In his
"Soldier's Pocket Book," Lord Wolseley says if a
young officer wishes to get on, he must volunteer for the most
hazardous duties and take every possible chance of risking his
life. It was a spirit and courage like that which was shown in
the service of God by a good soldier of Jesus Christ named
John McKenzie who died a few years ago. One evening when he
was a lad and eager for work in the Foreign Mission field he
knelt down at the foot of a tree in the Ladies' Walk on the
banks of the Lossie at Elgin and offered up this prayer:
"O Lord send me to the darkest spot on earth." And
God heard him and sent him to South Africa where he laboured
many years first under the London Missionary Society and then
under the British Government as the first Resident
Commissioner among the natives of Bechuanaland. -- J.O.
STRUTHERS
IT is answered prayer which brings
praying out of the realm of dry, dead things, and makes praying
a thing of life and power. It is the answer to prayer which
brings things to pass, changes the natural trend of things, and
orders all things according to the will of God. It is the answer
to prayer which takes praying out of the regions of fanaticism,
and saves it from being Eutopian, or from being merely fanciful.
It is the answer to prayer which makes praying a power for God
and for man, and makes praying real and divine. Unanswered
prayers are training schools for unbelief, an imposition and a
nuisance, an impertinence to God and to man.
Answers to prayer are the only
surety that we have prayed aright. What marvellous power there
is in prayer! What untold miracles it works in this world! What
untold benefits to men does it secure to those who pray! Why is
it that the average prayer by the million goes a begging for an
answer?
The millions of unanswered prayers
are not to be solved by the mystery of God's will. We are not
the sport of His sovereign power. He is not playing at
"make-believe" in His marvellous promises to answer
prayer. The whole explanation is found in our wrong praying.
"We ask and receive not because we ask amiss." If all
unanswered prayers were dumped into the ocean, they would come
very near filling it. Child of God, can you pray? Are your
prayers answered? If not, why not? Answered prayer is the proof
of your real praying.
The efficacy of prayer from a
Bible standpoint lies solely in the answer to prayer. The
benefit of prayer has been well and popularly maximized by the
saying, "It moves the arm which moves the universe."
To get unquestioned answers to prayer is not only important as
to the satisfying of our desires, but is the evidence of our
abiding in Christ. It becomes more important still. The mere act
of praying is no test of our relation to God. The act of praying
may be a real dead performance. It may be the routine of habit.
But to pray and receive clear answers, not once or twice, but
daily, this is the sure test, and is the gracious point of our
vital connection with Jesus Christ.
Read our Lord's words in this
connection:
"If ye abide in me, and my
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
done unto you."
To God and to man, the answer to
prayer is the all-important part of our praying. The answer to
prayer, direct and unmistakable, is the evidence of God's being.
It proves that God lives, that there is a God, an intelligent
being, who is interested in His creatures, and who listens to
them when they approach Him in prayer. There is no proof so
clear and demonstrative that God exists than prayer and its
answer. This was Elijah's plea: "Hear me, O Lord, hear me,
that this people may know that thou art the Lord God."
The answer to prayer is the part
of prayer which glorifies God. Unanswered prayers are dumb
oracles which leave the praying ones in darkness, doubt and
bewilderment, and which carry no conviction to the unbeliever.
It is not the act or the attitude of praying which gives
efficacy to prayer. It is not abject prostration of the body
before God, the vehement or quiet utterance to God, the
exquisite beauty and poetry of the diction of our prayers, which
do the deed. It is not the marvellous array of argument and
eloquence in praying which makes prayer effectual. Not one or
all of these are the things which glorify God. It is the answer
which brings glory to His Name.
Elijah might have prayed on
Carmel's heights till this good day with all the fire and energy
of his soul, and if no answer had been given, no glory would
have come to God. Peter might have shut himself up with Dorcas'
dead body till he himself died on his knees, and if no answer
had come, no glory to God nor good to man would have followed,
but only doubt, blight and dismay.
Answer to prayer is the convincing
proof of our right relations to God. Jesus said at the grave of
Lazarus:
"Father, I thank thee that
thou hast heard me.
"And I knew that thou hearest
me always, but because of the people that stand by I said it,
that they may believe that thou hast sent me."
The answer of His prayer was the
proof of His mission from God, as the answer to Elijah's prayer
was made to the woman whose son he raised to life. She said,
"Now by this I know that thou art a man of God." He is
highest in the favour of God who has the readiest access and the
greatest number of answers to prayer from Almighty God.
Prayer ascends to God by an
invariable law, even by more than law, by the will, the promise
and the presence of a personal God. The answer comes back to
earth by all the promise, the truth, the power and the love of
God.
Not to be concerned about the
answer to prayer is not to pray. What a world of waste there is
in praying. What myriads of prayers have been offered for which
no answer is returned, no answer longed for, and no answer is
expected! We have been nurturing a false faith and hiding the
shame of our loss and inability to pray, by the false,
comforting plea that God does not answer directly or
objectively, but indirectly and subjectively. We have persuaded
ourselves that by some kind of hocus pocus of which we are
wholly unconscious in its process and its results, we have been
made better. Conscious that God has not answered us directly, we
have solaced ourselves with the delusive unction that God has in
some impalpable way, and with unknown results, given us
something better. Or we have comforted and nurtured our
spiritual sloth by saying that it is not God's will to give it
to us. Faith teaches God's praying ones that it is God's will to
answer prayer. God answers all prayers and every prayer of His
true children who truly pray.
