not fail?"

"No," I replied, "the promise did not fail."

"But," she said, "does it not say that whatever things we desire when we pray, we will have them if we believe that we receive them?"

I said, "It says something that sounds a lot like that."

"Just what does it say?"

I replied, "Mark 11:24 says, All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. Do these "you"s refer to you?

She said, "What do you mean?"

I replied, "Are you one of the people to whom this promise is made?"

"Why," she said, "isn't it made to every professing Christian?"

I said, "Certainly not. God defines very clearly in His Word just to whom His promises to answer prayer are made."

"I would like to see God's definition," she said.

I said, "Let me show it to you," and I opened my Bible to 1 John 3:22 and read it to her: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. Then I said, "That is God's definition of the "we"s and the "you"s whose prayers God promises to answer – those who keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. Were you keeping His commandments? Were you doing the things that are pleasing in His sight? Were you living for the glory of God in everything?"

"No," she said, "I certainly was not."

"Then," I said, "the promise was not made to you, was it?"

"No," she said, "it was not."

"Then it did not fail?"

"No, it did not."

She saw her error, came back to God, and became one of the most active and useful members of that church. There are a multitude of men and women just like that woman: they take a promise that is made to someone else and apply it to themselves, and of course it fails.

What about you? That is, are you studying the Word of God every day of your life, earnestly and carefully, to find out what God wants you to do and how He wants you to live – and are you obeying God's will every time you know it? If so, you are on praying ground and belong to the class whose prayers God will answer, and God will give you what you ask. If not, you do not belong to the class whose prayers God promises to answer.

I had another illustration of this same thing in our church in Chicago. I had in my church two women – one was the woman of the house, and the other one was her maid. The housewife was a very earnest and intelligent Christian. One night at the close of a meeting the maid came to me and said, "Mr. Torrey, Miss W. thinks that I ought to have a talk with you."

"Why, Jennie, does Miss W. think that you ought to have a talk with me?"

"Because I am very troubled."

I said, "What are you troubled about?"

She replied, "I am troubled because God does not answer my prayers."

"Oh," I said, "there is nothing to be surprised about in that. Does God anywhere promise to answer your prayers? God tells us very plainly in His Word whose prayers He will answer. Then I quoted 1 John 3:22: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

"Now, Jennie," I said, "does that describe you? Are you studying the Word of God every day of your life to find out what God wants you to do, and do you do it every time you find it?"

"No," she replied, "I do not."

"Then," I said, "there is nothing mysterious about God's not answering your prayers, is there?"

"No," she said, "there is not."

I put the same question to each one of you. Are you studying the Word of God every day of your life to find out what God wants you to do and how He wants you to live, and are you doing it every time you find it out? If you are, as I have said, you are on praying ground, and God will heed your prayers and give you the things that you ask of Him; but if you are neglecting the study of the Word of God, neglecting to find out what His will is, or failing to do His will every time that you discover it, then you have no right whatsoever to expect God to answer your prayers. He does not promise to. Indeed, He distinctly says in His Word that He will not.

You can go all the way through your Bible, and you will find that this same thought in connection with the promise is seen in regard to every one of the great promises of God to answer our prayers. Take, for example, that wonderful promise of Jesus Christ to answer prayer, which is so often quoted and is so familiar to us all – John 14:13-14: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

Most people, when they quote this promise, stop there, and therefore get the impression that if anybody asks anything in Christ's name, Jesus Christ offers to do it. But Jesus Christ did not stop there. He went on. Let us read the promise again, and read on a little farther:

Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. (John 14:13-17)

In other words, Jesus Christ said to His disciples that if they had that love to Him that led them to keep His commandments (that is, to study His Word, find out what His commandments are, and do them every time they discovered them), He would pray to the Father, and the Father, in answer to His prayers, would give them the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would then guide them in their prayers so that they would pray according to the will of God, and whatsoever they (those who keep His commandments and were therefore led by the Holy Spirit) should ask in His name, that He would do.

Turn to another familiar promise – one of the most remarkable promises in the whole Bible regarding God's answering prayer: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (John 15:7). This verse is constantly quoted as if it read, "If you abide in Me, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you," but it does not so read. You have left out one of the most important clauses in the verse. Let me read it again as it really reads: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. The Lord Jesus tells us that it is not only necessary that we abide in Him, but also that His words must abide in us, if we are to ask so as to get what we ask.

In order that Christ's words may abide in us, we must study these words. Unless we get them in us, they certainly cannot stay in us, and we certainly cannot get Christ's words in us unless we study them diligently.

But it is not enough to get Christ's words in us. His words must abide in us; that is, they must stay in us. There is only one possible way in which Christ's words can stay in us, and that is by our diligently obeying them. Three verses later in this same chapter, Jesus says again, If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love (John 15:10).

You can go straight through your Bible and find that every promise of God to answer our prayers is made to those who diligently study His Word in order that they may know His will, and who always obey His will every time they find it.

Are you greatly troubled as to why God does not give you the things you ask? There is no mystery at all about it. You are not studying God's Word to find out His will for you, or else you are not doing it every time you find it. You may be obeying Him in many instances, but there is some particular thing you are not doing that you know God wants you to do, and there is not the slightest reason why you should expect God to answer your prayers.

God Answers the Prayers of Those Who Do the Things that Are Pleasing in His Sight

It is not enough that we keep His commandments. There is something more than that in the verse that we are studying. Let us read 1 John 3:22 again: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and [please notice that and; "and" is a little, but very important, word] do the things that are pleasing in His sight. It is not enough that we do the things that God specifically commands us to do; in addition to that, we must do the things that are pleasing in His sight, even though He has not commanded us to do them. There are many things that it would please God for us to do that He does not specifically command us to do.

The idea that many people have of God's government is that God is a great moral governor who lays down a lot of laws for us to obey. They think that God's governing only involves thou shalt do this, and thou shalt do this, and thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do this – and that the entire Christian duty lies in our doing the things that God specifically tells us to do and leaving undone the things that God specifically tells us not to do.

What a strange idea of God's government! God is not a mere moral governor. He is that, but He is far more than that. He is something infinitely better than that. God is our Father. That is the very thought that lies at the very foundation of the biblical doctrine of prayer – the thought of the fatherhood of God. All these apparently philosophical and educated arguments that people bring against the doctrine of God's answering prayer from "the uniformity of law" and "the established course of things in nature and in providence" are all utterly foolish. They are really unphilosophical (despite all their ostentatious parade of being profoundly scientific and philosophical) because they lose sight of the great fundamental truth about God that lies at the very foundation of the biblical doctrine that God answers prayer – the truth that God is not merely the creator and governor of the physical and moral universe, but that God is our Father.

How does a father govern his children? Does he lay down a lot of laws – thou shalt do this, and thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do this? Does he rest content when his children do the things that he specifically tells them to do and leave undone the things he specifically tells them not to do? No, not if he is a wise father. If he is a wise father, he will lay down some rules for the conduct of his children, which he, because of superior knowledge, knows to be wise, but those rules will not be extremely many, and certainly he will not be content if his children simply obey those rules. No, the wise father expects his children to become thoroughly acquainted with him so that they know instinctively what pleases him and, when they know what pleases him, do it without waiting to be told.

Consider how my wife and I govern our own children. Did we lay down a lot of laws for our children to follow as to what they should and should not do? No, certainly not. We did lay down a few principles of action, which we, in our superior wisdom, knew to be best for our children. We did not always explain to our children why we laid these laws down, for we wanted our children to learn obedience to authority.

In much of the home life of America today, in much of the school life, and even in much of our national life, we have entirely lost sight of the great and wholesome principle of authority. Some of our modern would-be educators tell us that we should explain everything that we command our children to do, in the home or in the school, and that we ought to let our children follow out their own individuality and not enslave them by parental or school authority.

That is one of the most dangerous principles in modern teaching. By it we are training a lot of Bolshevists – Bolshevists in the home, Bolshevists in the schools, and afterward Bolshevists in society and in civil government. If there is anything the present generation needs to learn, and that we, who are in authority of one kind or another, need to teach our children, it is the principle of rightful authority: the authority of the parent in the home, the authority of teachers in schools, and the authority of civil rulers in our government.

Our children were taught to obey when they were told to do anything – without asking why. If either I or my wife had told our children to do anything, and they had not done it, we would not have known what to make of it; or if we had told them not to do anything and they had done it, we would not have known what to make of that. I cannot recall an instance in many years in which our children disobeyed us in a single matter.

However, we were not satisfied with that. Over and above the few rules we laid down for the guidance of our children, we expected our children to get thoroughly acquainted with us so that they would know instinctively what would please us, and when they knew it, they would do it without waiting to be told. We would have been very much grieved if our children had only done the things that pleased us when they were specifically told to do them.

Let me give you a concrete example. While we were living in Chicago, President McKinley and Commodore Dewey, after Commodore Dewey's great victory at Manila, visited Chicago. The people flocked into Chicago from all over Illinois and the adjacent states until some of our streets were so crowded that you could scarcely get around. They wanted to see the President of the United States and the victorious Commodore.

Well, President McKinley and Commodore Dewey (afterward Admiral Dewey) were to be in Chicago over Sunday, and the people wanted to see them on Sunday as well as on weekdays. It would have been impossible to get up any ordinary rally on Sunday, even in Chicago, so if Commodore Dewey and President McKinley were to be seen at all, at any gathering on Sunday, it had to be a religious gathering.

So the committee arranged for a religious gathering in the Auditorium Building (which accommodated the largest audience of any building in Chicago at that time). It was not so much that they wanted a Christian meeting, but they wanted an opportunity for the people to see Commodore Dewey and President McKinley, and nothing but a Christian gathering would do for the Lord's Day.

The Auditorium at that time would seat seven or eight thousand people, and there were twenty or thirty thousand who wanted to go to the gathering to see the President and the Commodore. So the committee had a great problem on their hands. Who would they admit and who would they exclude from the meeting? It was decided to ticket the meeting, but to whom would the tickets be given? The committee decided that as wisely as they could, and as part of the decision, they decided that they would send some of the tickets to the public schools of the city to be given to selected scholars.

One of my daughters was attending one of the public schools in Chicago at the time. Her teacher called her up one day and said to her, "Blanche, here are two tickets for the meeting at the Auditorium next Sunday, at which President McKinley and Commodore Dewey will be present. I want to give them to you."

My daughter thanked her for her kindness, and then she said, "Miss F., I think you better give the tickets to someone else."

"Why?" exclaimed Miss F. "Why don't you want the tickets, Blanche? Everybody wants to go."

My daughter replied, "I do not expect to go."

"Why don't you expect to go?"

"Because I do not think that my father would like to have me go."

"But," said her teacher, "has your father told you not to go?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "My father has not told me not to go. In fact, I don't know whether he even knows there is to be such a meeting, but I don't think he would like to have me go, and therefore I am not going."

I heard about what my daughter had done, even though she did not tell me. If she had asked me for anything about that time, I think she would have been likely to get it, but she did not ask me for anything. In the same way, God expects that we will get so thoroughly acquainted with Him that we will know what would please Him and what would displease Him – and that we will want to please Him in all things. When we know what would please Him, God wants us to do it every time, without waiting to be told, and when we know what would displease Him, God wants us to refuse to do it, even though we are not specifically told not to do it.

When we are carefully considering in all our actions and decisions related to our conduct what would please God and what would displease God, and when we do every time the things we think would please Him, and refuse to do every time the things we think would displease Him, even though He has not specifically told us to do the one or to leave the other undone, then God will listen to our prayers.

If we always study to do the things that are pleasing in His sight, He will always study to do the things that please us, and therefore will grant our requests. Are you always, in all your decisions, carefully considering what would please or displease God? Are you doing every time the things that you think would please Him, and leaving undone every time the things that you think would displease Him, whether He has told you to do the one or not to do the other?

This is a very simple way of deciding the questions that seem so troubling to so many young Christians today – and older Christians, too. For example, consider the questions, "Should Christians go to the theater?" or "Should Christians dance?" or "Should Christians play cards?" or "Should Christians go to the movies?" and so on.

The way a great many people try to decide the answers to those questions is this: They ask if God says anywhere in His Word that we cannot go to the movies, that we cannot dance, that we cannot listen to this music, etc. That should not be the question. If you were a real loyal child of God, you would not ask that question. The question should be, "Will it please my Father?" We should ask, "Will it please God?"

Take, for example, the question of many movies. If I thought it would please God for me to go see the movie more than it would please Him for me to stay away, I would go, no matter what anyone else might think of it or what anyone else might do. But if I thought it would please God for me to stay away more than for me to go, I would stay away no matter who else went.

When I lived in Chicago, complimentary tickets were frequently sent to me from different theaters, especially from one of the highest-class theaters. Along with the tickets, a note would often be attached saying that the play was of a very high moral character, and that Bishop So-and-So in some other city, or Dr. So-and-So highly approved of it and had gone to the play, and that they would be highly complimented if I would occupy a box at the play.

I could not be influenced by any such empty persuasion as that. It made no difference to me what Bishop or Doctor So-and-So had done. The only question with me was, "Will it please God more for me to go than for me to stay away?" If I thought that it would please God more for me to go than for me to stay away, I would have gone, whether Bishop So-and-So had gone or not. But if, on the other hand, I had thought it would please God more for me to stay away, I would have stayed away, even though every bishop and minister in Chicago had gone.

Each one of us must decide these questions for ourselves. None of us can be a conscience for someone else. These questions are not at all difficult to decide if we know God well and decide the questions on this biblical basis of doing the things that would please our Father and not doing the things that would not please Him.

Take, for example, the theater and movies. Does it please God for a child of His to attend these things? There are certain things that we all know about them, or that we can easily learn if we do not already know them. We all know there is a great difference between different movies and plays. Some of them are of a high moral character, and the natural tendency of them would be uplifting. Others are not morally so good, while others are as vile as the writers and producers dare make them.

We know, too, that there is a difference between different actors and actresses. We know that some actors and actresses try to maintain a high moral standard, while others are among the most corrupt members of modern society. We know that some actresses go on the stage with lofty moral ideals, while other actresses have no moral ideals at all.

"Well, then," someone may say, "the way to decide it is this: go to those plays, and only to those plays, where the play itself is of a high, elevating, moral character, and where all the actors and actresses are men and women who are trying to maintain high moral ideals."

Well, if you decided it in that way, you would not go to very many plays or movies. But the question is not quite as simple as that. The movie industry is an institution, as is the theater, and we must judge it as an institution as it really exists today. It is possible to imagine movies of the purest and loftiest character, and to imagine plays that would be among the most elevating of all the influences in society; but the question is not of the movies and the plays as we can imagine them, but as they actually exist today.

There are certain things that all of us who have studied the problem at all thoroughly know about the stage and the movie industry as they exist today. We know that the influence of the stage upon the men and women who perform upon it is of a most demoralizing character. We know that many women have gone into acting with a determination to maintain the highest moral ideals, and that they have all found out, after they have been acting for a while, that they must do one of two things: they must either lower their flag (retreat from their high Christian principles and morals) or else quit the industry. Some have quit the industry, and others have lowered their flag.

Clement Scott, who was the leading dramatic critic of his day in England and whose whole life was given to dramatic criticism, said some years ago in a leading London paper that it was practically impossible for any woman to remain on the stage and retain her womanly modesty. This statement of his naturally aroused great excitement among theatrical people and brought great indignation. By threats of one kind and another they compelled Clement Scott to say that he was sorry that he made the statement, but they could never make him say that it was not true.

When Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in London, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who stood at the top of the dramatic profession of that day and who was afterward knighted by the king because of his prominence and rare gifts, came down to see me where I was staying. He brought along with him one of the leading newspaper men of London. They wanted to convince me that I was wrong in my attitude toward the stage.

We had a long conversation. I invited Mr. Alexander in to listen to the conversation, and he took part in it. In that conversation, both Mr. Alexander and I put some very direct questions to Beerbohm Tree, and he answered them honestly. His admissions that he made (not, of course, regarding any impropriety in his own personal moral conduct, but regarding what was necessary to be done in the conduct of the stage) made me think worse of the theater than I ever had before.

When I was holding meetings in the big armory in Cleveland, Ohio, a theatrical manager called upon me at the hotel where I was staying. He said, "I demand the right to defend the stage from your platform."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "Because you are doing a great profession a great wrong. I was in Philadelphia when you held your meetings there, and we theatrical managers got together while you were there, and we agreed together that your meetings cost the theaters of Philadelphia fifty thousand dollars."

I replied, "That is one of the best things I have ever heard about our meetings in Philadelphia. Now," I said, "what do you want to say?"

He said, "I want to defend the stage."

"Well," I said, "the Paris newspaper Figaro has said that it is wrong to judge actresses by the same moral standards that we judge other women, for what would be wrong in other women would be right in actresses, for it is a part of their art."

"Well," he said, "that is just what I believe."

"Well," I said, "that is worse than anything I have ever said about the theater."

While I was in that same city of Cleveland, one of the most highly respected actors was performing with his troupe in the city at that time. It was a famous troupe, known on both sides of the water, and of high repute. One of the leading ladies in the troupe came under the influence of our meetings, and in conversation with my private secretary, a woman, told her what was practically required of any woman who hoped to become a star. When it was told to me, I could not help but feel that I would rather see a daughter of my own in her coffin than to see her on the stage. Is God pleased when a child of His patronizes an institution like that, which has such an influence upon the women who perform on the stage?

I knew a young lady who graduated from one of the best schools in her city. One of her closest friends in the class became an actress soon after her graduation. This young lady's parents went abroad and left her, with the other children, in Brooklyn with an aunt. Her young friend, the actress, soon became engaged to a young man belonging to one of the better families in New York, and an invitation to the marriage came to this young lady whose parents were abroad. She took the invitation to her aunt and asked her about going. Her aunt said, in surprise, "Why, you don't intend to go to that wedding, do you? Is not your friend an actress?"

"Yes."

"Will there not be theatrical people at the wedding? You certainly would not go to a wedding where there were theatrical people present."

And yet this aunt herself attended the theater. I could not see the consistency of the matter. I repeat, knowing the stage as I do, not only as I have read about it in books, but from contact with a good many theatrical people and having had a good many conversations with theatrical people, I would rather see my daughter in her coffin than see her on the stage. I believe in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12), and how could I patronize an institution in which I would rather see my own daughter in her coffin than belonging to that institution?

When Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in London, I said some pretty plain things about the stage in our meetings in the Royal Albert Hall. I received a letter from a man who at that time was managing more than thirty theaters in London. He wrote to me saying, "I am the manager of more than thirty theaters in London at the present time, but I want to write to you that every word you have said about the stage is true. I wish I were not in the business, but I am. Nevertheless, what you say is true." A number of people quite prominently connected with the stage gave up that work during our meetings in London.

What about the dance? Should a Christian attend dances? The answer to that question is found in the other questions: Will it please God? Is God more pleased when a child of His dances or when His child refuses to dance? Now there are certain things that we all know about the dance. First of all, we know that a familiarity of contact is permitted between the sexes in the modern dance that is nowhere else permitted in decent society. How is it any better in the dance than it is elsewhere?

When I was in Ballarat, Australia, I said some pretty plain things about the dance, which led to a good many of the dancers giving up the dance and to the breaking up of a prominent dancing club in the city. Some months afterward I was crossing over from Tasmania to Australia, and a fellow passenger on the boat was a lawyer from Ballarat. This lawyer came to me and said, "Are you not Dr. Torrey?"

"Yes."

"Well, I do not think you were fair to the dancers of Ballarat."

"What did I say that was not true?"

He replied, "I simply think you were not fair."

"Yes, but will you state one single thing that was not true?"

He said, "I simply think you were not fair."

"Now see here," I said, "do you dance?"

"Yes."

"Are you a married man?"

"Yes."

"Does your wife dance?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, tell me – what would you do if you saw your wife in the same attitude toward some other man than yourself, at any other place than the ballroom, that she takes in the ballroom?"

He replied, "There would be trouble."

I said, "Will you please tell me how it is any better in the ballroom, to the strains of seductive music, than anywhere else? Tell me another thing. Do you not know that in every class of society, even the most select, there are some men who are moral outcasts?"

He replied, "Of course we all know, Dr. Torrey, that in every class of society there are men who are corrupt."

"And your wife dances with those men?"

"Well," he said, "she does not know their character."

"You are willing," I said, "that your wife would be in the embrace of some other man who is a moral outcast, simply because she does not know his character?"

He made no reply. What reply could be made?

Now I do not believe for one single moment that every woman who dances has evil thoughts. I think that some of the girls who dance are sweet, innocent, pure-minded girls, but if they knew the thoughts that were in the minds of the men with whom they dance, they would never go on the floor again.

Three young men came to me in an eastern college town and said to me, "Dr. Torrey, what do you have against the dance?"

I replied, "Do you dance?"

"Yes."

"Are you Christians?"

"Yes."

"Will you please tell me what your thoughts are when you dance?"

They said, "Our thoughts are all right if we dance with a pure girl."

I said, "Do you dance with any other kind?"

"Well," they said, "you know, Dr. Torrey, that there are some girls who are not what they ought to be."

"And," I said, "you dance with them?"

"Yes."

"Well, you have answered your own question."

It is a well-known fact, proven by many tests, that the dance is the greatest feeder of, and accessory to, the most awful institution that exists in civilized society today. Oh, if pure women could only know where many of the young men who dance with them go immediately after the dance is over! If I could only tell you things that I know personally, not things that I have read in books, but that which has come under my own personal observation regarding the effect of the dance among what are called the better classes of society, there is not a self-respecting woman in this audience, to say nothing of a Christian woman, who would go on the floor again.

There is certainly no dance that is considered more preferred than a dance at some college function. A young man whom I know very well attended one of our leading eastern Presbyterian colleges. He did not dance, for he had been brought up by parents who did not believe in the dance. But his best friend did dance.

This friend was a Christian, and he was president of the YMCA. He invited a young lady in whom he was interested to one of the college functions. The other young man who did not dance asked his friend who had invited the young lady to the dance to let him see the dancing card that he had filled out for her. When he looked it over, he saw that his friend had given a dance with this young lady to a man whose immorality was notorious in the college, and who was in a very disgusting physical condition at the time as the direct outcome of his sin. He turned to his friend and said, "What! Do you not know the condition in which he is in at the present time? Does not everybody in college know?"

"Yes, I know."

"And you have given a dance with this young lady whom you are interested in to that young man?"

The young man replied, "Well, you cannot make those distinctions in college."

No, you cannot, nor can you elsewhere, if you dance. Any woman who dances is bound, sooner or later, to get into the arms of a moral outcast. And is God pleased?

But what about cards? Should a Christian play cards? I honestly admit that I do not think the case against cards is as clear as the case against the theater or the dance, but it is clear enough. Everyone who has studied the matter knows that cards are the gambler's darling weapon. We know, also, that pretty much every gambler's first lessons that led him to the gaming table took place at the quiet family card table. I have never known a single reformed gambler in my life (and I have known many of them) who did not hate cards as much as he hated poison. Why? Because he knew that cards were the reason for his own downfall.

When we were holding meetings in Nashville, Tennessee, my wife went out to one of the prisons near Nashville, and there she learned of a man who was serving a life sentence for murder. He had shot a man at the gaming table, and he said that he took his first step in that direction by keeping score for his mother as she played cards with her friends.

Some years ago, a YMCA secretary in Ohio was going to the state penitentiary to visit some of the prisoners. Before he left, a lady came to him and asked, "Are you going to visit the prisoners?"

He said, "Yes."

She said, "I have a son in that prison. Will you take him this Bible for me and tell him that his mother sent it to him?"

The YMCA secretary consented. When he reached the prison, he asked for this young man. The young man was brought in. He started to hand him the Bible, saying, "Your mother sent you this Bible."

The prisoner looked at him and asked, "Did my mother send me that Bible?"

"Yes."

"Well," he said, "you can take it right back to my mother. I do not want my mother's Bible. If my mother had not taught me to play cards, I would not be here today. I don't want my mother's Bible. Take it back to her."

I knew of a family in which the father and mother tried to make home so pleasant for their three sons that they would not want to go anywhere else at night. And they did make their home pleasant – the pleasantest place in the whole community, and the sons were perfectly content to spend their nights at home. Among other things, to amuse their children, this father and mother played cards with them. Of the three sons, one did not like to play cards. He was not better than the other two. His tastes simply ran in another direction. The other two played cards at home.

Now this theory of making home so pleasant would have been all right if young men were always to stay at home, but the time comes for young men to leave home. These three young men left home, and the two who had learned to play cards at home, with their Christian father and mother, both became gamblers.

Major Cole, the evangelist, was once holding meetings in an Arkansas city. At one of the meetings in the Presbyterian church, a very disreputable-looking man came in and took a seat over on the right-hand side of the church. When the meeting was opened for testimonies, this moral derelict stood up, looked around the church, and said, "All this looks very familiar to me. When I was a boy, I attended this church. My father was an elder in this church. This is our old pew, where I am standing. There were seven of us boys who were in a Sunday school class. Our teacher was a very kind lady. She not only taught us the Bible on Sundays, but she had us at her house on Saturday afternoons to teach us the Bible and to play games with us.

"One day after we had been going there a while, she brought out a pack of cards and showed us tricks with the cards. Later we played games with the cards. We soon wanted more cards, and we asked the teacher if she would give us less Bible and more cards. But we did not get enough cards there, so we left Sunday school and spent our Sunday afternoons in a cotton press playing cards.

"There were seven members in the class. Two of those members have already been hanged. Two are currently in state prisons. I have lost track of one, and the sixth member of the class is currently a fugitive from justice. If the authorities knew where he was, he would be under arrest. I am the seventh member of that class, and if the authorities knew where I was, I would be under arrest."

Just then a lady in the back of the church who was dressed in black sprang to her feet and came running down the aisle. With her hands flung in the air, she cried, "Oh, I am that teacher," and she fell at his feet as though she were dead. They thought for a while that she was dead. I would not like to have been that teacher. Oh, fathers and mothers, happy is the young man or young woman who goes out into the world not knowing one card from another, and who is fully instructed in the danger there is in cards. If any of you parents have a pack of cards in your home, I advise you to burn it up as soon as you get home.

Well, what about the movies? I do not need to dwell upon that. The movies are worse than the theater ever dreamed of being, and are immeasurably worse. The stage, at its very worst, was never so filled with the most open depiction of degrading sin as the movies are today, and the character of movie actors and actresses is notorious.

I do not mean to say that every movie actress is immoral. I know better. One of the most modest and sweetest Christian young women I ever knew, who is now a minister's wife and a beautiful Christian mother, was, when I first got acquainted with her, a movie actress. I do not question that there are others like her. But the lives of movie actors and actresses, taken as a whole, are full of the most terrible temptations, and many, very many, have yielded to those temptations. Movies as they exist today (I am not talking about educational movies, although some that are paraded as educational are among the vilest movies that there are) are, for the most part, one of the greatest menaces that exist to the young life of our country, and also to pure family life. Is God pleased when a child of His patronizes a movie, when it is what we all know it is today?

There are many other things of which I might speak, but this is enough to illustrate the principle. Someone will ask, "Dr. Torrey, do you mean to say that dancing, going to the theater, playing cards, and going to the movies are sins in the sense that stealing, adultery, murder, gossiping, and slandering your neighbors are sins?"

No, I do not say that. "Then," you ask, "what is the harm in it?"

The harm in it is that indulging in these things does not please God, and therefore they rob prayer of power. I want every ounce of power in prayer that I can have, and if there is anything, no matter how innocent it may be in itself or however much can be said in defense of it, that robs prayer of power, I am going to give it up.

Remember, in all that I am saying, I am not legislating for the world. If it were in my power to pass a law that there should be no more dancing, card playing, theaters, and movies, I would not pass it. I would not believe in it. I am not legislating at all for the unsaved in these or other matters. I am simply trying to tell men and women who profess to be Christians how to put the most into your Christian life, and specifically how to have power in prayer. And beyond a doubt, these things rob prayer of power. The Christian who dances, goes to the theater, plays cards, attends the movies, or does many other things that are not pleasing to God cannot be a man or woman of power in prayer.

To sum up all we have said: the ones who can pray so that God will hear their prayers and give them whatever they ask are those who study the Word of God every day of their lives to find out what the will of God is, do God's will every time they find it, and further than that, make it their study to get thoroughly acquainted with God so that they know instinctively what will please God and what will displease God. In every action of their lives they seek to do the thing that pleases God, whether it pleases people or not, and not to do the thing that displeases God, no matter who else may do it.

Oh, that we all might enter into the wonderful place of privilege described in our text: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

* * *

 A Bolshevist was a member or supporter of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party that seized power in Russia in 1917. In 1918, at Lenin's suggestion, the political party was renamed the Russian Communist Party.
Chapter 6

Praying in the Name of Jesus Christ

Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14)

One of the most familiar, most wonderful, and at the same time most commonly misunderstood promises in the Bible regarding God's willingness to answer prayer is found in John 14:13-14: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself tells us here that if a certain class of people pray in a certain way, He will give them the very thing that they ask. Listen to the promise again: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. These words are very plain, very simple, very positive, and very precious and cheering. They tell us that there are certain people who can get anything they ask for from God if they will only ask for it in a certain way.

There is a doctrine regarding prayer that is very common in our day. It is this: "If we pray, our praying will do much good in many ways. We may not get the very thing that we ask, but we will get something just as good as that which we ask, or maybe something far better."

I do not doubt that there is a certain measure of truth in that doctrine. It is a good thing sometimes that some of us do not get what we ask for. We are so careless, so thoughtless, so hasty, and so little under the control of the Holy Spirit when we pray that it is often a good thing for us, and for others, that we do not get the very thing that we ask. It would be a great misfortune if some of us got some of the things that we ask of God. But while there is a certain amount of truth in that doctrine, it is not the doctrine of prayer taught in the Bible.

The doctrine of prayer taught in the Bible is that there are certain people who can pray in a certain way and who will get not merely something or something just as good as or even better than what they ask, but they will get the very thing that they ask. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

There are two things to especially notice about this promise. First, notice to whom the promise is made – who can ask in the name of the Lord Jesus and get the very thing they ask. Second, notice how these people must pray in order to get what they ask.

To Whom the Promise Is Made

First of all, notice to whom this promise is made. One of the most common sources of misinterpretation of the Bible is taking promises that are made to a clearly defined specific class of people and applying them to people to whom the promises were never made. God does not promise to answer the prayers of everyone. Indeed, He tells us very plainly that there are people whose prayers He will pay no attention to whatsoever.

In the case of the present promise, we are told very specifically in the context, in what goes before and what comes after the promise, just who it is whose prayers God will answer, if they are offered in a certain way. Who are the people to whom God says through His Son Jesus Christ, Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do? They are clearly described in verse twelve, the verse that immediately precedes this one, and in verses fifteen and seventeen, the verses that immediately follow the promise.

First then, let us look at verse twelve: Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. And then our Lord goes on to say, Whatever you [that is, you who believe on the Son, as just defined] ask in My name, that will I do.

The promise, then, is made first of all to those who believe upon Jesus Christ. Notice very carefully that it is not made to those who believe about Jesus Christ, but to those who believe in Jesus Christ. People are constantly confusing in their own minds two entirely different things – believing about Jesus Christ and believing in Jesus Christ.

God does not promise to answer the prayers of those who merely believe about Jesus Christ, even if their faith is perfectly and rigidly orthodox. He promises to answer the prayers of those who believe in Jesus Christ. A person may believe perfectly correctly about Jesus Christ and yet not believe in Him at all. The devil himself believes about Jesus Christ, and is doubtless perfectly orthodox in what he believes. He knows more about Jesus Christ as He really is than we do, but the devil certainly does not believe in Jesus Christ. There are many people today who, because their view of Jesus Christ is perfectly orthodox, think that they believe in Jesus Christ, but they do not at all think in a right or biblical way.

What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? To believe in Jesus Christ means to put our personal confidence in Jesus Christ as what He claims to be and to accept Him to be to ourselves what He offers Himself to be to us. It means for us to accept Him as our Savior, as the one who bore our sins in His own body upon the cross. It means to trust God to forgive us because Jesus Christ died in our place, and also to accept Him as our Lord and Master to whom we surrender the absolute control of our lives. We are told this in so many words in the first chapter of this same book, in verse twelve: But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name (John 1:12).

Nowhere in the whole Bible does God promise to hear the prayers of people who do not believe in Jesus Christ. He never promises to hear the prayers of people who are not united to Jesus Christ by a living faith in Himself as their Savior and as their Lord. I do not say that God never answers the prayers of those who are not believers in Jesus Christ. I believe that He sometimes does. He answered some of my prayers before I believed in Him in the biblical sense, but He does not promise to do it. His doing so belongs to what the old theologians used to call so aptly "the uncovenanted mercies of God."

God promises most plainly and most positively to answer the prayers of those who believe in Jesus Christ, but never does He promise to answer the prayers of those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. Anyone who does not believe in Jesus Christ has no right whatsoever to expect God to answer their prayers, and he has no right whatsoever to complain that the promises of God are not true because He does not answer their prayers. There are many people who say they know that God does not answer prayer because He has never answered their prayers, and they have tried it time and time again. But that is no proof at all that God does not answer prayer, for God has never promised to answer their prayers.

One of the many good things about believing in Jesus Christ is that it puts us on praying ground. It puts us in the place where we can go to God in every time of need and get from Him the very thing that we need and ask for. I would rather be on praying ground, I would rather be in such a relation to God that He can and will answer my prayers, than to have the combined wealth of a hundred Rockefellers. Times will come in the life of every one of us sooner or later when no earthly friend and no amount of wealth can help us; but the time will never come when God cannot help us and deliver us completely.

This important question, therefore, confronts each of us: Do I believe in Jesus Christ? The question is not asking if you believe about Him, but if you believe in Him. If you do not, there is only one wise thing to do. There is only one thing to do that has even the slightest resemblance of intelligence, and that is to believe in Jesus Christ right now. Put your confidence in Him as your Savior right now, and look to God to forgive your sins right now because Jesus Christ died in your place. Put your confidence in Him right now as your Lord and Master to whom you surrender the entire control of your thoughts and your life and your conduct – right now.

However, this is not the complete description of those whose prayers God promises to answer. The rest of the description of this fortunate class is found in the fifteenth verse, the verse that follows the promise: If you love Me, you will keep My commandments (John 14:15). The promise, then, is made to those who believe in Jesus Christ and who love Him with that genuine love that leads them to keep His commandments.

Of course, in order to keep His commandments we must know them, and in order to know them we must study His Word, in which He has revealed to us His will. So we see that the promise is made to those who study the Word of God each day of their lives so that they may know what God's will is regarding their conduct – and who, when they discover it, do it every time. This brings us to right where we were when we were studying 1 John 3:22: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

There is not one promise in all of Scripture that says God will hear and answer the prayers of a disobedient child. If we are to expect God to listen to us when we pray to Him, we must first of all listen to God when He speaks to us in His Word. We must obey God every time He commands, and then (and only then) He will hear every time we pray. We must study His Word every day of our lives so that we can find out what His will is, and when we find it, we must do it every time. Then, and only then, are we on praying ground.

In summary, then, the promise of God to give to a certain class of people whatever they ask in a certain way is made to those who are united to Him by a living faith and an obedient love, and the promise is made to them and to them alone.

Someone might want to ask, "Which is more important in the prayer life – that we have a living faith in Jesus Christ or an obedient love for Jesus Christ?" The answer is very simple. You cannot have one without the other. If you have a living faith in Jesus Christ, it will inevitably lead to an obedient love for Jesus Christ. Paul states this very clearly in Galatians 5:6: In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.

On the other hand, you will never love Jesus Christ until you begin by believing in His love for you. We begin by believing in His love for us and end by loving Him. As John puts it in 1 John 4:19, We love [Him], because He first loved us.

There are many people who are trying to love God as a matter of duty, but no one ever succeeds in that attempt. Of course, we should love God, for He is infinitely worthy of our love. We should love Him because of His moral perfection and because He is the infinite One and our creator, but no one ever loved Him for that reason, and no one ever will or ever can.

This is where the Unitarians, under the leadership of William Ellery Channing and other intellectual leaders of his day, made their mistake. They tried to love God as a matter of duty. We never can and never will. But if we will first of all just put our trust in His wonderful love for us – vile and worthless sinners – we will soon find ourselves loving Him without any effort. Love for God is the inevitable outcome of our believing in His love for us.

A little girl in London came one day to Mark Guy Pearse, the great English preacher, and looked up sadly into his face and said, "Mr. Pearse, I don't love Jesus. I wish I did love Jesus, but I don't love Jesus. Won't you please tell me how to love Jesus?" The great preacher looked down into her eager eyes and said, "Little girl, as you go home today keep saying to yourself, 'Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me.' And when you come back next Sunday, I think you will be able to say, 'I love Jesus.'"

The following Sunday, the little girl came up to him again with happy eyes and a radiant face and exclaimed, "Oh, Mr. Pearse, I do love Jesus. I do love Jesus! Last Sunday as I went home, I kept saying to myself, 'Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me.' I began to think about His love and how He died upon the cross in my place, and I found my cold heart growing warm; and the first thing I knew, it was full of love to Jesus."

That is the only way anyone will ever learn to love the Lord Jesus – by first of all believing what the Bible tells us about His love for us even when we are the vilest of sinners – how He died in our place, how He was wounded for our transgressions and was bruised for our iniquities, how the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and how by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53).

We begin by believing in Him. We begin by believing in His great love to us, and we end up loving Him and showing our love to Him by daily studying His Word to find out His will, and doing it every time we find it. Then we are on praying ground.

Some years ago, a great Scottish teacher delivered an address at Northfield on the subject of whether it was better to have faith in Jesus Christ without love, or to have love for Jesus Christ without faith. He came to the conclusion that it was better to have love without faith than to have faith without love. But the whole speech, though it was a great speech in many ways, was built upon a misapprehension and a false assumption. He had assumed that we could have love without faith, but we cannot. Love for Christ is the outcome of faith in Christ, and faith in Christ is the root out of which love for Christ grows. To discuss whether it is better to have faith without love or love without faith is like discussing whether it would be better to have an apple orchard whose trees had good roots but bore no apples, or to have an orchard whose trees had no roots but bore good apples. Of course, an orchard where the trees had no roots would bear no apples at all, and a life that is not rooted in faith in the love of Jesus Christ for us has no roots and cannot bear the fruit of love and the obedience that comes out of love. So, then, this promise that we are considering is made to those who have a living faith in Jesus Christ that manifests itself in an obedient love.

Praying in the Name of Jesus

How must those who are united to Jesus Christ by a living faith that reveals itself in an obedient love pray if they are to get the very thing that they ask? Let us read John 14:13-14 again: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

If we are to get from God what we ask, we must ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Prayer in the name of Jesus Christ prevails with God. No other prayer does. There is no other approach to God for any man or woman except through Jesus Christ, as the Lord Himself tells us in John 14:6: I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Just what does it mean to pray in the name of Jesus? I have heard many explanations of this. Some of them were so profound or mystical, or so mixed, or so obscure, or so something or other, that when I got through reading them or listening to them, I knew less about it than when I started. I have heard two great Bible teachers, two of the most renowned Bible teachers in the world, say that to pray in the name of Jesus means to pray in the person of Jesus.

I do not question that these two great Bible teachers had some definite thought in their own minds, but it certainly conveyed no clear and definite thought to my mind. The truth is, there is nothing mysterious about it. It is as simple as anything possibly can be. It is so simple that any intelligent child can understand it. I am always suspicious of profound explanations of the Scriptures that require a scholar or philosopher to understand them. The Bible is the plain man's book.

The Lord Jesus Himself said in Matthew 11:25, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. In at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the meaning of Scripture that lies on the surface, the meaning that any simple-minded man, woman, or child who really wants to know the truth and to obey it would see in it, is what it really means.

I have great sympathy with the little child who, when she once heard a learned attempt to explain away the plain meaning of Scripture, exclaimed, "If God did not mean what He said, why didn't He say what He meant?" Well, God does always say just what He means. He says just what you and I would understand by it if our wills were really surrendered to God and we really desired to know exactly what God wanted to tell us without us reading our own opinions into the Bible. He means by this expression, in My name, just exactly what the words would indicate to any earnest and intelligent seeker after the truth who was willing to take God's words at their exact face value.

When you come across a word or a phrase in the Bible and do not know what it means, the thing to do is not to run off to a dictionary, a commentary, or some theology book, but to take your concordance and go through the Bible and look up every place where that word or phrase, or synonymous words or phrases, are used. Then you will know just what the word or phrase means. The meaning of words and phrases in the Bible is to be determined just as it is in all other books – by how it is used.

I have studied in this way the phrase, in My name, along with synonymous phrases such as in His name or in the name of Jesus Christ. I have looked up every passage in the Bible where they are found, and I have discovered what I suspected at the outset – that these phrases mean exactly the same in the Bible that they do in ordinary, everyday speech. What does it mean in ordinary, everyday speech to ask something in another person's name? It simply means that you ask someone for something on the basis of some claim that the person in whose name you ask it has upon the one from whom you ask it.

Let me illustrate. Suppose I would go down to the First National Bank of this city and write out a check that said, "Pay to the order of R. A. Torrey the sum of five dollars." Then I would sign my own name at the bottom of the check, go to the bank teller's window, and give that check to the teller. What would I be doing? I would be asking that bank to give me five dollars. And in whose name would I be asking it? In my own name. And what would happen? The bank teller would take the check and look at it, then look at me, and then he would say, "Mr. Torrey, do you have any money in this bank?" If I said, "No," he would say something like, "We would like to accommodate you, but that is not business. You have no claim whatsoever upon this bank, and we cannot honor your check even though it is for only five dollars."

Suppose, instead, that some man here in the city who had a hundred thousand dollars in that bank would call me in and say, "Dr. Torrey, I am greatly interested in the work of the Bible Institute, and I am going to give some money to it." Then he writes a check that says, "Pay to the order of R. A. Torrey the sum of five thousand dollars," and he signs his name at the bottom of the check. If I go to the bank again and present that check, what would I be doing? I would be asking that bank to give me five thousand dollars. And in whose name would I be asking it? Not in my own name, but in the name of the man whose name is signed to the bottom of the check and who has a claim of a hundred thousand dollars on that bank.