"Prayer
makes the darkened cloud withdraw,
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings every blessing from above."
The emphasis in the Scriptures is
always given to the answer to prayer. All things from God are
given in answer to prayer. God Himself, His presence, His gifts
and His grace, one and all, are secured by prayer. The medium by
which God communicates with men is prayer. The most real thing
in prayer, its very essential end, is the answer it secures. The
mere repetition of words in prayer, the counting of beads, the
multiplying mere words of prayer, as works of supererogation, as
if there was virtue in the number of prayers to avail, is a vain
delusion, an empty thing, a useless service. Prayer looks
directly to securing an answer. This is its design. It has no
other end in view.
Communion with God of course is in
prayer. There is sweet fellowship there with our God through His
Holy Spirit. Enjoyment of God there is in praying, sweet, rich
and strong. The graces of the Spirit in the inner soul are
nurtured by prayer, kept alive and promoted in their growth by
this spiritual exercise. But not one nor all of these benefits
of prayer have in them the essential end of prayer. The divinely
appointed channel through which all good and all grace flows to
our souls and bodies is prayer.
"Prayer
is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to give."
Prayer is divinely ordained as the
means by which all temporal and spiritual good are gained to us.
Prayer is not an end in itself. It is not something done to be
rested in, something we have done, about which we are to
congratulate ourselves. It is a means to an end. It is something
we do which brings us something in return, without which the
praying is valueless. Prayer always aims at securing an answer.
We are rich and strong, good and
holy, beneficent and benignant, by answered prayer. It is not
the mere performance, the attitude, nor the words of prayer,
which bring benefit to us, but it is the answer sent direct from
heaven. Conscious, real answers to prayer bring real good to us.
This is not praying merely for self, or simply for selfish ends.
The selfish character cannot exist when the prayer conditions
are fulfilled.
It is by these answered prayers
that human nature is enriched. The answered prayer brings us
into constant and conscious communion with God, awakens and
enlarges gratitude, and excites the melody and lofty inspiration
of praise. Answered prayer is the mark of God in our praying. It
is the exchange with heaven, and it establishes and realizes a
relationship with the unseen. We give our prayers in exchange
for the Divine blessing. God accepts our prayers through the
atoning blood and gives Himself, His presence and His grace in
return.
All holy affections are affected
by answered prayers. By the answers to prayer all holy
principles are matured, and faith, love and hope have their
enrichment by answered prayer. The answer is found in all true
praying. The answer is in prayer strongly as an aim, a desire
expressed, and its expectation and realization give importunity
and realization to prayer. It is the fact of the answer which
makes the prayer, and which enters into its very being. To seek
no answer to prayer takes the desire, the aim, and the heart out
of prayer. It makes praying a dead, stockish thing, fit only for
dumb idols. It is the answer which brings praying into Bible
regions, and makes it a desire realized, a pursuit, an interest,
that clothes it with flesh and blood, and makes it a prayer,
throbbing with all the true life of prayer, affluent with all
the paternal relations of giving and receiving, of asking and
answering.
God holds all good in His own
hands. That good comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ
because of His all atoning merits, by asking it in His name. The
only and the sole command in which all the others of its class
belong, is "Ask, seek, knock." And the one and sole
promise is its counterpart, its necessary equivalent and
results: "It shall be given -- ye shall find -- it shall be
opened unto you."
God is so much involved in prayer
and its hearing and answering, that all of His attributes and
His whole being are centered in that great fact. It
distinguishes Him as peculiarly beneficent, wonderfully good,
and powerfully attractive in His nature. "O thou that
hearest prayer! To thee shall all flesh come."
"Faithful,
O Lord, Thy mercies are
A
rock that cannot move;
A
thousand promises declare
Thy
constancy of love."
Not only does the Word of God
stand surety for the answer to prayer, but all the attributes of
God conspire to the same end. God's veracity is at stake in the
engagements to answer prayer. His wisdom, His truthfulness and
His goodness are involved. God's infinite and inflexible
rectitude is pledged to the great end of answering the prayers
of those who call upon Him in time of need. Justice and mercy
blend into oneness to secure the answer to prayer. It is
significant that the very justice of God comes into play and
stands hard by God's faithfulness in the strong promise God
makes of the pardon of sins and of cleansing from sin's
pollutions:
"If we confess our sins, he
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness."
God's kingly relation to man, with
all of its authority, unites with the fatherly relation and with
all of its tenderness to secure the answer to prayer.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is most
fully committed to the answer of prayer. "Whatsoever ye
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be
glorified in the Son." How well assured the answer to
prayer is, when that answer is to glorify God the Father! And
how eager Jesus Christ is to glorify His Father in heaven! So
eager is He to answer prayer which always and everywhere brings
glory to the Father, that no prayer offered in His name is
denied or overlooked by Him. Says our Lord Jesus Christ again,
giving fresh assurance to our faith, "If ye shall ask
anything in my name, I will do it." So says He once more,
"Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."
"Come, my soul, thy suit prepare,
Jesus loves to answer
prayer;
He Himself has bid thee pray,
Therefore will not say thee
nay."