What would happen? The teller would look at the check, and he would not ask me whether I had any money in that bank. He would not care whether I had a penny in that bank or in any bank. If the check were properly written and properly endorsed, he would count me out five thousand dollars, for I would be asking it in the other man's name – asking it on the basis of his claims on that bank.

That is exactly what praying in the name of Jesus Christ means. It means that we go to the bank of heaven, on which neither you nor I nor any other person on earth has any claim of his own, but upon which Jesus Christ has infinite claims. Then in Jesus' name, which He has given us a right to put on our checks if we are united to Him by a living faith that reveals itself in an obedient love, we ask whatever we need in His name.

To put it another way, to pray in the name of Jesus Christ is to recognize that we have no claims on God whatsoever, that God owes us nothing whatsoever, and that we deserve nothing of God. However, believing what God Himself tells us about Jesus Christ's claims upon Him, we ask God for things on the basis of Jesus Christ's claims upon God. When we draw near to God in that way, we can get whatever we ask, no matter how great it may be.

Praying in the name of Jesus means more than merely attaching the phrase, "In Jesus' name" to your prayers. Many people ask for things and put that phrase, "In Jesus' name" at the end of their prayer, while all the time they are really approaching God on the basis of some claim that they imagine they have on God. In reality, although they use the phrase, they are not praying in the name of Jesus Christ, but are praying in their own names.

A person might not put that phrase in his prayer at all, and yet all the time draw near to God, realizing that he has no claims on God. Instead, believing that Jesus Christ has claims on God, he approaches God on the ground of Jesus Christ's claims. This is why many people fail to get answers to prayer. They ask things of God on the basis of some claim they imagine they themselves have on God. They imagine that because they consider themselves to be such good Christians, so consistent in their lives, and so active in their service, that God is under obligation to grant their prayers.

When I was in Melbourne, Australia, a note was put in my hands one day as I went on the platform at the businessmen's meeting at the noon hour in the town hall. This note read:

Dear Dr. Torrey:

I am in great perplexity. I have been praying for a long time for something that I am confident is according to God's will, but I do not get it. I have been a member of the Presbyterian church for thirty years, and have tried to be a consistent member all the time. I have been superintendent in the Sunday school for twenty-five years and an elder in the church for twenty years, and yet God does not answer my prayer. I cannot understand it. Can you explain it to me?

I took the note with me to the platform. I read the note to the congregation and then said:

It is perfectly easy to explain it. This man thinks that because he has been a consistent church member for thirty years, a faithful Sunday school superintendent for twenty-five years, and an elder in the church for twenty years, that God is under obligation to answer his prayer. He is really praying in his own name, and God will not hear our prayers when we approach Him in that way. We must, if we desire God to answer our prayers, give up any notion that we have any claims upon God. There is not one of us who deserves anything from God. If we got what we deserved, every last one of us would spend eternity in hell. But Jesus Christ has great claims on God, and we should go to God in our prayers, not on the basis of any goodness in ourselves, but on the basis of Jesus Christ's claims. This man is going to God on the basis of the claims that he thinks he has in himself – that he has been a faithful church member for thirty years, a Sunday school superintendent for twenty-five years, and an elder in the church for twenty years. He is praying in his own name.

At the close of the meeting, a gentleman stepped up to me and said, "I wrote that note. You have hit the nail square on the head. I did think that because I had been a consistent church member for thirty years, a Sunday school superintendent for twenty-five years, and an elder in the church for twenty years, that God was under obligation to answer my prayers. I see my mistake."

Multitudes are making the same mistake. They imagine that God is under obligation to answer their prayers and that they have some claim on God because they are faithful church members and are active in Christian service. Not one of us has any claim on God. The best of us if we got what we deserved would spend eternity in hell. We are miserable sinners. But Jesus Christ has claims on God, and He has given us the right to draw near to God in His name – on the basis of His claims on God.

To pray, then, in the name of Jesus Christ, simply means that we recognize that we have no claims whatsoever on God. We recognize that we have no merit whatsoever in His sight, and furthermore, we recognize that Jesus Christ has immeasurable claims on God and has given us the right to draw near to God, not on the basis of our claims, but on the basis of His claims. When we thus draw near to God in prayer, God will give us what we ask.

Oh, what a precious privilege it is to pray in the name of Jesus Christ! How rich we are if we only realize that Jesus Christ has given us the privilege of drawing near to the heavenly Father in His name, on the basis of His claims on God.

When I was a boy, my father had put the management of much of the expenditures of the home and other things in the hands of my next oldest brother (my oldest brother was away from home), and the bank account was in my brother's name. But he, too, was called away from home, and so my father turned over the matter of paying bills and the conduct of the business to me. He gave me a checkbook full of blank checks with his name signed to them and said, "Whenever you need any money, just fill out a check for the amount that you need, and go and present it at the bank."

How rich I felt with that checkbook full of blank, signed checks, knowing that I could fill them out at any time and go to the bank and get what I asked! But what is that compared to what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us? He has put His entire bank account at our disposal. He has given us the right to draw near to the Father in His name and ask anything of God, not on the basis of our claims upon God, but on the basis of His claims upon God.

Even before D. L. Moody gave up business, he was very active in Christian work. He often went out from Chicago to some of the nearby country towns and held a short series of meetings. At one time he was holding a series of meetings in a town in Illinois some distance from Chicago. The wife of the judge of that district came to him and said, "Mr. Moody, won't you go and talk to my husband?"

Mr. Moody replied, "I cannot talk to your husband. Your husband is an educated man. He is an educated unbeliever, and I am nothing but an ignorant shoe clerk from Chicago." But the judge's wife was very insistent that he should go and talk with him, and finally Mr. Moody consented to go – and he went.

When he entered the judge's outer office, the law clerks laughed audibly as they thought of how quickly the clever judge would dispose of this ignorant young worker from Chicago. Mr. Moody went into the judge's inner office and said to him, "Judge, I cannot talk with you. You are an educated man and have studied the arguments of unbelievers, and I am nothing but an uneducated shoe clerk from Chicago. But I want to ask you one thing: When you are converted, will you let me know?"

The judge answered with a contemptuous laugh and said, "Yes, young man. When I am converted, I will let you know. Good-bye."

As Mr. Moody walked out of the inner office to the outer office, the judge raised his voice higher so that the clerks in the outer office could hear: "Yes, young man. When I am converted, I will let you know," and the law clerks laughed louder than before.

But the judge was converted within a year. Mr. Moody went back to the town and called on the judge. He said, "Judge, do you mind telling me how you were converted?"

"No, Mr. Moody," he replied. "I will be very glad to tell you. Sometime after you were here, one night my wife went to the prayer meeting as she always did, and I stayed at home as I always did and read the evening paper. After a while as I sat there reading, I began to feel very miserable. I began to feel that I was a great sinner. Before my wife got home, I was so miserable that I did not dare face my wife, so I went to bed before she got home. She came up to my room and asked, 'Are you ill?'

"I replied, 'No, I wasn't feeling real well and thought I would go to bed. Good night.' I was miserable all night, and when morning came, I felt so bad that I did not dare face my wife at the breakfast table. I simply looked into the breakfast room and said, 'Wife, I am not feeling real well. I'll not eat any breakfast this morning. Good-bye. I am going down to the office."

When I got to the office, I felt so miserable that I told my clerks that they could take a holiday. After they left, I locked the outer door, went into my inner office and locked that door, and sat down. I got to feeling more and more miserable as I thought of my sins, until at last I knelt down and said, 'Oh, God, forgive my sins.' There was no answer. I cried more earnestly, 'Oh, God, forgive my sins.' There was no answer.

"I would not say, 'Oh, God, for Jesus Christ's sake forgive my sins,' for I was a Unitarian and did not believe in the atonement. Again I cried, 'Oh, God, forgive my sins.' But there was no answer. At last I was so perfectly miserable at the thought of my sins that I cried, 'Oh, God, for Jesus Christ's sake forgive my sins.' And I found instant peace."

Oh, men and women, there is no use in trying to approach God in any other way than in the name of Jesus Christ and on the basis of His claims upon God and His atoning death – whereby He took our sins upon Himself and made it possible for us to approach God on the basis of His claims upon God.

While we have no claims upon God because of any goodness or service of our own, Jesus Christ has infinite claims upon God and has given us the right to approach God in His name. Therefore, we ought to go very boldly to God and ask great things of God. Oftentimes when we pray and ask something that seems to be pretty big, the devil will say to us, "You should not pray for anything as great as that. You are such a poor Christian. That is more than you deserve."

Yes, it is more than we deserve, but it is not as much as Jesus Christ deserves. Time and time again, Satan has said to me when I have dared to ask something of God that seemed very large, "Oh, don't dare to ask as great a thing as that. You are not worthy of anything as great as that." I have replied, "I know that I am not worthy of anything as great as that. I am not worthy of anything at all, but Jesus Christ is worthy of that, and I am not asking on the basis of my claims upon God, but on the basis of His."

Sometimes as I think of how precious the name of Jesus Christ is to God and how He delights to honor the name of His Son, I grow very bold and ask God for great things. Once when I was kneeling in prayer, I was thinking of how infinite the worth of Jesus Christ was, how infinite were His claims upon God, and how God delights to give great things in His name. I grew very bold and asked God to send me around the world preaching the gospel and to allow me to see many thousands of people saved in Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and other lands. As I thought of the power of Jesus' name, I knew that God had heard my prayer and that I was going to go around the world and see thousands saved in many lands.

Do you realize that we honor the name of Christ by asking great things in His name? Do you realize that we dishonor that name by not daring to ask great things in His name? Oh, have faith in the power of Jesus' name, and dare to ask great things in His name.

During our Civil War, there was a father and mother in Columbus, Ohio, who had an only son, the joy of their hearts. Soon after the outbreak of the war, he came home one day and said to his father and mother, "I have enlisted in the army." Of course, they felt bad to have their son leave home, but they loved their country and were willing to make the sacrifice of giving their son to go to war and fight for his country.

After he had gone to the front, he wrote home regularly, telling his father and mother about his experiences in camp and elsewhere. His letters were full of brightness and good cheer, and they brought joy to his parents' lonely hearts. But one day at the regular time no letter came. Days passed, and no letter. Weeks passed, and they wondered what might have happened to their boy. One day a letter came from the United States government, and in it they were told that there had been a great battle, that many had been killed, and that their son was among those who had been killed in battle. The light went out of that home.

Days and weeks, months and years, passed by. The war came to an end. One morning as they were sitting at the breakfast table, the maid came in and said, "There was a poor, ragged fellow out at the door, and he wanted to speak to you. But I knew you did not wish to speak to a man like him, so he handed me this note and asked me to give it to you." The maid handed the father a soiled and crumpled piece of paper. The father opened it, and when he glanced at it, his eyes fell upon the writing. He flinched, for he recognized the writing of his son. The note said:

Dear Father and Mother:

I have been shot and have only a short time to live, and I am writing you this last farewell note. As I write, there is kneeling beside me my most intimate friend in the company, and when the war is over, he will bring you this note. When he does, be kind to him for my sake.

Your Son Charles

There was nothing in that house that was too good for that poor tramp "for Charlie's sake," and there is nothing in heaven or on earth too good, or too great, for you and me in Jesus' name. Oh, be bold and ask great things from God in Jesus' name.

* * *

 See R. A. Torrey's book How to Study the Bible for the Greatest Profit (available from Aneko Press) for a more in-depth explanation of this.
Chapter 7

The Prayer of Faith

This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. (1 John 5:14-15)

I call your attention today to one of the most remarkable statements to be found in the whole Bible in regard to God answering prayer and in regard to our knowing that God has heard our prayer and has granted the thing we have asked of Him. You will find it in 1 John 5:14-15: This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

Please notice carefully exactly what God tells us in this passage. We are told that there is a way in which certain people can pray so as to not only get the very thing that they ask, but so as to know, before they actually get it, that God has heard their prayer and that therefore the thing that they have asked of Him has been granted to them.

Listen again to these wonderful words that the Holy Spirit inspired John to write: This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. Certainly that is an astonishing statement. It gives to us the plain and positive assurance that there are some people who can pray in a certain way, and that if those people pray in that way, they will not only get whatsoever they ask, but they can know before they get it that God has heard their prayer and has granted their request. It is certainly a great joy when we pray to be able to know that the prayer we have offered has been heard and that the thing we have asked has been granted. It is a great joy to be just as certain that it is ours as we will later be when we actually have it in our hand.

To Whom the Promise Is Made

Please note who it is to whom God makes this promise. As I have said so often before, when you try to understand and apply the promises of God that you find in the Bible, you must always be very careful to note just exactly who the people are to whom the promise is made. We are told in the immediate context, in the previous verse, just who the people are to whom this promise is made: These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).

Immediately after that verse is the promise that we are studying now, so it is as clear as day that the promise is made to those who believe in the name of the Son of God. The promise is to them and to no one else, and anyone who does not believe in the name of the Son of God has no right whatsoever to take this promise to himself; nor does anyone have the right to think that God's Word has failed if he does take the promise to himself and it is not fulfilled. The fault is with himself and not with God's Word. He has taken to himself a promise that was made to someone else. We are told in the Gospel of John, written by the same person who wrote 1 John, just what it means to believe on the Son of God: But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name (John 1:12).

So John himself interprets believing in the name of the Son of God to mean receiving the Son of God. That is, it means receiving Him to be to us what He offers Himself to be to all who put their trust in Him – our personal Savior who bore our sins in His own body on the cross, and our Lord and Master to whom we surrender the absolute control of our thoughts, our will, and our conduct. So, then, this promise is made to those who have received Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and trusted God to forgive them because Jesus Christ died on the cross in their place, who have received Him as their Lord and Master to whom they have surrendered the absolute control of their thoughts, their will, and their conduct, and who have made an absolute surrender to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is made to them and to no one else, and no one else has the least right to claim it.

This is where many go astray – they do not really believe in the name of the Son of God. They have not really received Him, yet they appropriate to themselves this promise that was never made to them.

How We Must Pray in Order to Know that God Has Heard Our Prayers and Has Granted the Thing that We Have Asked

Now we come to the question, How must those who believe in the name of the Son of God pray in order to know that God has heard their prayer and has granted what they asked? Read the fourteenth verse again: This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. In order to know that God has heard our prayer and granted us what we asked, we must pray according to His will.

When we who believe in the name of the Son of God pray for anything that we know to be according to His will, then we can know, because of the all-sufficient reason that God says so in His Word, that God has heard the prayer and has granted us what we asked. We can know it – not because we feel it or because of any inward illumination of the Holy Spirit – but we can know it for the very best of all reasons: because God says so in His Word, and God cannot lie.

But is it possible for us to know what the will of God is so that we can be sure while we are praying that we are asking something that is according to His will? Yes, we certainly can know the will of God with absolute certainty in many cases when we pray.

How Can We Know the Will of God?

We can know the will of God by the promises in His Word. The Bible was given to us for the specific purpose of revealing to us the will of God, and when we find that anything is definitely promised in the Word of God, we know that that is His will, for He has said so in so many words. When we who believe in the name of the Son of God go to God and ask Him for anything that is definitely promised in His Word, we can know with absolute certainty that God has heard our prayer and that the thing that we have asked of God is granted. We do not have to feel it; God says so, and that is enough.

For example, God says in His Word, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:5). So when I go to God and ask for wisdom, if I am a believer in the name of the Son of God, I know with absolute certainty that God has heard my prayer and that wisdom will be granted.

Some years ago I spoke at a YMCA Bible conference at Mahtomedi, White Bear Lake, Minnesota. I spoke on the subject of prayer. I had to hurry immediately from the amphitheater to the train. As I was leaving the amphitheater, I saw another minister from Minneapolis who was to immediately follow me on the program, and he was very agitated. He stopped me and said, "Mr. Torrey, I am going to tear to pieces everything that you said to these young men this morning."

I replied, "If I have not spoken according to the Bible, I hope you will tear it to pieces. But if I have spoken according to the Book, you better be careful how you try to tear it to pieces."

"But," he exclaimed, "you have produced upon these young men the impression that they can pray for things and get the very thing they ask for."

I replied, "I do not know whether that is the impression that I have produced or not, but it certainly is the impression that I intended to produce."

"But," he said, "that is not right; you must say that they will get what they ask for if it is according to God's will."

I replied, "If you do not know that the thing you have asked for is according to God's will, then it is all right to say, 'If it is according to Your will.' But if you know God's will, what is the need of saying, 'If it is according to Your will'?"

"But," he said, "we cannot know God's will."

I answered, "What was the Bible given to us for if it was not to reveal God's will? When you find a specific promise in the Bible and take that promise to God, don't you know that you have asked something according to His will? For example, we read in James 1:5, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. When you ask for wisdom, then, do you not know that God is going to give it?"

"But," he said, "I do not know what wisdom is."

I said, "If you did, you would not need to ask for it, but whatever it may be, do you not know that God is going to give it?"

He made no reply. I never heard that he tried to tear what I said to pieces, but I do know that later he himself spoke very boldly on the subject of confidently asking God for the things that we need from Him and that are according to His will.

When you have a definite promise in God's Word, you do not need to put any "ifs" before it. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). They are absolutely certain, and if you plead any plain promise in God's Word, you do not need to put any "ifs" in your request. You can know that you are asking something that is according to God's will, and it is your privilege to know that God has heard you. It is your privilege to know that you have the thing you have asked. It is your privilege to get up from prayer with the same absolute certainty that the thing that you will have afterward when you actually see it in your hand is yours.

Suppose some cold winter morning when I lived in Chicago I had gone down on South Clark Street that was then teeming with poor men, and some shivering vagrant would have come up to me and said, "Mr. Torrey, it is very cold and I need an overcoat. Will you give me an overcoat?" Suppose I had replied, "If you will come over to my house this afternoon at 39 East Pearson Street, at two o'clock, I'll give you an overcoat."

Promptly at two o'clock the vagrant makes his appearance. I meet him at the door and bring him into the house. Then he says to me, "Mr. Torrey, you said to me this morning on South Clark Street that if I would come to your house at two o'clock this afternoon you would give me an overcoat. Now, if it is your will, please give me that overcoat."

What would I say? I'd say, "What did you say?"

"I said, if it is your will, please give me that overcoat."

"But why do you put any 'if' in it? Did I not say I would?"

"Yes."

"Do you doubt my word?"

"No."

"Then why do you put in an 'if'?"

And why should we put any "ifs" in our prayers when we take to God any of His promises? Does God ever lie? There are many cases in which we do not know the will of God, and in such cases it is all right to put in "if it be Your will." Even in cases where we do know His will, our prayers should always be in submission to His will, for the dearest thing to the true child of God is God's will; but there is no need to put any "ifs" in when He has revealed His will. To put in an "if" in such a case as that is to doubt God, to doubt His Word, and is really to call God a liar.

This passage of Scripture is one of the most abused passages in the Bible. God put it into His Word to give us confidence when we pray. It is constantly misused to make us uncertain when we pray. Often when some young and enthusiastic believer is asking for something with great confidence, some cautious brother will go to him after the meeting is over and say to him, "Now, my young brother, you must not be so confident as that in your prayers. It may not be God's will, and we ought to be submissive to the will of God; you should say, 'If it be Your will.'"

Some people always have an element of uncertainty in their prayers, and one would think that 1 John 5:14-15 said, "This is the uncertainty that we have before Him, that we can never know God's will, and therefore can never be sure that our prayer is heard." But that is not the way it reads. It says, This is the confidence [not uncertainty, but absolute confidence] which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. Oh, how subtle the devil is to take a passage of Scripture that God has put into His Word to fill us with confidence when we pray, and use it to make us uncertain when we pray.

But can we know the will of God when we pray, even when there is no definite promise in regard to the matter about which we are praying? Yes – in many cases we can. How? Romans 8:26-27 answers the question: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit when we pray to make known to us what the will of God is in the matter about which we are praying and to show us if what we are praying for is according to His will. There are many things that we need that are not definitely promised in the Word, and it doesn't mean at all that because they are not definitely promised in the Word that they are not according to the will of God. It is the will of God to give us very many things that He has not specifically promised in His Word, and it is the method of God, when we pray, to show us His will, by the direct illumination of the Holy Spirit, even in regard to things about which He has given us no specific promise.

For example, while I was pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago, the child of a man and woman who were both members of our church became very sick. The child first had the measles, followed by meningitis. The child sank very low, and the doctor said to the mother, "I can do no more for your child. Your child cannot live." She immediately hurried down to my house to get me to come up to their house and pray for her child, but I was out of town holding meetings in Pittsburgh. She sent for my assistant pastor, W. S. Jacoby, who went up to the house with one of my colleagues in the Bible Institute, and he prayed for the child.

That night after I got home from Pittsburgh, Mr. Jacoby came to my house to tell me about it. He said, "Mr. Torrey, if I ever had an answer to my prayers in my life, it was today when I was praying for the Duff child." He was confident that God had heard his prayer and that the child would be healed – and the child was healed right away. This happened on a Saturday. The next morning the doctor called again at the house and there was such a remarkable change in the child that he said to Mrs. Duff, "What have you done for your child?" She told him just what she had done. Then he said, "Well, I will give him some more medicine."

"No," she said, "you will not. You said you could do no more for the child, that the child must die. We went to God in prayer, and God has healed the child. You are not going to take the honor to yourself by giving him some more medicine."

Indeed, the child was not only improved that morning, but the child was well. Mrs. Duff went down to the morning service and would have brought the child with her except it was such a stormy morning that she thought she better not take him out in the intense cold.

Neither Mr. Jacoby nor I could pray for every sick child in that way, for it is not the will of God to heal every sick child or every sick adult. It is God's general will in regard to His children that they are well in body, but there are cases when God, for wise purposes of His own, does not see fit to heal the sick. However, there are cases when He does see fit to heal the sick, and in those cases, if we are living near to God and listening for the voice of His Spirit and are entirely surrendered to the Spirit in our praying, the Spirit of God will make clear to us the will of God, we will know that our prayer is heard, and we will know that the thing is ours long before we actually get it.

I will give another illustration along an entirely different line, for the healing of the body is only one of the lines along which God answers prayer, and it is not by any means the most important. In my first pastorate, we had a united meeting of all the churches of the town. In the course of the meetings we had a day of fasting and prayer. During the morning meeting as we were praying, God led me to pray that one of the most unlikely men in the town would be saved that night. He had led a wild, roaming life. Few in his family were Christians, but as we knelt in prayer that morning, God put a great burden on my heart for that man's salvation, and I prayed that he might come to the meeting and be saved that night.

As I prayed, God gave me great confidence that he would indeed come and be saved that night – and he did indeed come to the meeting that night and get saved. There was not a man in that whole town who was more unlikely to be saved than he. That was more than forty years ago, but when I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a few years ago, I met another man whose mother was saved about the same time, who told me that this man was living in Tennessee and was still living a Christian life. I cannot pray for the salvation of every unsaved person in that way, but God, by His Spirit, revealed to me His will regarding that man, and in many other cases He has revealed His will.

Here is yet another illustration along still another line. One day when I was in Northfield, Massachusetts, I received word from Chicago from Mr. Fitt, Mr. Moody's son-in-law, that we needed $5,000 for the work in Chicago at once, and he asked me to pray for it. Another member of the faculty of the Bible Institute was in Northfield at that time, and that night we went out and knelt down and prayed to God to send the needed money. God gave my friend great confidence that He had heard the prayer, and he said to me, "God has heard the prayer, and the $5,000 will come." Mr. Fitt and Mr. Gaylord also prayed in Chicago, and God gave Mr. Gaylord a great confidence that the money would come. We knew it was ours. We knew that God had heard the prayer and that we had received the money.

A telegram came the next day from Indianapolis saying that $5,000 had been deposited to our account in a bank in Indianapolis and was waiting our order. Though we had prayed and expected, Mr. Fitt could hardly believe it when he heard it. He sent down to our bank in Chicago, and they made inquiry from the bank in Indianapolis if it was true – and they found out that it was. As far as I know, the man who put that money in the bank in Indianapolis had never given a penny to the Bible Institute before. I did not know there was such a man in the world, and as far as I know, he has never given a penny to the Bible Institute since.

Now I cannot go to God every time I think I need money and ask God for it with that same confidence, but there are times when I can. There have been many such times in my life, and God has never failed – and He never will. Banks sometimes fail, but God never fails.

In summary, when God makes His will known, either by a specific promise of His Word or by His Holy Spirit while we are praying, that the thing that we ask for is according to His will, it is our privilege to know – if we really believe in the name of the Son of God – that that thing we have asked is granted, and that it is ours. And it is just as truly ours as it will be when we later actually have it in our hand.

Praying in Faith

The passage we have been studying is closely related to another passage in the Gospel of Mark that contains a promise of our Lord Himself in regard to God answering prayer. It is a very familiar passage: Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you (Mark 11:24).

I will not stop to call your attention to whom this promise is made, other than to say that it is the same as all the other promises of God to answer prayer which we have been studying: it is for those who believe in Jesus Christ, who are united to Him by a living faith that manifests itself in an obedient love. This is evident from the context, as you can find out for yourself if you will read the promise in its context.

So, how must we pray in order to get the thing that we ask? We must pray in faith. That is, we must pray with a confident expectation of getting the very thing that we ask. There are those who say that any prayer that is in submission to the will of God and is in faith in Him and dependence on Him is a prayer of faith. But it is not "the prayer of faith" in the biblical sense of the prayer of faith. The prayer of faith in the biblical sense is the prayer that has no doubt whatsoever that God has heard the prayer and granted the specific thing which we have asked from Him (1 John 5:15).

This is evident from James 1:5-7: But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. No matter how positive the promises of God may be, we will never receive them in our own experience until we absolutely believe them. The prayer that gets what it asks is the prayer of faith; that is, it is the prayer that has no doubt whatsoever of getting the very thing that is asked.

This comes out more clearly in Mark 11:24: Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. When we pray to God, and pray according to His will as known by the promises of His Word or as known by the Holy Spirit revealing His will to us, we should confidently believe that the very thing that we have asked is granted to us. We should believe that we have received, and what we thus believe we have received, we will afterward have in actual personal experience.

Take for example the matter of praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. When anyone prays for the Holy Spirit – anyone who is united to Jesus Christ by a living faith that reveals itself in an obedient love, who has received Jesus Christ as their Savior and is trusting God to forgive them on the sole basis that Jesus Christ died in their place, who has received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Master, and has surrendered all their thoughts, purposes, and conduct to His control – they can know that they have prayed for something according to His will. We can know this because Jesus Christ specifically says, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? (Luke 11:13).

When the person knows that he has asked something that is according to God's will as He has clearly revealed it in His Word, it is his privilege to say, "I have what I asked. I have the Holy Spirit." It is not a question at all of whether he feels that he has received the Holy Spirit or not. It is not a question of some remarkable experience. It is simply a question of taking God at His Word. The one who prays believes that he has received – simply because God says so.

And what he has taken by simple faith on the Word of God, simply believing he has received because God says so, he will afterward have in reality. There is no need for him to go to any "tarrying meeting," work himself up into a frenzy of emotionalism, or fall into a trance or into unconsciousness. These are things utterly foreign to anything described in the New Testament. He has a far better basis for his assurance that he has received what he asked than any feeling or any emotionalism: he has the immutable Word of God from God, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2).

Praying in faith – praying with an unquestioning belief that you will receive just exactly what you ask – is one of the most important factors in obtaining what you ask when you pray. As you pray, believe that God has heard your prayer and that you have received the thing that you ask. As James puts it, He must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord (James 1:6-7). That is, let not the person who has any doubts that God has heard his prayer think that he will receive anything from the Lord.

Now the tremendously important questions arise: How can we pray the prayer of faith? How can we pray with a confident, unquestioning certainty in our minds that God has heard our prayer and granted the thing that we ask? This has been partly answered in what we have already said, but in order that it may be perfectly clear, let us repeat the substance of it again.

To pray the prayer of faith, we must first of all study the Word of God, especially the promises of God, and find out what the will of God is. We must build our prayers on the written promises of God. Intelligent faith, the only kind of faith that counts with God, must be based upon authority. We cannot believe by just trying to make ourselves believe. Such belief as that is not faith, but is credulity; it is make-believe.

The great basis of authority for intelligent faith is God's Word. As Paul puts it, Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ, or the Word of God (Romans 10:17). The faith that is built upon the sure Word of God is an intelligent faith. It has something to rest upon. If we want to pray the prayer of faith, we must study the Word of God much, find out what God has definitely promised, and then with God's promise in mind, we can approach God and ask Him for that which He has promised.

This is where many go astray. This is where I went astray in my early prayer life. Not long after my conversion I got hold of this promise of our Lord Jesus: Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you (Mark 11:24). I said to myself, "If I want anything, all that I need to do is ask God for it and then make myself believe that I am going to get it, and I'll have it." So whenever I wanted anything, I asked God for it and tried to make myself believe I was going to get it, but I didn't get it, for it was only make-believe, and I did not really believe at all.

I later learned that faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ, and that if I wanted to pray the prayer of faith, I must have some basis for my faith, some ground upon which to rest my faith. I learned that the most certain of all grounds for faith was the Word of God. So when I desired anything from God, I would search the Scriptures to find out if there was a promise that covered that case, and then I would go to God and plead His own promise. Thus, resting upon that promise, I would believe that God had heard – and He had – and I got what I asked.

One of the mightiest men of prayer of the last generation was George Müller of Bristol, England. In the last sixty years of his life (he lived to be ninety-two), he obtained the equivalent of more than seven million dollars by prayer. But George Müller never prayed for something just because he wanted it, or even just because he felt it was greatly needed for God's work. When it was laid upon George Müller's heart to pray for anything, he would search the Scriptures to find if there was a promise that covered the case. Sometimes he would search the Scriptures for days before he presented his petition to God. Then when he found the promise, with his open Bible before him and his finger upon that promise, he would plead that promise before God, and so received what he asked. He frequently prayed with an open Bible before him.

This is not all that is to be said about how to pray the prayer of faith, though. It is possible in many instances for us to have faith when there is no definite promise covering the case. We can still pray with the absolute assurance that God has heard our prayer. We can believe with a faith that has not a shadow of doubt in it that we have received what we have asked.

The Bible plainly tells us how this comes to pass: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27). That is to say, the Holy Spirit, as we have already said, often makes God's will clear to us as we pray, so that if we listen to His voice we can pray with absolute confidence, with a confidence that has not a shadow of doubt that God has heard our prayer and has granted what we asked.

My first experience of this came very early in my ministry. There was a young dentist in my congregation whose father was a member of our church. This dentist was taken very ill with typhoid fever. He went down to the very gates of death. I went down to see him and found him unconscious. The doctor and his father were by the bedside, and the doctor said to me, "He cannot live. The crisis is past and it has turned the wrong way. There is no possibility of his recovery."

I knelt down to pray, and as I prayed, a great confidence came into my heart – an absolutely unshakable confidence that God had heard my prayer and that the man was to be raised up. As I got up from my knees I said to the father and the doctor, "Eddie will get well. He will not die at this time."

The doctor smiled and said, "That is all right, Mr. Torrey, from your standpoint, but he cannot live. He will die."

I replied, "Doctor, that is all right from your standpoint, but he cannot die. He will live."

I went to my home. Word was soon brought to me that the young man was dying. They told me what he was doing, and said that no one ever did that except when they were dying. I calmly replied, "He is not dying. He will not die. He will get well." I knew he would. He did. The last I knew he was still living, and his healing took place about forty or forty-five years ago.

But I cannot pray for every sick person in that way, not even if he is a sincere Christian, which this man was not at that time. Sometimes it is God's will to heal. Usually it is God's will to heal if the conditions are met, but it is not always God's will to heal. The prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, God tells us in James 5:15, but it is not always possible to pray the prayer of faith – only when God makes it possible by the leading of His Holy Spirit.

The prayer offered in faith will not only heal the sick, but it will also bring many other blessings – blessings of far more importance than physical healing. It will bring salvation to the lost. It will bring power into our serving God. It will bring money into the treasury of the Lord. It will bring great revivals of religion.

In my first pastorate, one of the first people to accept Christ was a woman who had been a backslider for many years. She not only came back to the Lord, but she came back in a very thorough way. Not long after her conversion, God gave her a great spirit of prayer for a revival in our church and community. After I had been there about a year, she was called to go out to California with a sick friend, but before going she came into the prayer meeting and said, "God has heard my prayer for a revival. You are going to have a great revival here in the church." And we did have a revival, not only in the church, but in the whole community – a revival that transformed every church in the community and brought many souls to Christ. The revival went on again the next year, and the next, and the next, until I left that field. It continued under the pastor who followed me, and under the pastor who followed him.

The prayer of faith is the great secret of getting the things of all kinds that we need in our personal life, in our service, in our work, in our church, and everywhere. There is no limit to what the prayer of faith can do. If we would pray more, pray more intelligently, and pray the prayer of faith, there is no telling what we could do as a church and as Christians in our communities.

But as we have said, in order to pray the prayer of faith, we must first of all study the Bible much in order to know the promises of God, what they are, how large they are, how definite they are, and just exactly what is promised. In addition to that, we must live so near to God, be so fully surrendered to the will of God, have such a delight in God, and so much feel our utter dependence upon the Spirit of God that the Holy Spirit Himself can guide us in our prayers and indicate clearly to us what the will of God is. The Holy Spirit can make us certain as we pray that we have asked for something that is according to God's will, thus enabling us to pray with the absolute confidence that God has heard our prayer and that we have received the thing that we asked of Him.

Many of us fail in our prayer lives because we either do not know that it is our privilege to pray in the Spirit – to pray under the Spirit's guidance – or else we do not realize our utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit. We do not cast ourselves upon Him to lead us when we pray, and therefore we pray for things that our own heart and our own selfish desires prompt us to pray for, or else we are not in such an attitude toward God that the Spirit of God can make His voice heard in our hearts.

Oh, that we might all be made to realize the immeasurable blessings for ourselves, for our friends, for the church, and for the world that lie within the reach of the prayer of faith. May we be determined to pray the prayer of faith, and then get down to the study of the Word of God so that we would know God's will and what to pray for. May we be in such close relation with God that we are fully surrendered to His will and delight in Him always. Let us look to the Holy Spirit and be in such utter, constant dependence upon Him that as we pray it would not be so much we who pray as it is the Holy Spirit praying through us. Then we would soon see this spiritually desert nation and our spiritually desert churches blossom as the rose (Isaiah 35:1).
Chapter 8

Praying Through, and Praying in the Holy Spirit

He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart. (Luke 18:1)

Even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Luke 11:8-9)

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:18)

What sort of praying is it that prevails with God and obtains what it seeks from Him? Why is it that many prayers of God's own children come short of obtaining that which they seek of God? There are two passages in the Gospel of Luke that throw a light upon these questions. In the first of these two passages, our Lord Jesus Himself is the speaker:

Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him"; and from inside he answers and says, "Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. (Luke 11:5-10)

The central lesson in this parable is that when we pray, if we do not obtain the thing the first time we ask for it, we should pray again; and if we do not obtain it the second time, we should pray a third time; and if we do not obtain it the hundredth time we pray, we should go on praying until we do get it. We should do much thinking before we ask anything from God, and it should be clear that the thing that we ask is according to His will. We should not rush carelessly into God's presence and ask for the first thing that comes into our minds without giving proper thought to the question of whether it is really something that we should have or not. However, when we have decided that we should pray for the thing, we should keep on praying until we get it.

The word translated "persistence" in the eighth verse is a very significant word. Its primary meaning is "shamelessness." That is, it sets forth the persistent determination in prayer to God that will not be put to shame by any apparent refusal on God's part to grant the thing that we ask. This is a very startling way that our Lord Jesus uses to set forth the necessity of persistence in prayer. It is as if He wants us to understand that God would have us draw near to Him with a resolute determination to obtain the things that we seek – a determination that will not be put to shame by any seeming refusal or delay on God's part.

Our heavenly Father delights in the holy boldness on our part that will not take "no" for an answer. The reason why He delights in it is because it is an expression of great faith, and nothing pleases God more than faith. We have an illustration of this holy boldness in the woman of Syrophoenicia in Matthew 15:21-28. She came to Jesus Christ for the healing of her daughter. She cried, Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.

But our Lord seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to her. As Matthew puts it, He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us." In spite of His apparent deafness to her appeal, she kept right on crying out to Him. Then He turned to her with an apparently more positive rebuff, saying, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel – and she was not of the house of Israel.

Then she worshipped Him and kept on calling to Him, saying, Lord, help me! Then came what almost appears like a cruel rebuff, when our Lord said, It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. The word that Jesus used here for "dogs" was a peculiar word that meant a little pet dog, and was not at all as harsh as it seems, although it was an apparent refusal to hear her prayer. But, as we shall see, our Lord was simply putting her faith to the test so that she might get an even larger blessing.

The woman replied, Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. She would not take no for an answer. Then comes one of the most wonderful words of commendation that ever fell from the lips of our Lord. This is the way Matthew puts it: Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once. That sort of thing pleases God. He wants us to have that kind of faith in His loving-kindness and in Himself, so that even when He does not seem to hear, we will still trust Him to hear.

God does not always give us the things we ask for the first time we ask for them, but we should not give up. No – we should keep on praying until we do get what we are praying for. We should not only pray, but we should pray through.

It is deeply significant that this parable about persisting in prayer (Luke 11:5-10) comes almost immediately after the request on the part of the disciples of our Lord, in which they say, Lord, teach us to pray (Luke 11:1). That is followed by Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer (really the disciples' prayer), and then comes this parable.

The same lesson is taught in a very remarkable way in the second passage in Luke to which I have already referred:

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, "In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, 'Give me legal protection from my opponent.' For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, 'Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.'" And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith [literally, "the faith"] on the earth?" (Luke 18:1-8)

We find the central lesson in this parable in the words with which our Lord Jesus opens the parable, which is really the message of the whole parable: They ought to pray and not to lose heart. The clear meaning of this is that when we begin to pray, we should pray on and on until we get the thing that we desire of God. The exact force of the parable is that if an unrighteous judge will yield to persistent petitions and grant the thing that he did not want to grant, how much more will a loving God yield to the persistent cries of His children and give the things that He longs to give all the time, but which it would not be wise to give and would not be for the person's own good to give, unless they were trained to that persevering faith that will not take no for an answer. So we see again that God does not always give us what we desire of Him in prayer the first time we ask.

Why is it that God does not give to us the things we ask of Him the very first time we ask Him,? The answer is clear: God wants to do more for us, and better for us, than to merely give us that thing. He wants to do for us the far greater good of training us into persistent faith. Other things that we get by our effort do not always become ours the first time we make an effort to get them, and our own good God compels us to be persistent in our effort and so does not always give us what we ask in prayer the first time we pray.

Just as He desires to train us to be strong men and women in other lines of the Christian life, so He would also train and make us to be strong men and women of prayer by compelling us to pray hard for the best things. He compels us to "pray through."

Many people tell us that we should not pray for the same thing a second time. Sometimes they tell us that the way to pray is to ask God for something and then take it by faith the first time we ask. That is often true. When we find something definitely promised in the Word, we should rest upon the plain Word of God, and when we have prayed and know that we have asked something according to God's will, we therefore can know that the prayer is heard and that we have received what we have asked. Resting there, we need to ask no more, but can claim the thing as ours.

But that is only one side of the truth. The other side of the truth is that there are times when it is not made clear the first time, or the second time, or the third time that the thing we ask is according to His will and that therefore the prayer is heard and the thing we have asked has been granted. In such a case we ought to pray on and on and on. While undoubtedly there are times when we are able, through faith in the Word or through the clear leading of the Holy Spirit, to claim something the first time we have asked it of God, nevertheless, beyond a question, there are other times when we must pray again and again and again for the same thing before we get our answer.

Those who claim that they have grown beyond praying twice for the same thing have either grown beyond our Master, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, or else they have not grown up to Him. We know this because we are clearly told regarding Jesus in Matthew 26:44, He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. The truth is not that they have grown beyond the Master, but that they have not yet caught up to Him.

There are those, and there are many of them, who stop praying for something after they pray about it once or twice and do not get it. They call it "submission to the will of God" to stop praying when God does not grant their request at the first or second asking. They say, "Well, maybe it is not God's will." They call that submission to the will of God, but in general this is instead spiritual laziness and lack of determination in that most important of all human lines of effort – prayer.

None of us ever think of calling it submission to the will of God when we give up after one or two attempts to obtain things by our efforts other than prayer. In those cases, we call it lack of strength of character. When the strong man of action starts out to accomplish something, if he does not accomplish it on the first, or the second, or the hundredth time, he keeps hammering away until he does accomplish it. In the same way, when the strong man of prayer starts to pray for something, he keeps on praying until he prays it through and obtains what he seeks.

How fond we are of calling bad things in our conduct by good names. We call our spiritual inactivity, laziness, and indifference "submission to the will of God." We should be very careful about what we ask from God, but when we do begin to pray for something, we should never give up praying for it until we get it, or until God definitely makes it very clear to us that it is not His will to give it.

I am glad that God does not always give us the things that we seek from Him the first time we ask. There is no more blessed training in prayer than that which comes through being compelled to ask again and again and again, even over many years, before one obtains that which he seeks from God. Then when it does come, what a sense we have that God really is, and that God really answers prayer.

I recall an experience that was full of blessing to me and full of encouragement to my faith. In my first pastorate there were two people whom God put upon my heart and for whose salvation I prayed through my entire pastorate there. But I left that field of labor without seeing either one of them converted.

I went to Germany for further study, and then took a new pastorate in Minneapolis, but I kept on praying every day for those two people. I went back to the place where I began my ministry to hold a series of meetings, praying every day for the conversion of those two people. Then one night in that series of meetings, when I gave the invitation for all who would accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, those two people stood up side by side. There was no special reason why they were side by side, for they were not relatives. When I saw those two people for whom I had prayed every day all those years standing up to accept the Lord Jesus Christ, what an overwhelming sense came over my soul that there is a God, and that He hears prayer if we meet the conditions of prevailing prayer and follow the method of prevailing prayer taught in His own Word.

We see right here why many prayers fail to accomplish that which we seek from God. We pray and pray and pray, and are on the verge of attaining that which we are praying for, and right then, when God is just about to answer the prayer, we stop and miss the blessing.

For example, in many churches and in many communities there are people who are praying for revival, and the revival does not come at once. It does not come for some time, and they keep on praying. They have nearly prayed through. They are right on the verge of attaining what they sought, and if they would pray a little longer, the revival would break upon them. But they get discouraged, throw up their hands, and quit. They were right on the border of the blessing, but they did not cross into the promised land.

In January of 1900 or 1901, the faculty of the Bible Institute of Chicago instituted a late prayer meeting Saturday nights from nine to ten o'clock to pray for a worldwide revival. After we had been praying for some time, the thing happened that I knew would happen when we began. People came to me, or to my colleague that was most closely identified with me in the conduct of these meetings, and they would ask, "Has the revival come?"

"No, not as far as we can see."

"When is it coming?"

"We don't know."

"How long are you going to pray?"

"Until it comes."

And it did come. A revival began there in that prayer-meeting room of the Bible Institute in Chicago and then broke out in faraway China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and India, and swept around the world with the most marvelous manifestations of God's saving power. This was not merely through Mr. Alexander and me, but it was through a multitude of others in India, Wales, and elsewhere. In Wales, for example, under Evan Roberts and others, there were one hundred thousand professed conversions in twelve months. I believe that God is looking to us today to pray through again.

I prayed fifteen long years for the conversion of my oldest brother. He seemed to be getting farther and farther away from any hope of conversion, but I prayed on, and one morning, my first winter in Chicago, after fifteen years of praying, never missing a single day, God said to me as I knelt in prayer, "I have heard your prayer. You do not need to pray anymore. Your brother is going to be converted." Within two weeks my brother was in my home, shut in with sickness that made it impossible for him to leave. He was shut in for two weeks, and then the day he left he trusted in Christ over in the Bible Institute in Mr. Moody's office, where he and I went to talk and pray together.

I told this incident once when I was holding meetings in a certain city. An elderly woman came to me at the close of the meeting and said, "I have been praying for the conversion of my brother, who is sixty-three years old, for many years; but a short time ago I gave up and stopped praying. But I am going to begin my prayers again." Within two weeks of that time she came to me and said, "I have heard from my brother, and he has accepted Christ."

Oh, men and women, pray through. Pray through. Pray through. Do not just begin to pray, pray a little while, and then throw up your hands and quit – but pray and pray and pray until God bends the heavens and comes down.

Praying in the Holy Spirit

There is another passage closely connected with the two that we have just been studying. It is closely connected with them in thought, and I now call your attention to it: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints (Ephesians 6:18).

The three words to which I want to call your special attention are these: in the Spirit. We find the same thought in the epistle of Jude: But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life (Jude 1:20-21). In those words, praying in the Holy Spirit, we find one of the two greatest secrets of prevailing prayer.

The other great secret of prevailing prayer is found in the words of our Lord Jesus in John 14:13-14: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. The two great secrets of prevailing prayer are praying in the name of the Lord Jesus and praying in the Holy Spirit.

If anyone would ask me what the great secret of holy living is, I would say at once, "Living in the Holy Spirit." If anyone would ask me what the great secret of effective service for Jesus Christ is, I would reply at once, "Serving in the Holy Spirit." If anyone would ask me what the greatest secret of profitable Bible study is, I would reply, "Studying in the Holy Spirit." And if anyone would ask me what the one great all-inclusive secret of prevailing prayer is, I would reply, "Praying in the Holy Spirit." God the Father answers the prayer that the Holy Spirit inspires.

What does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirit? To pray in the Holy Spirit means to pray as the Holy Spirit would have us pray. He is our ever-present, indwelling Friend, Counselor, and Guide – the Comforter whom our Lord Jesus Himself promised us when He left this world (John 14:15-17, 26). The Holy Spirit has taken the place of our Lord during His absence from us, and He inspires us and guides us to pray. Over and over again we have seen our need for dependence upon the Holy Spirit if we are to pray properly and effectively.

When we were studying Acts 12, we saw that it is the Holy Spirit's work to lead us into the presence of God and to make God real to us so that we are really praying unto God. We also saw that it is the Holy Spirit who gives us that intense earnestness in prayer that prevails with God. When we were studying how to pray according to the will of God and how to pray the prayer of faith, we saw that it was the Holy Spirit who reveals to us what God's will is as we pray. It is He who leads us to pray according to His will so that we can know as we pray that we have asked something that is according to God's will, and that we might know that the prayer is heard.

What are the characteristics of the prayer that is in the Holy Spirit?

The first characteristic of the prayer that is in the Holy Spirit is intense earnestness. We see this in Romans 8:26: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

As we saw in Acts 12:5, the prayer that prevails with God is the prayer into which we throw our whole heart. It is the prayer of intense earnestness, and it is the Holy Spirit who inspires us to that intense earnestness in prayer. Oh, how cold and formal we are in many of our prayers! How little intense longing there is in our souls to obtain the thing that we ask. We even pray for the salvation of the lost with much indifference, even though we ought to realize that if our prayers are not heard, the lost are going to spend eternity in hell; but men and women whose prayer lives are under the control of the Holy Spirit pray with intense earnestness. They cry mightily to God. There is a great burden of prayer in their hearts. They sometimes pray with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26).

Charles Finney tells us about a man named Abel Clary. He says of him:

He had been licensed to preach, but his spirit of prayer was such, and he was so burdened with the souls of men, that he was not able to preach much, for his entire time and strength were given to prayer. The burden of his soul would frequently be so great that he was unable to stand, and he would writhe and groan in agony. I was well acquainted with him and knew something of the wonderful spirit of prayer that was upon him. He was a very silent man, as almost all are who have that powerful spirit of prayer.

Abel Clary, simply by praying, was of great assistance to Mr. Finney in his work in Rochester, New York, where a revival sprang up. The report of that revival resulted in revivals all over the country, and it has been reported that one hundred thousand souls were brought to Christ in a year.

Of Mr. Clary's work in Rochester, Mr. Finney writes:

The first I knew of his being in Rochester, a gentleman who lived about a mile west of the city called on me one day and asked me if I knew a Mr. Abel Clary, a minister. I told him that I knew him well. "Well," he said, "he is at my house, and has been there for some time, and I don't know what to think of him."

I said, "I have not seen him at any of our meetings."

"No," he replied, "he cannot go to meeting, he says. He prays nearly all the time, day and night, and in such agony of mind that I do not know what to make of it. Sometimes he cannot even stand on his knees, but will lie prostrate on the floor and groan and pray in a manner that quite astonishes me."

I said to the brother, "I understand it: please keep still. It will all come out right; he will surely prevail."

Mr. Finney says of Mr. Clary in another place:

I think it was the second Sabbath that I was at Auburn when I observed the solemn face of Mr. Clary in the congregation. He looked as if he was weighed down with an agony of prayer. Being well acquainted with him and knowing the great gift of God that was upon him, the spirit of prayer, I was very glad to see him there. He sat in the pew with his brother, the doctor, who was also a professor of religion, but who had nothing by experience, I would think, of his brother Abel's great power with God. At intermission, as soon as I came down from the pulpit, Mr. Clary, with his brother, met me at the pulpit stairs, and the doctor invited me to go home with him and spend the intermission and get some refreshments. I did so.

After arriving at his house, we were soon summoned to the dinner table. We gathered around the table, and Dr. Clary turned to his brother and said, "Brother Abel, will you ask the blessing?" Brother Abel bowed his head and began, audibly, to ask a blessing. He had uttered only a sentence or two when he broke down, suddenly moved back from the table, and fled to his room. The doctor supposed he had been taken suddenly ill, and he rose up and followed him.

In a few moments he came down and said, "Mr. Finney, Brother Abel wants to see you."

"What ails him?" I asked.

He said, "I don't know, but he says you know. He appears in great distress, but I think it is the state of his mind."

I understood it in a moment, and I went to his room. He lay groaning upon the bed, the Spirit making intercession for him and in him, with groanings that could not be uttered. I had barely entered the room when he said, "Pray, Brother Finney."

I knelt down and helped him in prayer for the conversion of sinners. I continued to pray until his distress passed away, and then I returned to the dinner table. A wonderful revival broke out in Auburn. Hundreds of souls were converted in six weeks.

Oh, that we had people in our church here, and in the Bible Institute, who knew how to pray like that. I believe that the greatest need today of the church of Jesus Christ in America and throughout the world is men and women who pray in the Holy Spirit with the intense earnestness that He and He alone gives.

The second characteristic of praying in the Holy Spirit is intelligent praying, perfect wisdom in our praying, praying for things that are according to the will of God. This comes out in the next verse, Romans 8:27: He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The third characteristic of the praying that is really praying in the Holy Spirit is complete assurance that God has heard and answered our prayer. We saw this previously when we studied Mark 11:24 and the prayer of faith. The prayer of faith is really the prayer that the Holy Spirit inspires. The person who so prays knows that he is praying according to the will of God and has assurance without a shadow of doubt that God has heard and has answered his prayer.

The fourth characteristic of praying in the Holy Spirit is determination in our praying – the determination to get what we ask from God, a persistence in asking until we get it. This comes out clearly in Ephesians 6:18, which we were studying earlier. Listen to it again: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. What a marvelous explanation, by piling up words of deepest significance, of the determination and perseverance in prayer that comes from the Holy Spirit having control of our prayer life.

Those are the characteristics of the praying that is really in the Holy Spirit.

How can we pray in the Holy Spirit?

How can we pray in the Holy Spirit? That is, how can we make sure that the Spirit of God is guiding us in our prayer? How can we be sure that our prayers are not merely the promptings of our own selfish desires but are the sure leadings of the Spirit of God within us? The answer to this all-important question is very plainly set forth in the Word of God.

First of all, if we are to pray in the Spirit, we must surrender our wills and ourselves absolutely and unreservedly to God. This comes out in many places in Scripture. For example, it comes out in Acts 5:32, where we read, And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him. We are plainly taught here that God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him, and to them only. The heart of obedience is in the will – the surrender of the will and the surrender of one's self to God. Unless we make this absolute surrender, God cannot take control of our lives by His Holy Spirit, and He cannot take control of our prayer life any more than any other part of our life. Our surrender to Him must extend to our praying as well as to the other spheres of our activities.

In the second place, if we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must scrupulously obey God in every department of our lives. Disobedience at any point of our life grieves the Holy Spirit and makes it impossible for Him to control us in our actions. It is just as impossible for Him to take control of our prayer life as it is to take charge of any other part of our life.

In order to obey God, we must study the Word of God every day of our lives to find out what the will of God is, and then whenever we find it, we must do it every time. If we refuse to do it at any point, the Holy Spirit cannot keep control of our prayer life and we cannot pray in the Holy Spirit. That is seen very clearly in our Lord Jesus' wonderful promise to answer prayer – that wonderful passage that we recently studied, found in John 14:13-14: Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

Jesus then went on to say, If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you (John 14:15-17). By saying that, Jesus clearly shows the connection between daily obedience and that power in prayer that comes through praying in the Holy Spirit.

In other words, the Lord Jesus says that if we have that love to Him that leads us to obey Him in everything, day by day, then He prays to the Father, and the Father sends His Holy Spirit to help us in all the circumstances of life, especially in our prayer life. Thus, whatsoever we ask in His name is according to His will, and therefore, whatsoever we ask is what we get. Oh, how we come again and again to all these wonderful promises of God regarding answered prayer and see that there is no effective praying of any kind possible on our part unless we are studying the Word of God daily to find out the will of God – and doing it every time we find it.

In the third place, if we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must realize and keep in mind our own utter inability to pray properly, and our entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit if we are to pray wisely and prevailingly. If there is any time when we need to feel our utter dependence upon the Comforter, the ever-present Friend and Helper and Counselor, the Holy Spirit, it is when we pray. We need to feel deeply our dependence upon Him in our daily lives and in our daily warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil. We need to feel our dependence upon Him in our service for Christ, realizing that it is not by might nor by power (not by any natural gifts or abilities of our own), but by God's Spirit that we are to accomplish anything for God in this world (Zechariah 4:6).

We need to feel our dependence upon Him in our Bible study, realizing that He is the only perfect interpreter of the Word. He is ready to interpret the Word to us as we study, but above all we need to feel our dependence upon Him when we pray. We will do well if we always bear in mind the inspired words of Paul as found in Romans 8:26: We do not know how to pray as we should. If Paul, that mighty servant of Jesus Christ, that inspired apostle, that wonderful man of prayer, did not know how to pray as he should, then we certainly do not.

However, we should also constantly keep in mind the words that immediately follow: But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27). When you go to God in prayer, realize that you do not know how to pray as you should. Bear in mind and keep in mind your utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit in every word of prayer.

In the fourth place, if we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must definitely ask God to guide us by His Holy Spirit as we pray. Tell God that you do not know how to pray as you should, and ask Him to guide you by His Spirit as you pray – and He will.

In the fifth place, if we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must count upon God answering our prayer and sending His Holy Spirit to teach us to pray. We can unhesitatingly count upon God sending Him because in the passage just read, Romans 8:26-27, He has definitely promised to do so.

In the sixth place, if we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must keep being filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul's inspired exhortation in Ephesians 5:18 has the most intimate connection with our prayer life: Be filled with the Spirit. Translated more literally, it says, "Be getting filled with the Holy Spirit" (it is a continuous process, as is indicated by the tense of the Greek verb used here). If we are filled with the Spirit, we will be guided by the Spirit in our prayers as well as in everything else. A Spirit-filled person will always be a prayerful person, and his prayers will be in the Holy Spirit. The way to be getting continually filled with the Holy Spirit is indicated in what we have just studied in the preceding points. If we do the things indicated here, we will continue to be filled with the Spirit of God.

Finally, if we are to pray in the Spirit, we must study the Word of God daily and earnestly. The written Word of God is the visible instrument through which the invisible Spirit of God works. If you are to keep filled with the Spirit, you must keep full of the Word. This is seen very clearly in Ephesians 5:18 when we read with it the verse that immediately follows it and then compare with Colossians 3:16. Listen to Ephesians 5:18-19: Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.

Now listen carefully to Colossians 3:16: Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. We see here that Paul in Colossians attributes to being filled with the Word exactly the same thing that he attributes to being filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18-19, and these two epistles were written at just about the same time.

We must never lose sight of the tremendously important fact that the invisible Spirit of God does His work through the visible written Word of God. If we keep ourselves in harmony with the mind of God by a constant daily study of the Word of God and by scrupulous obedience to the Word of God, then, and only then, will the Holy Spirit guide us in our prayers. If we keep ourselves full of the Holy Spirit's truth contained in the written Word, the Holy Spirit is far more likely to pray through us.

From this point of view, then, there is deep significance in our Lord's own words found in John 6:63: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. In this study of precious and significant Bible passages dealing with how to pray and how to obtain that for which we pray, we have often seen the great truth that prevailing prayer always goes hand in hand with persistent and obedient study of the Word of God.

Let's review what we have learned in this chapter in our study of God's own Word on the subject of prevailing prayer. What must we do if we are to pray the prayer that obtains from our heavenly Father the things that we ask of Him?

First of all, we must be careful as to what we ask of God. We must be sure that it is something that we ought to have, something that is according to His infinitely wise and absolutely holy will, and then once we begin to pray for it, we must keep on praying for it for days and weeks and months, and if need be, for years, until we get it. We ought always to pray and not to lose heart (Luke 18:1). We ought to pray through.

In the second place, we must not pray from our own selfish (and possibly foolish) desires, but under the impulse, inspiration, guidance, and control of the Holy Spirit. We must be sure to pray in the Holy Spirit. We must let Him pray through us so that we pray in the wisdom, earnestness, intensity, never-wearying persistence, and resistless power of prayer that He imparts.

That kind of prayer will be the mightiest power on earth, for all God is and all God has is at the disposal of that kind of praying. That kind of praying can accomplish anything that God Himself can accomplish. That kind of praying partakes of the omnipotence of the God with whom that kind of praying puts us in perfect connection.

As you go throughout your day, go with these words burning in your soul: "Praying in the Holy Spirit." I long to live in the Holy Spirit. I long to preach and witness in the Holy Spirit. I long to study and understand the Word of God in the Holy Spirit. Above all else, I long to pray in the Holy Spirit. I long also that this church as a body would learn to pray in the Holy Spirit, for then nothing will be able to stand against this church as it sweeps on and on, from victory to victory, for God.
Chapter 9

Hindrances to Prayer

You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)

We have an exceedingly important subject for our study now. That subject is "hindrances to prayer," or why it is that God often does not answer the prayers of His children. Let us read James 4:2-3: You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

In the second verse we are told that the reason why we do not have the things that we earnestly desire and urgently need is because we do not ask for them – because we do not pray. We are told, You do not have because you do not ask. We are told that the reason for our poverty and powerlessness is neglect of prayer. We are told that we can put forth the most strenuous activity to get things that we need – lust, murder, envy, fighting, and war – and yet fail to get them because we do not pray.

In studying this verse, we see very clearly that the main reason for the poverty and powerlessness of the average Christian, the average minister, and the average church is our neglect of prayer. But in the third verse we are told that we can pray and still not obtain, because you ask with wrong motives, or as the Greek word means, we "ask evilly, wrongly, or improperly"; that is to say, there is something that hinders God from answering our prayers.

As we have looked at the mighty power of prayer and the great and wonderful things prayer brings to pass, I do not doubt that many of you have said to yourselves, "Well, my prayers have no such power as that. God doesn't hear and answer my prayers that way."

Why is that? Is it because what the Bible teaches about prayer is not true? Is it because God does not answer prayer? Is it because God in former times answered prayer, but does not answer it any longer? No, not at all. It is not for any of those reasons. Why is it then? It is because there is something in your own life or in your own heart that makes it impossible for God to answer your prayers. It is because there is something in your case that hinders prayer.

We will now look at what these hindrances to prayer are – what the things are in our hearts or in our lives that make it impossible for God to answer our prayers. I hope that when you see what the things are that prevent God from answering your prayers, you will give them up today and get into a place where not only can you pray, but you can also obtain.

A Wrong Motive in Our Prayers

You will find the first hindrance to prayer right in our text. Let's read it again: You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. The first thing, then, that hinders prayer, the first thing that makes it impossible for God to answer our prayers, is a selfish purpose in our prayers. We ask for things we have a right to ask for, things which are in the will of God to give us, but we ask for them in a wrong way. That is, we ask from a wrong motive. We ask for them for our own selfish gratification, that (as the Bible puts it) we may spend it on our pleasures.

What should be our motive in our prayers? The Bible answers that question very plainly and very directly in 1 Corinthians 10:31: Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Here we are told specifically that in everything we do, even in our eating and drinking, the glory of God should be our main purpose for doing it. If that is true of the simplest duties of everyday life, it certainly must be true of our praying. Our supreme motive in our prayers should be that God may be glorified by answering our prayers. Our motive in praying should not be that we may get some gratification, but that God may get glory to Himself.

This thought comes out again and again in the Bible. For example, the Lord Jesus says in John 14:13, in that wonderful promise we have quoted so often, Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Then in that prayer that our Lord Himself taught us, as recorded in Matthew 6, the prayer begins with these words: Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. This clearly shows us that the first thing in our prayers should be hallowing God's name and glorifying God Himself.

Then in John 17:1, that marvelous prayer that our Lord Jesus offered the night before His crucifixion, the real "Lord's prayer," our Lord began with these words: Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You. Whatever we ask of God in prayer, the first and main purpose we have in asking anything should be that God may be glorified in giving it. However, this is very far from the thought of many of us when we pray, as will be evident from a few simple illustrations.

For example, many Christian women are praying for the conversion of their husbands. That certainly is a proper thing to pray for. Indeed, I cannot see how any truly converted woman can rest, or give God rest day or night, until her husband is truly converted and born again. But as proper as that prayer is, it often fails because the wife who offers it is praying for the conversion of her husband from a purely selfish motive. She thinks to herself, "How much happier our married life would be if both my husband and I were Christians. Then we would agree in the deepest interests of life and we would know what real marriage means."

That is certainly true. No two people can know the deepest joys of married life and the real meaning of true marriage where one is saved and the other unsaved – where one is "a believer" and the other is "an unbeliever." But to pray for the conversion of your husband for that reason may be selfishness; it is a refined selfishness, but selfishness nevertheless.

Maybe a woman prays for the conversion of her husband because she cannot bear the thought that her husband would be lost forever. That, too, may be selfishness. Again, it is refined selfishness, but selfishness nevertheless.

Why should a wife pray for the conversion of her husband? First of all and above all else, she should pray for the salvation of her husband in order that God may be glorified in the conversion of her husband. She should pray because she cannot bear it that God should any longer be dishonored by the Christless, godless, God-disobeying life of her husband. She should pray in order that God may be glorified by her husband obeying God and doing the first thing that God demands of every man – believing in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The wife should pray for the conversion of her husband in order that God may be glorified when her husband ceases his rebellion against God and his wicked life, and gives himself up to Jesus Christ and His service.

That should be the supreme motive for which a Christian woman prays for the conversion of her husband. When a woman begins praying for the conversion of her husband along that line, it will not be long before she sees him converted.

However, that is far from the thought of many women who are praying most earnestly, and even agonizingly, for the conversion of their husbands. This is very evident from the way in which she speaks to you about her husband. She will say to you, "I wish you would pray for my husband that he may be converted; he is such a good man. It is true that he is not a Christian, but he is such a good man."

Could any woman who had any proper understanding of the infinite majesty and glory of God or of the divine majesty and dignity of His Son, Jesus Christ, call a man, no matter how kind he might be to her and no matter how just he may be to others, a good man when he is disobeying God in the very first thing that God demands of him – that he believe in His Son Jesus Christ? Can a wife call a man good just because he is her husband when he is trampling underfoot the glorious Son of God? No, no, no! He may be your husband, and he may be kind and generous and excellent in many ways, but if he is rejecting Jesus Christ, he is a wicked, stubborn rebel against God.

You may love your husband. You ought to love him; but do not dishonor God by calling him good. Cry out to God for your husband's conversion not merely so that you can have the joy of seeing him converted, or not merely that he can have the joy of being converted and be saved from an eternal hell, but in order that God may be glorified in his conversion. If you pray that way, it will not be long before you see your husband converted.

Here is another illustration. Many ministers and many professing Christians are praying for a true revival. That certainly is a good prayer and is a prayer that is according to God's will. It is a biblical prayer, for we read in Psalm 85:6 this prayer: Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? Yes, that is a perfectly proper prayer. Indeed, I cannot see how anyone who is a real Christian can keep from praying that prayer with intense earnestness in the days in which we are living.

However, we may, and often do, offer that prayer from an entirely selfish motive. Many ministers are praying for a revival in their churches from purely selfish motives. I received a letter once from a minister, the pastor of a church, asking me to come and hold a meeting with him. He wrote, "I am losing my hold upon my people, and if I do not have a revival I will have to give up my church." In other words, he wanted a revival merely so that he could keep his job. That might have been an extreme case, but there are many who are basically the same. Both ministers and members often pray for a revival in order that there may be an increase of members in the church, in order that the church may have greater esteem in the community, in the hope that some of the rich people in the community may be converted and will then help financially support their church, or for many other purely selfish reasons.

Why should we pray for a revival? We should pray for a revival so that God may be glorified by a revival. We should pray for a revival because we can no longer bear it that God should be dishonored by the low level of living among professed Christians and by the increase of wickedness and godlessness in the world. We should pray for a revival because we can no longer endure it that God should be dishonored by the loud-spoken unbelief so common among people today, and by the even more dangerous unbelief of many of our church members – and even of some alleged preachers of the gospel today.

We should pray for a revival so that God may be glorified by the church being brought up to that level of Christian life that will glorify God. We should pray for a revival so that God will be glorified by the conversion of sinners, by stopping the mouths of unbelievers, and by delivering some of our church members and our preachers from dangerous heresy and unbelief to a God-honoring faith in God's Word and the truth contained in His Word. We should pray for a revival so that God may be glorified; but that is far from the thought of many who are praying for a revival today.

Here is still another illustration. There are many ministers and members in our churches today who are praying that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. That is certainly a proper prayer, a prayer that pleases God, and a prayer that has much basis in the Word of God. The Lord Jesus distinctly tells us in Luke 11:13, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? We read in the record in the Acts of the Apostles, When they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).

Yes, indeed, it is a proper prayer, and I cannot understand how any Christian can rest until he is baptized with the Holy Spirit and knows it. But there is much prayer for the baptism, or filling, with the Holy Spirit that is purely selfish. People pray for the baptism with the Holy Spirit because they think they will be happier. They know others who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and such a new and radiant and glorious joy has come into their lives that they want it too.

Maybe they pray for the baptism with the Holy Spirit because they know someone else who has been baptized with the Holy Spirit and a new power has come into their service, and they want the baptism with the Holy Spirit in order that they, too, will be more prominent and successful in their work for God. All this is pure selfishness, and we can pray for the baptism with the Holy Spirit in that way until we are dead and yet never obtain it.

Why should we desire the baptism with the Holy Spirit? Or why, if we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, should we pray for a new filling with the Holy Spirit? We should do so in order that God may be glorified in our being baptized or filled with the Holy Spirit. We should do so because we can no longer endure it that God should be any longer dishonored by the low level of our living and by the ineffectiveness of our service. We should pray for this in order that God would be glorified by our being empowered to lead such lives as honor Him – in order that God would be glorified by our having the power in His service that we ought to have.

We should pray for it in order that God would be glorified by our being baptized or filled with the Holy Spirit. When we start praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit along that line, it will not be long before we are thus baptized with the Spirit of God. But this is far from the thought of many who are praying for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, as is very evident from the way they talk and the way they pray.

A friend of mine was holding a meeting in a town in New York State near the Hudson River. At one of his morning services, he spoke about the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As he left the meeting, one of the ministers of the town walked with him. They had not gone far when this minister said, "I greatly enjoyed your address this morning. That baptism of the Holy Spirit that you were talking about is just what I need, and that is what I am going to have." That sounded very encouraging, but the minister went on to say, "I have a salary of $1,200 a year. I believe if I had that baptism of the Holy Spirit that you have been talking about, I could get $1,500 a year."

You might smile at that, but it is really shocking and appalling. It may be an extreme case, but it illustrates a tendency of thought that is very common among professed Christians and ministers today who are praying that they would be baptized, or filled, with the Holy Spirit. When we come to see this thing in a biblical light, when we see how dishonoring to God our lives are, and when we come to desire the baptism, or filling, with the Holy Spirit so that God will be glorified rather than so that we will be blessed, it will not be long before we are baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Sin in the Heart or Life

A second hindrance to prayer is set forth in Isaiah 59:1-2: Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. We are distinctly told here that the reason in many instances why God does not answer prayer is because our iniquities and our sins have caused a separation between us and our God and have hid His face from us so that He will not hear.

The people of Isaiah's time were saying, "God does not answer prayer any longer. He may have answered it in the days of Moses. He may have answered in the days of Elijah; but He does not answer any longer. Either His ear is heavy that it cannot hear, or His hand is shortened that it cannot save."

"No, no," Isaiah said. "The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is His ear dull that it cannot hear. The trouble is not with God, but the trouble is with you. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."

Sin in our hearts or lives makes it impossible for God to answer our prayer, even if what we are praying for is entirely according to His will. If you are praying for something and you do not get it, do not conclude that God does not answer prayer. Do not conclude that God does not answer prayer today just as He did in the olden times. Do not conclude that what you are asking for is not according to the will of God. Instead, get alone with God, ask Him to search your heart, and ask Him to show you whether there is anything in your past life that you have done that was wrong that you have not set straight. Ask Him if there is any past sin in your life that you have not judged, or whether there is anything in your life today that is displeasing to Him.

Then wait silently before Him and give Him an opportunity to show you. If He shows you anything, confess it to Him as sin and give it up. If you will not do this, then there is not the least use in your trying to pray, for nothing will come of your prayers. It will not be because God does not hear prayer today just as much as in former days. It is not because the arm of the Lord is shortened that it cannot save, nor His ear dull, that He cannot hear. God's ear is just as sharp to hear the voice of true prayer as it ever was, and His hand is just as long and just as strong to save as it ever was. Rather, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. It is right at this point that we find the full explanation of why it is that many of our prayers are not heard and bring nothing to pass.

I had a very striking illustration of this in my own life some years ago – an experience that I have never forgotten. I had started out to carry on the work that God had given me to do in Minneapolis without any pledges for its support and without taking up any contributions or collections of any kind. I simply looked to God in prayer to provide the money for the work. I do not believe that God asks everyone to do that, or even that He asks the same person to always do that, but I was entirely sure that God had told me to do it at that time, and I had stepped out in simple faith in God.

I previously had a strong society supporting me who paid me a generous salary, paid for the rent of the various halls, paid for the missionaries I employed, and paid for all the work that was done; but I saw that the time had come when I should step out in simple faith in God, so I asked the society that had been supporting me if they would turn the work over to me to carry it on in that way. I told them that there was a great deal of other work they could be doing and that they needed their money for that other work.

Somewhat reluctantly, but very kindly, they agreed to my request, and in a single day I cut off every source of income I had in the world. From that time on, every penny that came for the support of myself and my wife and children, every penny that came for rent of halls, lights, fuel, and everything else, every penny that came for my missionaries came in answer to prayer. We took up no collections, had no subscriptions, and no one was ever asked for money – no one but God. Many people were watching the experiment. Many of them were looking on very sympathetically, and others were possibly observing quite critically. However, for an experiment that must have seemed crazy to an outsider, it was received, as far as I know, with kindness everywhere.

The money came in day after day, week after week, and month after month. The money did not come from the old sources, but came almost entirely from new sources. Sometimes it came in small amounts and sometimes in large amounts. Sometimes it came in ordinary ways, and sometimes in ways that seemed very extraordinary. But it came.

However, one day it did not come. That is to say, I had obligations I had to meet very soon, but I had no money to meet them. When I went home that night, before I went to sleep, I took the matter to God in prayer. I asked Him to send me that money, not only so the work could continue, but that His name might not be dishonored by an apparent failure on His part to answer prayer.

I went to bed, I am afraid, without very much clear faith that the money would come. I was all alone in the house. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by great pain and physical distress. I was very sick. I looked up to God and cried to Him that He would touch my body and heal me, and that He would send that money; but there was no answer. Again I cried to God to touch my body and send that money. Still no answer. It seemed as though the heavens above my head were brass. It seemed as if there were no God there, and the devil came and taunted me. He said, as he said to the psalmist of old, "Where is your God? There is no God, or if there is a God, He does not answer prayer in the way you have been teaching people that He does" (Psalm 42:3).

I was in great distress of soul as well as body. It seemed as if the very billows of hell were going over my head. It seemed as if the cherished faith of years was lost. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been where it seemed that the faith that you cherished for years and that you thought was so well-founded had been nearly lost?

Well, that was where I was. Again I cried to God, "Touch my body, heal me, and send that money." No answer. Then I looked up and said, "Heavenly Father, if there is anything wrong in my life anywhere, show me what it is and I will give it up." Instantly God brought up something that had often come up before to trouble me, but every time it would come up I would say, "That's all right. I know it's all right. There is nothing wrong about that." All the time, though, in the bottom of my heart I knew it was wrong.

Do you have anything like that in your heart and life – something that always comes up to trouble you when you get nearest to God, and yet which you try to persuade yourself is right, saying to yourself, "That's all right. I know it's all right. I am sure it is all right. It is all nonsense to think that that is wrong"? Well, that is how it was with me. It came up again very vividly, and I looked up and said, "Oh, God, if this thing is wrong in Your sight, I will give it up now." No answer. In the depths of my heart I knew it was wrong, but I said, "Oh, God, if it is wrong in Your sight I will give it up." There was no answer. Then I cried, "Oh, God, this thing is wrong; it is sin. I give it up now." Instantly God touched my body. Immediately I was as well as I am this moment, and the money came and the work went on. When? When I judged my sin.

Oh, men and women, if you are praying for something and not getting it, I beg of you, do not think that God does not answer prayer. Do not decide that the thing that you are praying for is not according to God's will. God may be dealing with you. He may be trying to bring you to your senses and to Himself. Go alone with God and honestly ask Him to show you if there is anything wrong in your heart or life, anything that is displeasing to Him. When He shows you, set it straight at once and you will find an open heaven and a God who answers prayer. You will find a God whose ear is not only quick to hear prayer in general and whose hand is not only strong to save in general, but a God whose ear is quick to hear your prayer and whose hand is long and strong to give immediate deliverance to you. Oh, how many things there are that we greatly need and that we could have at once if we would only judge and put away our sin!

Idols in the Heart

Now let us turn to Ezekiel 14:1-3, and we will find that God tells us very plainly of a third hindrance to prayer: Then some elders of Israel came to me and sat down before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all?"

The elders of Israel had come to ask Ezekiel to pray for them. It seemed like a day of great triumph for Ezekiel. For a long time, for days and months, perhaps for years, Ezekiel had been longing for the time when the elders of Israel would come to their senses and come to him and ask him to pray for them. The time seemed to have come. With a glad heart, Ezekiel was about to go to God in prayer for them and for the people. But God suddenly stopped him. He said, "Ezekiel, do not pray for these men. They have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all?" We are clearly told here that idols in the heart make it impossible for God to attend to our prayers.

In Japan, China, India and other non-Christian lands, they set up their idols in their temples and in their homes; but the Jews, and we Christians today, set up our idols in our hearts. There are no hideous images on our mantles or in other places in our homes, but there are idols in the hearts of many of us that make it just as impossible for God to answer our prayers as if we had the most hideous idols in our homes or in our churches.

What is an idol? An idol is anything that someone puts before God. Many men make idols of their wives. No man can love his wife too much. The more truly a man loves God, the more deeply and tenderly he will love his wife; but a man can put his wife in the wrong place. He can put his wife before God. Many men, many professing Christian men, many active Christian men, do things to please their wives that they know do not please God. They are making idols of their wives. They are not on praying ground.

Many wives also make idols of their husbands. No wife can love her husband too much. The more truly a woman loves God, the more deeply and tenderly she will love her husband; but a wife can put her husband in the wrong place. She can put her husband before God, and she can do things to please her husband that she knows do not please God. How many wives are doing that these days? How many wives are doing things to please their husbands in the matter of dress, social engagements, entertainment, amusements, and other matters that she knows full well in her heart do not please God? They are making idols of their husbands, and they are not on praying ground.

We can make idols of our children. We cannot love our children too much. The more truly we love God, the more deeply and tenderly we will love our children; but we can put our children in the wrong place. We can put our children before God, and we can do things to please our children that we know do not please God. How many Christians are doing that very thing today? How many Christian fathers and mothers are allowing forms of amusement and social entertainment and other things in their homes that they know are displeasing to God, but their children want them? They are making idols of their children, and they are not on praying ground.

How many professedly Christian fathers and mothers have a beautiful daughter for whom they are seeking a man of wealth or culture or social position, and the man whom they are cultivating as a prospective husband for their Christian daughter is not a Christian man? He is gifted, talented, and maybe rich. Very likely he has a delightful personality, but he is not a Christian. They know perfectly well that God commands in the most unmistakable terms in 2 Corinthians 6:14, Do not be bound together with unbelievers (by "unbelievers" here is not meant infidels, but unbelievers in the New Testament sense as including all who have not believed in Jesus Christ with a living faith – those who have not believed on Him with the faith that receives Him as Savior and Lord). Yet knowing this, in deliberate violation of God's written law, they are seeking this brilliant match for their daughter. They have made an idol of their daughter and her future prosperity and prospects. They are not on praying ground.

Many people make idols of social position. There are many professedly Christian men and women, often quite sincere in some respects, who are doing things to secure or maintain a social position that they desire to occupy that they know are not right in the sight of God.

Major Whittle, the evangelist, was once holding meetings in Washington, DC. A very old friend of his was occupying a very high position in the United States government at the time. This friend invited Major Whittle to his beautiful Washington home. One day he was showing Major Whittle around the home, and as they went from room to room they entered a very large and beautifully decorated room. Major Whittle glanced around it and then said to the man, "What is this room for?" The man evaded an answer, but Major Whittle was not a man easily put off, and he repeated his question: "What is this room for?"

The man replied, "Well, Major, if you must know, it is a ballroom." Major Whittle looked at him sternly and said, "Do you mean to tell me that you have fallen so low in the moral scale that you have a ballroom in your home?" The man dropped his head and said, "Major, I did not think I would ever come to this, but here we are in Washington society, and my wife and daughter told me that we must do this to maintain our position in society – and I have yielded to them." He and his wife had made an idol of social position, and he and his wife paid for it very dearly by the time his career ended.

The temptation to make an idol of our reputation is especially real with ministers of the gospel. Many people today put an extraordinary and absurd value upon what is called advanced thought and original thinking. If a minister of the gospel is true to the old God-given doctrines, no matter how scholarly and how brilliant he may be, he will be rated as not scholarly and not up-to-date by many people. On the other hand, no matter how little a scholar or how poor a thinker a man may be, if he promotes views that are a little contrary to biblical teaching, he will at once be rated as a great thinker, fully abreast of the times, and a great scholar.

So many ministers who are really perfectly sound at heart in their own views will throw out a little suggestion now and then in order to make people think that they are up-to-date and in tune with the culture, yet those suggestions will undermine the faith of the young men and women in their congregations. They have made idols of their reputations, and they have lost their power in prayer.

Sometimes we ministers realize that if we use very ornate rhetoric and theatrical modes of address we will not win as many souls to Christ as we will by preaching the simple, straight gospel, but we will have a far greater reputation as pulpit orators. Many men in the pulpit today have sacrificed their real power for God by cultivating elaborate and highly polished rhetoric and oratorical methods of delivery that awaken the admiration and applause of shallow men and women, but has robbed them of real power for God. Such men have made idols of their reputations, and they are not on praying ground.

Oh, men and women, if you covet power in prayer, get alone with God and let Him search you. Ask Him to show you if there is any idol in your heart, and when He shows it to you, do away with it today.

The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from thy throne

And worship only Thee.

An Unforgiving Spirit

Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us another hindrance to prayer in Mark 11:25: Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. We are distinctly told here that an unforgiving spirit makes it impossible for God to answer our prayers.

The entire basis of God answering our prayers is based upon His dealing with us as forgiven sinners. God cannot deal with us as forgiven sinners while we are not forgiving those who have wronged us. I believe we touch here upon one of the most frequent causes of unanswered prayer: bitterness in our heart toward someone who has wronged us, or whom we think has wronged us. How many wives are praying, praying earnestly, praying with almost breaking hearts for the conversion of their husbands, but all the time they have bitterness in their hearts toward someone who has wronged them, or whom they think has wronged them? Woman, are you willing for your husband to be eternally lost for the poor, miserable gratification of hating somebody who has wronged you, or whom you think has wronged you?

How many mothers are praying, praying so earnestly, for the conversion of their sons, and all the time that they are praying they have bitter hatred in their hearts toward some other woman who has wronged her, or whom she thinks has wronged her. Woman, are you willing for your son to go down to an eternal hell for the poor, miserable gratification of hating somebody?

If we desire power in prayer, let us search our hearts today. Let us look to God to search our hearts and bring to light any enmity that may be in our hearts toward anyone. Then, if we find that there is such enmity, no matter how much that person may have wronged us, let us give it up and let the Spirit of God come into our hearts – that Spirit who makes us love everyone, even our most bitter enemy.

When Mr. Alexander and I were holding meetings in Launceston, Tasmania, we had a day of fasting and prayer. There was an active Christian man in the community who had a son-in-law, and he and his wife had had some trouble with that son-in-law. They had forbidden him from ever coming under their roof again. At the morning service I spoke, as I always did on the day of fasting and prayer, on hindrances to prayer. When I got to this part of my sermon, the man was deeply convicted of that sin. As he went away from the meeting to his home at the noon hour, he was thinking about it, and he wondered to himself whether he ought to write to his son-in-law.

As he got close to home, he was wondering whether he ought to speak to his wife about this matter. He went up the steps and reached out his hand to open the door, still thinking about this. Unknown to him, his wife had been at the meeting also, and as he reached out to open the door, his wife opened the door from the other side and instantly said, "Telegraph him to come at once." They did so, and power in prayer came into the life of that man and woman.

There are some of you now who have had no power in prayer for days, weeks, months, or maybe even years, simply because of some bitterness that you have in your heart toward someone. There is no use whatsoever of your praying until you let God cast that bitterness out. Listen again to the words of Jesus Christ Himself: Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.

Stinginess in Our Giving

Let us now look at a deeply significant passage of Scripture that throws much light on the subject we are studying: He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered (Proverbs 21:13). Here God clearly tells us that if we shut our ears to the cry of the poor when they cry unto us for help, He will shut His ears to us when we cry unto Him for help.

The person who is meager, stingy, and ungenerous in his giving cannot be a mighty person of prayer. This thought runs all through the Bible. We are told it over and over and over again. For example, read Luke 6:38: Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure – pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.

God directly tells us here that He measures out His gifts to us in exactly the same measure that we measure out our generosity to others. Some of us use such tiny pint-size measures in our giving that God can only give us pint-size blessings. God puts His gifts into our lives in answer to our prayers through the same door that we give out our kindnesses. Some of us open the door of our giving such a little way that God can only get in the tiniest blessing to us.

Now let's look at one of the most familiar promises in the Bible. It is a promise that you hear in almost every prayer meeting, yet is a promise that is constantly quoted without any reference whatsoever to the connection and to the condition of fulfillment implied in that connection. The verse is Philippians 4:19: My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. What a wonderful promise that is! The English Revised Version makes it even more wonderful. It says, My God shall fulfil. Turn that word "fulfil" around and you get exactly what the Greek word signifies: "fill full." Let me read it that way: My God shall fill full every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

One of the elders of our church in Chicago stood up one night in our prayer meeting and said, "I thank God, brethren, that there is one promise in the Bible without any condition," and then he quoted Philippians 4:19: My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

I stopped him. I said, "Hold on a minute, Brother H. There is a condition. It is very clear in the context. Listen to Philippians 4:15-16: You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone; for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs."

Paul then goes on to say how they had just sent to him again, and it is then that he says, And my God will supply all your needs [that is, every need of a generously giving church] according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. There is absolutely nothing here that a stingy Christian has any right to claim. We are plainly told that the promise is made to large givers, and to them alone. Of course, the gift may not be large in itself, but it is large in comparison with what a person has.

Here is another familiar promise that sounds very much like the one that we have just read: God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed (2 Corinthians 9:8). Notice the uses of "all" and "every" and "abound." Let me quote it again: God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. That is a wonderful promise, isn't it?

But read it in its context. Begin two verses previous: He who sows sparingly [the context shows that Paul is speaking about the sowing of gifts, and sowing sparingly means giving sparingly or in a small way] will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). God loves a cheerful giver. Now add verse 8: And God is able to make all grace abound to you [that is, toward the cheerful giver], so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you [that is, you cheerful givers] may have an abundance for every good deed.

There is nothing in these verses for the stingy Christian, but only for the Christian who is a cheerful giver. Are you a cheerful giver? Do you love to find opportunities to give? When you see the collection basket coming, do you say to yourself, "I am so glad I have another opportunity to give," or do you say, "I wish they wouldn't always take up collections"?

Are you one of those who, when you see the collection basket coming, say, "Oh, why do they take up a collection so often?" Then you begin to reason with yourself as to how much you ought to give. You first take out a dollar, and you look around and say, "Well, I guess this is my share. If everybody here gives a dollar, they will have plenty. There are over two thousand people here, so if everyone gives a dollar, there will be two thousand dollars." Then you hesitate and say, "Well, they don't need two thousand dollars." You take out fifty cents and say, "Oh, I think that is all I ought to give. If everybody gives fifty cents, there will be a thousand dollars." Then you hesitate and say, "Well, I do not believe they need a thousand dollars," and you take out a quarter. You say, "Well, that's enough. If everybody gives a quarter, they will have five hundred dollars; that certainly is enough." Then you hesitate again, put back the quarter, and take out a dime, saying, "Oh, I think ten cents is my share. If everyone gives ten cents, that is two hundred dollars. Certainly that is enough."

The collection basket is now getting nearer, and you put back the dime, take out a nickel, and say, "I think that is my share. If everybody gives a nickel, they will have a hundred dollars. That certainly is enough." But wait – the basket is nearer still, and you put back the nickel and take out a penny. You pinch that penny until poor President Lincoln's figure on the penny squeals. Come, now, be honest – do you do that? Or do you throw in all you have and say, "I wish I could give even more"? Are you a cheerful giver? If you are not, you cannot be a mighty person of prayer.

Let's look at one other passage of Scripture. It is that wonderful promise that we studied earlier: Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight (1 John 3:22). What a wonderful promise that is! John here tells us plainly that he got whatever he asked of God. But why? Read the context. Start back at verse 16: We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18). That is to say, let us not love in mere profession of love, but in reality, by actually doing.

For example, it is a cold winter night, and there are only a few at the prayer meeting. An enthusiastic brother enters, and he soon stands up in the prayer meeting and says, "Brethren, I am very glad to be here tonight. I do so enjoy the company of Christian people. I know that I have passed from death unto life, because I love the brethren, as 1 John 3:14 says. Oh, how I love the brethren. How glad I am to be here tonight! I'd rather be here than to go to the theater or the circus or any entertainment. I do not see how anybody who calls himself a Christian can go to places like that. There is no place I enjoy as much as I enjoy the prayer meeting. There is no fellowship that I love as much as I love the fellowship of Christians. I know I have passed from death unto life, because I love the brethren."

As soon as the meeting is over, you go to this enthusiastic, glowing brother, and you say to him, "Brother Smith, I was so glad to hear your testimony tonight. It just warmed my heart. But I want to speak to you about a little matter. You know Sister Johnson has had some difficult and unfortunate circumstances. Her husband died a few months ago. He left her no insurance, and she is having a hard time paying her rent and keeping her family together. She lives in that little house of yours over on the other side of town, and she is afraid she cannot pay the rent this time. Can you give her a break on the rent?"

Instantly this glowing Christian becomes cold, and he says, "Well, of course I sympathize with the poor sister, and I wish I could help her, but business is business. If she cannot pay the rent, I suppose she will have to get out." How can the love of God dwell in that man? It cannot! That man simply loves with word or with tongue, but not in deed and truth.

Here is another illustration. Another brother comes into a prayer meeting where you are present, and he gets up with the same glowing testimony. He tells how glad he is to be there, how he loves the brethren, how he loves the company of Christians, and how he knows that he has passed from death unto life because he loves the brethren. When the meeting is over, you go to him and say, "Brother Brown, I greatly enjoyed your testimony tonight. It did me good and it warmed my heart. But you know Sister Jones and what a hard time she has been having lately. You remember how her husband was coming home from work a few weeks ago and was run over by a train and killed. He had no insurance and no money saved up, and Sister Jones has been unable to get any compensation from the railroad. It is going to be a cold winter, and they have no coal at her house. We are getting together a little money to stock the house with coal or wood and to put in a barrel of flour, potatoes, and some other provisions so she can keep her family together and not suffer."

Suddenly this brother also becomes cold and says, "Well, I am sorry for her, and I'd like to help her, but charity must begin at home. I've got to pay my income tax, and you know how much it is. And though I would like to help, I cannot." It does not seem to occur to the brother that unless he had plenty of money, he would not have to pay a lot in income tax. How does the love of God abide in him? It doesn't. He simply loves with word or with tongue, but not in deed and truth.

However, let me read on: We will know by this [that is, by loving not merely in word and in tongue, but by our actual giving – in deed and truth] that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him [that is, before God] in whatever our heart condemns us [that is, it condemns us in the matter of our stingy giving]; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us [that is, does not condemn us because of our stingy giving], we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask [that is, we whose hearts do not condemn us because of our stinginess, we who are giving generously as we ought, we who love in deed and truth] we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight (1 John 3:19-22).

You can go straight through your Bible, and you will find that every great promise on God's part to give to us in answer to our prayer is conditioned upon our generous giving to others who need our help.

It is right here that we discover the secret of why individual believers, and the church of Christ as a whole, have so little power in prayer today. It is because of our downright stinginess in our giving. Great men of prayer are all great givers; that is, they are great givers according to their ability. George Müller of Bristol, England, was, as far as we know, one of the very greatest men of prayer of the last generation. He obtained the English equivalent of more than seven million dollars by prayer. For about sixty years he carried on a most marvelous work in supporting and training the orphans of England, often having two thousand or more orphans under his roof at one time who needed to be fed three meals a day; yet every penny that came for the support of the orphans and for the support of the other work for which he felt responsible came in answer to prayer. No appeal was ever made to anybody and no collections or offerings were ever taken, yet the money never failed. Sometimes it seemed up to almost the last moment as if it would fail, but it always came. He would ask God for a hundred pounds sterling, and it would come and he would pass it on. He would ask for sixty thousand pounds sterling, and it would come and he would pass it on. In all, as we have already stated, he asked God for over seven million dollars, and it came and he passed it on.

The reason why it kept coming was because he kept passing it on; none of it stuck to his fingers. When he died at the advanced age of ninety-two years, he had just enough money left to pay his funeral expenses. We ask and we get and we keep, and so God ceases to give. We shut our ears at the cry of the poor – the poor in our own land and the poor in other lands, and the spiritually poor even more than the poor in money, and so God shuts His ears to our cry, just as He told us three thousand years ago He would do.

The evangelical churches of America do not even average a dollar a week per member for foreign missions, yet we wonder why God does not hear our prayers. Many professedly Christian women spend more money every year of their lives on a single article of clothing than they do on foreign missions, yet they wonder why God does not hear their prayers. A Christian woman should certainly give more for the work of sending the gospel to the perishing heathen than she does on personal adornment.

Many professing Christian men spend more money every year of their lives on unnecessary, unwholesome, and filthy tobacco, than they do upon sending the gospel to the perishing in China, India, Africa, and elsewhere, yet they wonder why God does not answer their prayers. There are many, many men in our churches today who, if you ask them for a few hundred dollars a year for foreign missions would almost faint away, and yet they spend more than that in a year on tobacco or alcohol or sports or movies. Many of them spend many times that amount on these things, never dreaming of giving that much to foreign missions, yet they wonder why God does not answer their prayers. There is no wonder about it; it is your selfishness, your downright stinginess in your giving.

A young lady came into my office in Minneapolis one day. I was interested in the newsboys of Minneapolis, and so was she. I was vice president of the Newsboys' Home (a home for orphan boys who sold newspapers), and we needed something badly for that home. This young woman was the daughter of a wealthy railway magnate. Standing by my table in my office, she rested her fingers upon the table and said to me, "Oh, Mr. Torrey, we must get that money for the newsboys. How can we get it?" As she said it, one diamond alone that flashed on her finger would have met the need many times over.

Another time a very enthusiastic missionary advocate at a large world missionary meeting at Rochester some years ago stretched out her hands to the audience in a pathetic appeal and said, "Sisters, we must have money for foreign missions." As she said that, more than seven thousand dollars' worth of diamonds flashed on her fingers; yet we wonder why God does not answer our prayers.

Oh, there is no wonder at all about it. The explanation is simple. It is found in the Word of God. It is because of our stinginess, our selfishness, the smallness of our giving. God says it in His Word, and He is thundering it in our ears now: He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered (Proverbs 21:13).

A Wrong Treatment of Husband or Wife

There is one more hindrance to prayer of which we must speak. We find it plainly stated in 1 Peter 3:7: You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

That is plain enough, is it not? God here distinctly tells us that a wrong treatment of a wife by a husband (and vice versa, of course – a wrong treatment of a husband by a wife) hinders prayer and it makes it impossible for God to hear the prayer of the husband or wife, as the case may be. Some of us are searching far and wide to discover what it is that hinders our prayer. We do not need to look so far away. Look into your home life.

Husband, are you treating your wife as the Bible tells us a husband ought to treat his wife? Wife, are you treating your husband as the Bible tells us a wife ought to treat her husband? If you are not, God will not hear your prayers. You can make all kinds of pretense of piety, and you can be very faithful in attending religious services and cooperating in Christian work, but God's eye is on your home life.

The religion of our Lord Jesus Christ is a very homely religion; that is to say, it is a religion that enters right down into the practicalities of everyday home life. That is one reason why I rejoice in it and am glad that I am a Christian. Christianity magnifies the home. Our modern modes of living, even among believers, minimize the home, but God doesn't.

How many a man are there in our churches today who, if you heard him talk in a prayer meeting or in a missionary meeting, you would think he was a perfect saint of God? You admire his soft, endearing, and sincere words. Many women who hears him thinks, "How pleasant it must be to live with a husband like that." But in his home he is quite different. He is irritable, harsh, domineering, and overbearing. He comes down to breakfast, and if by some chance the food isn't cooked just right, perhaps it is a little burnt, he flies into a towering passion and he says to his wife, "Why can't we have a decent meal in this house? I buy the best and you are always burning it. If I can't get a good meal at home, I am going to the restaurant," and he rises from the table, hurries out of the room, takes his hat, and starts for a restaurant. His poor broken-hearted wife sits down and begins to sob.

That man is actually shortening the life of his wife, yet he wonders why God does not answer his prayers. Man, there is no wonder about it. It is because you are a brute, and God nowhere promises to answer the prayers of brutes, but of men – real 100 percent Christian men.

I heard some years ago of a husband who did that very thing. He came to the breakfast table, the food was burned, and he arose from the table irritated and complaining. He complained about the burnt food and said to his wife, "Why can't we have a decent meal in this house? If we can't, I am going to the restaurant." He dashed out of the room, took his hat, and left the house. His wife, of course, sank down by the table, buried her face in her arms, and began to cry and sob.

They had a darling little boy, a sweet sympathetic boy, and he went up beside his sobbing mother, put his arms around her neck, cried with her, and sobbed out, "Mom, I'm awfully sorry you married Dad. Aren't you?" There are many men who act in such a way in their homes, although they profess to be earnest Christians, that they make their children sorry that their mom married their dad, yet they wonder why their prayers are not answered.

Here is an illustration on the other side. How many professedly Christian women today are sweet as a summer morning, as winsome and alluring as a June breeze, when she is at the missionary society, the sewing circle, or any other public gathering of the church; but how different she is at home, where she is moody, irritable, petty, and nagging. Her husband comes home tired from work. As they are about to sit down to the evening meal, his wife says to him, "John, did you mail that letter I gave you this morning?" He looks horrified, puts his hand in his pocket, finds the letter there, and begins to apologize.

"Wife," he says, "I am so sorry I forgot to mail it."

Then she complains, "Of course you forgot to mail it. You always forget to mail it. You never do what I ask you to do," and she goes on and on until at last he, in anger and disgust, arises from the table, takes his hat, and starts for the club or the tavern. And that woman wonders how such a good Christian woman as she could have a drunkard for her husband.

I'll tell you, woman, it is because you made him so. God forbid that I should justify a man in being a frequenter of places like that under any circumstances, but it is a simple matter of fact that many men frequent taverns because their professedly Christian wives make their homes so like hell that they feel they cannot stay there. Yet that woman wonders why her prayers are not answered.

Take another illustration. How many a woman there is who a few years or even a few months ago, when a certain young man was coming around at night, stood before the mirror and dressed herself down to the smallest detail with the utmost care because "Charlie" was coming tonight. If it had been anybody else but Charlie, she would not have taken such care, but it was Charlie.

But now the months have passed and they have been married several months. If anyone, any other gentleman, is coming home to dinner besides her husband, she is as careful as ever to make herself look attractive. But no one is coming tonight except Charlie, and any old dress or collar or ribbon is good enough, for "it is only Charlie." Yet she wonders why her prayers are not answered.

Oh, men and women, if we are to expect God to answer our prayers, we must take our Christianity into our home life, and we must be in love always. I read a question some years ago in the Ladies' Home Journal. The question was, "How long should the honeymoon last?" I have forgotten what the answer given by the magazine was, but I can tell you. Forever. Every year of married life should be more loving and tender and thoughtful than the one that went before, and it must be if we are to have power in prayer.

Men and women, if we are to have power in prayer, we must look very carefully into our home life. There are also other things in married life that hinder prayer. Some of these things one cannot speak of in public, and yet how much they need to be spoken of in the day in which we are living. How many hideous abominations are covered up under the sacred name of marriage!

Oh, men and women, if we are to have power in prayer, we must spread our whole married life out before the all-seeing, all-searching, all-holy eye of God, and say to Him, "Heavenly Father, if there is anything in my married life anywhere that is displeasing in Your sight, show me what it is and I will put it away." Then let us wait before God and let Him search our married life there in the white light of His Word, and when the white light of the indwelling Spirit of God discloses any spot of any kind, as most likely it will, let us put it away. Then we will have an open door of access to God and our prayers will be no longer hindered. Instead, we will call to God and He will hear and give us what we seek from Him.

* * *

 From "Walking with God" by William Cowper (1731-1800).
Chapter 10

Prevailing Prayer and Real Revival

It is time for the Lord to act, for they have broken Your law. (Psalm 119:126)

Our subject in this chapter is prevailing prayer and real revival. I have five texts. Please listen to them very carefully.

The first text is Psalm 119:126:

It is time for the Lord to act, for they have broken Your law.

Our second text is Psalm 85:6:

Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?

Our third text is Acts 1:14; 2:1-2, 4, 41-42:

These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer. . . . When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. . . . And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. . . . Those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Our fourth text is Ezekiel 37:9-10:

Then He said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus says the Lord God, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life."'" So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

Our fifth text is Luke 11:13:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

The great need of the church today is a general, widespread, deep, thoroughgoing, genuine revival. That is also the greatest need of business, the greatest need of human society, the greatest need of human government, the greatest need of international relations, and the greatest need of missions. In every department of life today – business, social relations, politics, international relations, education, church – we are facing the most ominous problems and the most important crises that have confronted the human race in centuries, if not in human history, since the incarnation of God in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, and the birth of the church, which was the outcome of that incarnation.

The only hope of the church is a great revival, and this is the only hope of human society. It is revival or revolution, not only in Russia, but throughout the civilized world. There must be a real and larger coming of the life of God into the church and through the church into human society as a whole, or else it will be universal chaos and destruction – in church, state, school, home, and everywhere, and consequent chaos and midnight darkness on the earth, resulting in utter and universal dissolution, desolation, and destruction.

Of course, those of us who know our Bibles at all know very well that the final "revival," the revival resulting in a universal and permanent reign of righteousness on earth as well as in heaven, when God's kingdom will come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10), and when the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9), will only come as the result of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ to this earth to take the reins of government. The time of that coming is God's concern and not ours (Acts 1:7), and it is in His hands. We should long for that coming (Revelation 22:20), long intensely for it (2 Peter 3:12), and wait.

However, that does not mean that in the meantime we should sit down and let things go to the dogs, glorying in the fact that things are getting worse and worse all the time, congratulating ourselves on what fine folks we are and what a tough crowd the rest of folks are in business and church and state. There is no Bible basis for being sure that the Lord will not tarry and that there will not be another revival, or, it may be, many revivals, before that glad day comes and before that most glorious of all revivals comes.

If John Wesley had reasoned that way in his day of widespread spiritual and theological darkness, or Martin Luther in his day, or John Knox in his day, or Jonathan Edwards in his day, or Charles G. Finney in his day, what would have become of the church, of the state, of human society, and of faith in God?

Whether the Lord Jesus comes soon or whether He tarries, we need a revival, and we need it badly. If He would come within a year and find us doing our best to bring about that greatly needed revival, He would say to us, Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master (Matthew 25:21). Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes (Matthew 24:46). If, on the other hand, He would come this year and find us sitting in idle meditation on the glorious truth of His second coming and congratulating ourselves that we were not as the rest of society – those who do not know the truth – He would cut us asunder and appoint us our portion with the rest of the hypocrites (Matthew 24:50-51).

So my first prayer is, Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20). But as I do not know and cannot know how soon that prayer will be answered (as God has seen fit to set the times and the seasons by his own authority as stated in Acts 1:7), my second prayer is, and it is getting to be a more and more intense and insistent prayer, "Lord, send a revival, and let it begin in me."

What I have to say will come under three headings:

  * First, What a real revival is, and what the results of a real revival are.
  * Second, The need for a real revival.
  * Third, The relation of persistent prayer to a real revival.

What a Real Revival Is, and What the Results of a Real Revival Are

A real revival is a time of quickening or impartation of life. That is exactly what the word "revival" means according to its etymology, and also according to its usage today. That is also exactly what the Hebrew word translated "revive" in our second text means, Will you not revive us again? (Psalm 85:6), and it is so translated in the Revised Version: Wilt thou not quicken us [i.e., impart life to us] again?

As God alone can give life, a revival is a time when God visits His people and imparts life to them by the power of His Spirit. Then, through them, He imparts life to sinners dead in trespasses and sins. We frequently have religious excitements and enthusiasms worked up by the deceitful methods and hypnotic influence of the mere professional evangelist or "revivalist," but these are not revivals, and these things are not needed. They are a curse rather than a blessing. They are the devil's imitations of a revival.

New life from God – that is a true revival. A general revival is a time when this new life from God is not confined to scattered localities, but is general throughout Christendom and the earth.

The reason why a general revival is needed is that spiritual dearth, desolation, and death are general. It is not confined to any one country, though it may be more manifest in some countries than in others. It is found in our foreign mission fields as well as in our home fields. We have had local revivals. The life-giving Spirit of God has breathed upon this minister and that, this church and that, this community and that; but what we need, and desperately need, is a revival that is widespread and general.

In order that we may have a more complete idea of what a revival really is, let us look at the results of a revival.

1. Let us look at the results of a revival in ministers of the gospel.

In times of revival the minister has a new love for souls. In general, we ministers do not have the love for souls that we should have. We do not have the love for souls that our Lord Jesus had. We do not have the love for souls that Paul had. When God visits His people, the hearts of ministers are greatly burdened for the unsaved. They go out in great longing for the salvation of their fellow men. They forget their ambition to preach great sermons and their ambitions for fame. They desire one thing, and one thing only: to see people brought to Christ and saved.

When true revivals come, ministers get a new love for God's Word and a new faith in God's Word. They cast to the winds their doubts and their criticisms of the Bible and of the creeds, and they begin preaching the Bible – especially Christ crucified. Revivals make ministers who are loose in their doctrines orthodox. A genuine, wide-sweeping revival would do more to get our ministers and theological professors right in their doctrine than all the heresy trials that were ever instituted.

Revivals bring to ministers new liberty, new joy, and new power in preaching. It is no longer a weeklong grind to prepare a sermon, and it is no longer a nerve-consuming effort to preach it after it has been prepared. Preaching becomes a joy and a refreshment, and there is real power in it in times of revival.

2. Now let us look at the results of a revival in Christians generally. The results of a revival in Christians generally are as distinct as its results upon the ministry.

In times of revival, Christians come out from the world and live separated lives. Christians who have been lingering in the world, who have been playing cards, dancing, going to the theaters and the movies, and indulging in similar unbecoming foolishness, give those things up. They get a new spiritual vision by which they see clearly that these things are incompatible with their increasing life and light.

In times of revival, Christians get a new spirit of prayer. Prayer meetings are no longer a mere duty, but become the necessity of a hungry, persistent heart. Private prayer is followed with new zest. The voice of sincere prayer to God is heard day and night. People no longer ask if God answers prayer. They know He does, and they besiege the throne of grace day and night.

In times of revival, Christians go to work for lost souls. They do not go to meetings simply to enjoy themselves and get blessed. They go to meetings to watch for souls and bring them to Christ. They talk to people on the street and in the stores and in their homes. The cross of Christ, salvation, heaven, and hell become the subjects of constant conversation. Politics, the weather, sports, and the latest novels are forgotten. The things of God occupy the whole horizon of their thought.

In times of revival, Christians have new joy in the Lord Jesus. Life is always joy, and new life is new joy (John 15:11; Acts 2:46). Revival days are glad days. They are exceedingly glad days, days of heaven on earth (Deuteronomy 11:21).

In times of revival, Christians get a new love for the Word of God. They want to study it day and night. Revivals are very bad for saloons, sports, parties, theaters, and movies, but they are good for Christian bookstores and Bible societies.

3. Now let us look at the results of real revival on the unsaved world. Revivals have a most undeniable influence on the unsaved world.

Real revivals bring a deep conviction of sin. Our Lord said that when the Spirit was come, He would convict the world concerning sin (John 16:7-8). We have seen that a revival is when the Holy Spirit comes, and therefore there must be a new conviction of sin – and there always is. If you see something that people call a revival and there is no conviction of sin, you can know at once that it is not a real revival. A certain sign of real revival is deep conviction of sin.

Real revivals also bring conversions and regenerations. When God refreshes His people, He also always converts sinners. The first result of Pentecost was new life and power to the 120 disciples in the upper room. The second result was three thousand conversions in a single day. It is always this way. I am too often reading of revivals here and there where Christians were greatly helped, but where there were no conversions. I have my doubts about such revivals. If Christians are truly renewed, they will get after the unsaved by prayer, testimony, persuasion, preaching, and personal work, and there will be – there must be – conversions, real conversions, regenerated lives, lives completely transformed. The unsaved becoming earnest believers in Jesus Christ, drunkards become sober, impure men and women become pure, thieves become honest and hardworking citizens, and lazy people gladly begin working hard. A true revival always begins in the hearts of those who are already Christians, but it never ends there. It goes out to the unsaved, and there are definite conversions.

The Need for Revival

I think that the mere description of what a revival is and what a revival does shows that it is needed, greatly needed, but let us look at some specific conditions that exist today that show the need of a revival. If one dwells upon these conditions, he is likely to be called a pessimist. If facing the facts results in being called a pessimist, I am willing to be called a pessimist. I am actually an optimist. I am an optimist of the optimists, but I am not a blind optimist. I am not one who shuts his eyes to facts that are as clear as day. If, in order to be an optimist, one must shut his eyes and call black white and error truth and sin righteousness and death life, I have no desire to be an optimist; but I am an optimist all the same. Pointing out the real conditions that are very bad will lead to better conditions.

Let us look first at the ministry.

Many of us who are professedly orthodox ministers are practically unbelievers. That may be pretty plain speech, but it is also indisputable fact. There is no essential difference between the teachings of Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll on the one hand, and the teachings of some of our theological professors on the other. Theological professors are not so direct and honest about it as Paine and Ingersoll were. They might phrase it in more elegant and studied and soothing words, but it means the same thing and produces the same damnable results. Much of the so-called "New Learning," "Higher Criticism," and "Modernism" is simply Thomas Paine infidelity sugarcoated and flavored with a pretense of piety.

Quite a number of years ago, Professor Howard Osgood, a real scholar and not a mere peddler of German infidelity, once read a statement of some positions held by the Modernists of his day, who were not much different but not quite as bad as the Modernists of today, and he then asked if these positions as he read them did not fairly represent the scholarly criticism of the day. The critics themselves admitted that they did. Then he threw a bomb into the ranks of the "Higher Critics" by saying, "I am reading verbatim from Tom Paine's Age of Reason."

There is little new in "Higher Criticism," or in modernistic or liberal theology in general. Our future ministers are often being educated under faithless professors. These future ministers enter the college or theological seminary as really only immature boys, and naturally come out doubting God's Word in many cases, and then they go forth to poison the church.

Even when our ministers are orthodox, as, thank God, many are today, nevertheless they are often not men of prayer. How many modern ministers, do you suppose, know what it means to agonize in prayer (Romans 15:30, Greek), to wrestle in prayer, and to spend a good part of a night in prayer? Of course, we do not know how many, but I do know that many do not.

Many of us who are ministers have no love for souls. How many of us preach because we must preach, preach because we feel that people everywhere are perishing, and by our preaching hope to save some? How many of us follow up our preaching as Paul did his, by pleading with people everywhere to be reconciled to God (Acts 20:31; 2 Corinthians 5:20)?

Perhaps we have said enough about ministers, but it is evident that a revival is needed for our sake, or some of us will have to stand before God overwhelmed with confusion in that dreadful day of reckoning that is surely coming (Romans 14:12).

Let us now look at the church.

Look at the doctrinal state of the church today. It is certainly bad enough, and is apparently getting worse all the time. Many of our church members do not believe in the whole Bible. To many, the book of Genesis is a myth, Jonah is an allegory, and even the miracles of the Son of God are questioned. They have been denied in a recent article in one of our most popular and widely circulated magazines by one of the most prominent Presbyterian ministers in this country – a member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. With a great many people, the doctrine of prayer is old-fashioned and the work of the Holy Spirit is scorned. We are told that conversion and regeneration are unnecessary, and hell is no longer believed in. Then look at the fads and errors that have sprung up in consequence of this loss of faith and creedal chaos: Christian Science, Unitarianism, Spiritualism, Universalism, Russellism, Theosophy, Metaphysical Healing, and a perfect pandemonium of doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1).

Look at the spiritual state of the church.

Worldliness is rampant, if not prevalent, among church members. Many church members are just as eager as any in the rush to get rich. They use the methods of the world in the accumulation of wealth, and they hold on to it just as fast as any worldly person when they get it.

Prayerlessness abounds among church members on every hand. It is doubtful if one in ten of the church members of this country attend a prayer meeting with any regularity, and secret prayer takes very little of the time or attention of the average church member. Someone has said that Christians, on average, do not spend more than five minutes a day in secret prayer. Of course, none of us know for certain whether that is true or not, but I fear that it is far nearer true than most of us suspect.

Neglect of the Word of God goes hand in hand with neglect of prayer to God. Very many professed Christians spend twice as much time every day of their lives in wallowing through the mire of the daily news as they do bathing in the cleansing laver of God's Holy Word. How many Christians average an hour a day in God's Word and prayer? You might be embarrassed if you had to answer this regarding yourself.

Along with neglect of prayer and neglect of the Word of God goes a lack of generosity. The churches are rapidly increasing in wealth, but the treasuries of the missionary societies are empty. Evangelical church members do not average a dollar a week for foreign missions. It is simply appalling.

There is an increasing disregard for the Lord's Day. The first day of the week has very largely become a day of worldly pleasure instead of a day of holy service. The Sunday newspaper, with its silly nonsense and filthy scandal takes the place of the Sunday school and church service, and even YWCA secretaries take young girls off for weekends in the mountains or to other resorts, taking them away from church and Sunday school, giving them instead a little semi-pious devotional for a small part of the day and no end of fun for the rest of the day. Sports, shopping, yardwork, and entertainment have taken up much of the day that should be set aside as holy.

Church members mingle with the world in all forms of questionable amusements. In many places, the young man or young woman who does not believe in the dance with its unashamed immodesties, the card table with its strong drift toward gambling, and the theater and the movies with their increasing appeal to obscenity, immorality, and other sin, is considered an old fogey, a relic of out-of-date Puritanism.

Only a very small proportion of professing Christians have really entered into fellowship with Jesus Christ and His burden of souls. But enough has been said of the spiritual state of the church.

Let us now look at the condition of the world.

Note how few conversions there are. Many churches last year lost more members than they gained. Here and there a church has a large number of additions upon confession of faith, but these churches are rare exceptions; and even where there are many additions, in most cases the conversions are not deep, thorough, and satisfactory.

There is, in most circles, an utter lack of deep conviction of sin. Very seldom are people overwhelmed with a sense of their terrible guilt in trampling underfoot the Son of God (Hebrews 10:29). Sin is regarded as a mere "misfortune," as a "sickness," or even as a "mistake." It is seldom regarded as an enormous wrong against a holy God that is deserving of eternal damnation.

Unbelief is widespread. Many people seem to regard it as a sign of intellectual superiority to reject the Bible, and even to reject faith in a personal God and a future life. In most cases they are proud of this sign of intellectual superiority because it is the only sign of intellectual superiority that they possess.

Hand in hand with this widespread unbelief goes immorality, as has always been the case. Unbelief and immorality are twins. They always exist and grow together. This prevailing immorality is found everywhere. Look at the legalized adultery that we call divorce. Much so-called marriage is little more than legalized prostitution. Men marry one wife and then another, and are still admitted into good society – and women do likewise. There are thousands of supposedly respectable men in America living with other men's wives, and thousands of supposedly respectable women living with other women's husbands.

The increasing immorality is seen in the state of the theater and movies. The theater, at its best, is bad enough, but now shows filled with evil seem to rule the day, and the women who degrade themselves by appearing in such plays are defended in the newspapers and welcomed by supposedly respectable people. The movies are even viler than the theater ever dared to be, and the rottenness of them is paraded before our eyes in the newspapers that we are urged to receive into our homes and let our children read.

Much of our literature is rotten, but people will read books today that a few years ago would have been considered to have been obscene literature. Even supposedly decent people read these books because they are popular.

Art is frequently a mere covering for shameless indecency. Women are induced to cast all modesty and decency to the winds so that the artist may perfect his art and defile his morals by employing them as "models."

Greed for money has become a mania with both rich and poor. The multi-millionaire will often sell his soul and trample the rights of his fellow men under foot in the crazy hope of becoming a billionaire. The laboring man will often commit sin in order to increase the power of the union and to keep up wages. Wars are waged and people are treated like dogs and subjected to all kinds of cruelty in order to improve commerce and to gain political prestige for unprincipled politicians who parade as statesmen.

The wild and almost incredible depravity of the day lifts its serpent head everywhere. You see it in the newspapers, on the billboards, and in advertisements of all kinds. You see it on the streets at night. You see it just outside the church door. You find it not only in the awful cesspools set apart for it in the great cities, but it is crowding into our hotels and apartment houses and into the residential portions of our cities. Sadly, if you look closely enough, you can even find it in supposedly respectable homes. Indeed, it will be carried to your ears by the confessions of brokenhearted men and women. The moral condition of the world in our day is disgusting, unpleasant, sickening, and appalling.

We need a deep, widespread, general revival in the power of the Holy Spirit. We will either have a general revival or a general dissolution of the church, the home, and the state. A revival – new life from God – is the cure, and the only cure, that will stem the awful tide of immorality and unbelief. Mere argument will not do it – but a wind from heaven, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a true God-sent revival will. Infidelity, higher criticism, liberalism, modernism, Christian Science, spiritualism, universalism, and theosophy will all go down in the face of the outpouring of the Spirit of God. It was not discussion and argument and reasoning, but the breath of God that relegated Paine, Voltaire, Volney, and the other triumphant infidels of old to the land of forgetfulness. We need a new breath from God to send away the destructive critics of our day and the parrots whom they have trained to occupy university chairs and evangelical pulpits in England and America to keep them company.

The Place of Prayer in Revival

We now come to the place of prayer in revival. This is the most important thing I have to say, and all that I have written so far is simply a preparation for this and was intended to lead up to this, but what needs to be said can be said in a few words.

The great need of today, as we have said, is a general revival. That is clear, and allows for of no honest difference of opinion. What, then, should we do? Pray. Take up the psalmist's prayer: Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? (Psalm 85:6). Take up Ezekiel's prayer: Come from the four winds, O breath [i.e., breath of God], and breathe on these slain, that they come to life (Ezekiel 37:9).

The first great revival in Christian history had its origin, on the human side, in a ten-day prayer meeting. We read of that small group of disciples, These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer (Acts 1:14). We see the result of that prayer meeting in the next chapter of the book of Acts: They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance (Acts 2:4). Further on in the same chapter we read, That day there were added about three thousand souls (Acts 2:41). In the next verse we read how real and lasting the revival proved, for these are the words recorded there: They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Acts 2:42). In the last verse of the chapter we read, The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved (Acts 2:47).

The great revival seen in Acts 4 came in the same way. A time of great peril had come to the church that seemed to threaten its very existence. The two great leaders of the church, Peter and John, had been arrested, imprisoned, and threatened with death. What did the church do? We read, When they had been released, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord (Acts 4:23-24).

Further down we read:

And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:31-35)

Every true revival from that day to this has had its earthly origin in prayer. The Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century began with his famous call to prayer, and he carried it forward by prayer. It has been recorded of Jonathan Edwards that he "so labored in prayer that he wore the hard wooden boards into grooves where his knees pressed so often and so long."

The marvelous work of grace among the North American Indians under David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards' son-in-law, in 1743 and the following years, had its origin in the days and nights that Brainerd spent before God in prayer for an enduement of power from on high for this work.

We can go further back than that, though, and see how revival is always the result of prayer. There was a great religious awakening in Ulster, Ireland, in the early part of the seventeenth century. The lands of the rebel chiefs, which had been forfeited to the British crown, were settled by a class of colonists who for the most part were governed by a spirit of wild adventure. Real piety was rare. Seven ministers, five from Scotland and two from England, settled in that country, the earliest arrivals being in 1613. Of one of these ministers, named Blair, it is recorded by a contemporary, "He spent many days and nights in prayer, alone and with others, and was vouchsafed great intimacy with God."

Mr. James Glendenning, a man of very meager natural gifts, was a man similarly minded regarding prayer. The work began under Glendenning. The historian of the times says, "He was a man who never would have been chosen by a wise assembly of ministers, nor sent to begin a reformation in this land. Yet this was the Lord's choice to begin with him the admirable work of God which I mention on purpose that all may see how the glory is only the Lord's in making a holy nation in this profane land, and that it was not by might, nor by power, nor by man's wisdom, but by God's Spirit."

By James Glendenning's preaching at Oldstone, multitudes of hearers felt in great anxiety and terror of conscience. They looked upon themselves as altogether lost and damned, and cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?" Many fainted by the power of God's Word. A dozen in one day were carried out as dead. These were not women, but some of the boldest men of the neighborhood, "some who had formerly feared not with their swords to put a whole market town into a fray." Concerning one of them, the historian writes, "I have heard one of them, then a mighty strong man, now a mighty Christian, say that his purpose in coming into church was to consult with his companions how to work some mischief."

This work spread throughout the whole country. By the year 1626 a monthly concert of prayer was held in Antrim. The work spread beyond the bounds of Down and Antrim to the churches of the neighboring counties. The religious interest became so great that Christians would travel thirty or forty miles to the communions, continuing from the time they left home until they returned without being weary or sleeping. Many of them neither ate nor drank, yet some of them professed that they "went away most fresh and vigorous, their souls so filled with the sense of God." This revival changed the whole character of northern Ireland.

I have told elsewhere of the great revival, the marvelous work of God, in Ulster and other northern counties of Ireland in 1859 and 1860. That, too, came by prayer. About the spring of 1858 a work of power began to manifest itself. It spread from town to town and from county to county. The congregations became too large for the buildings, and the meetings were held in the open air, often attended by many thousands of people. Many hundreds of people were frequently convicted of sin in a single meeting. In some places the criminal courts and jails were closed for lack of occupancy. There were manifestations of the Holy Spirit's convicting and regenerating power of a most remarkable character, clearly proving that the Holy Spirit is as ready to work today as in apostolic days, if and when ministers and Christians really believe in Him and begin to prepare the way by prayer for Him to work.

It was in answer to the prayers of John Wesley and his associates that the Lord saved the church and the state in England in the early part of the eighteenth century. The little group met for prayer long before God so wonderfully used them in preaching, and even a historian as utterly rationalistic as William Lecky admits that it was the Wesleyan revival that saved England politically and commercially and every other way. Conditions were appalling when the group of believers whom God had aroused and endued with the spirit of supplication began to pray.

One observer remarks of the English of that day that they were "the most lifeless in Europe." It is said that "the greater part of the prominent statesmen of that time were unbelievers in any form of Christianity, and they were distinguished for the grossness and immorality of their lives." Yet in answer to the prayers of a small group of godly men, the prayers that would not take no for an answer, there came such a religious revival that in a few years the whole character of English society was changed, and there came a period of great spiritual life and activity in the church.

The wonderful revival of 1857 and 1858 in this country, which has been described as the greatest revival known since the days of the apostles, was the result of prayer. It began with the prayers of an obscure city missionary in New York, and continued with the prayers of those whom he succeeded in associating with him in his burden of a desire for a revival. It has been said of America at the time immediately preceding this revival that its moral and spiritual degradation was such that "the whole country was on the very verge of a volcanic eruption of vice and political disaster." However, prayer prevailed with God. The spirit of prayer spread, prayer meetings attended by thousands were held in New York in churches and theaters. Prayer meetings were held every hour of the day and night, and a chain of prayer two thousand miles in length was formed. There was such an outpouring of the Spirit of God that countless thousands were born again, and the influence of that great work crossed the Atlantic Ocean and led to the prayers in the north of Ireland that resulted in the great Ulster revival of which I have written earlier.

The great awakening under Mr. Moody in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, and the results of which were felt in all the missionary countries of the earth and in the distant islands of the sea, had its origin, humanly, in prayer. Mr. Moody, though he was a most active worker from the time of his conversion, made no real impression until men and women began to cry to God. His going to England at all was in answer to the unrelenting cries of a bedridden saint, and while the spirit of prayer continued, that wonderful work of God abode in strength. However, in the course of time, less and less was made of prayer, and the work of that mighty man of God fell off perceptibly in power.

Beyond a doubt, one of the great secrets of the inadequacy, superficiality, unreality, and temporary character of many of our modern so-called revivals is that so much dependence is put upon man's methods and plans and so little dependence is placed upon God's power, sought and obtained by the earnest, persistent, believing prayer that will not take no for an answer. We live in a day characterized by the multiplication of man's methods and the reduction of God's power. The great cry of our day is work, work, work, organize, organize, organize, give us some new society, tell us some new methods, devise some new machinery; but the great need of our day is prayer, more prayer, and better prayer.

Prayer could bring just as marvelous results today as it ever could – if the church would only give itself to prayer, real prayer, prevailing prayer. There seem to be increasing signs that the church is awakening to that fact. Here and there God is laying upon individual ministers and churches a burden of prayer that they have never known before. Many are getting entirely disgusted with mere methods and man-made revivals, and they are learning to depend more upon God. Ministers are crying to God day and night for power. In a few places, perhaps many, churches or portions of churches are meeting together in the early morning hours and the late night hours, crying to God for abundant rain. There are indications of the coming of a mighty and widespread revival.

A general revival is needed, but if we cannot have a general revival sweeping over the whole earth, we can have local revivals, state revivals, and national revivals. It is not necessary that the whole church starts praying to begin with. Great revivals always begin first in the hearts of a few men and women whom God arouses by His Spirit to believe in Him as a living God, as a God who answers prayer, and upon whose heart He lays a burden from which no rest can be found except in unrelenting crying unto God. Oh, may He, by His Spirit, lay such a burden upon our hearts today. I believe He will.

* * *

 This quote about the grooves in the boards might refer to Edward Payson (1783-1827) rather than Edwards, as it is attributed to Payson in Power Through Prayer by E. M. Bounds.
R. A. Torrey – A Brief Biography

R. A. Torrey was an author, conference speaker, pastor, evangelist, Bible college dean, and more. Reuben Archer Torrey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on January 28, 1856. He graduated from Yale University in 1875 and from Yale Divinity School in 1878, when he became the pastor of a Congregational church in Garrettsville, Ohio. Torrey married Clara Smith in 1879, with whom he had five children.

In 1882, he went to Germany, where he studied at the universities at Leipzig and Erlangen. Upon returning to the United States, R. A. Torrey pastored in Minneapolis, and was also in charge of the Congregational City Mission Society. In 1889, D. L. Moody called upon Torrey to lead his Chicago Evangelization Society, which later became the Moody Bible Institute. Beginning in 1894, Torrey was also the pastor of the Chicago Avenue Church, which was later called the Moody Memorial Church. He was a chaplain with the YMCA during the Spanish-American War, and was also a chaplain during World War I.

Torrey traveled all over the world leading evangelistic tours, preaching to the unsaved. It is believed that more than one hundred thousand were saved under his preaching. In 1908, he helped start the Montrose Bible Conference in Pennsylvania, which continues today. He became dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) in 1912, and was the pastor of the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles from 1915 to 1924.

Torrey continued speaking all over the world and holding Bible conferences. He died in Asheville, North Carolina, on October 26, 1928.

R. A. Torrey was a very active evangelist and soul winner, speaking to people everywhere he went, in public and in private, about their souls, seeking to lead the lost to Jesus. He authored more than forty books, including How to Bring Men to Christ, How to Pray, How to Study the Bible for Greatest Profit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power in Christian Life and Service, and Why God Used D. L. Moody, and also helped edit the twelve-volume book about the fundamentals of the faith, titled The Fundamentals. He was also known as a man of prayer, and his teaching, preaching, writing, and his entire life proved that he walked closely with God.
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The Power of Prayer and The Prayer of Power – Reuben A. Torrey

Revised Edition Copyright © 2020

First edition published 1924

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Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org.

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