BLJ: Friend, do you believe the title? Do you believe prayer can make a difference? The supernatural walk belongs to the men and women of prayer.
PRAYER OPENS UP DIVINE RESOURCES
PRAYER OPENS UP DIVINE RESOURCES
The preceding chapter closed with the statement that prayer can do anything that God can do. It is a tremendous statement to make, but it is a statement borne out by history and experience. If we are abiding in Christ -- and if we abide in him we are living in obedience to his holy will -- and approach God in his name, then there lie open before us the infinite resources of the divine treasure-house.
The man who truly prays gets from God many things denied to the prayerless man. The aim of all real praying is to get the thing prayed for, as the child's cry for bread has for its end the getting of bread. This view removes prayer clean out of the sphere of religious performances. Prayer is not acting a part or going through religious motions. Prayer is neither official nor formal nor ceremonial, but direct, hearty'; intense. Prayer is not religious work which must be gone through, and avails because well done. Prayer is the helpless and needy child crying to the compassion of the father's heart and the bounty and power of a father's hand. The answer is as sure to come as the father's heart can be touched and the father's hand moved.
The object of asking is to receive. The aim of seeking is to find. The purpose of knocking is to arouse attention and get in, and this is Christ's repeated assertion that the prayer without doubt will be answered, its end without doubt secured. Not by some roundabout way but by getting the very thing asked for.
The value of prayer does not lie in the number of prayers, or the length of prayers, but its value is found in the great truth that we are privileged by our relations to God to unburden our desires and make our requests known to God, and he will relieve by granting our petitions. The child asks because the parent is in the habit of granting the child's requests. As the children of God we need something and we need it badly and we go to God for it. Neither the Bible nor the child of God knows anything of that half-infidel declaration that we are to answer our own prayers. God answers prayer. The true Christian does not pray to stir himself up, but his prayer is the stirring up of himself to take hold of God. The heart of faith knows nothing of that specious skepticism which stays the steps of prayer and chills its ardor by whispering that prayer does not affect God.
D. L. Moody used to tell a story of a little child whose father and mother had died, and who was taken into another family The first night she asked whether she could pray as she used to do. They said: "Oh, yes!" So she knelt down and prayed as her mother had taught her; and when that was ended, she added a little prayer of her own: "O God, make these people as kind to me as father and mother were." Then she paused and looked up, as if expecting the answer, and then added: "Of course you will." How sweetly simple was that little one's faith! She expected God to answer and "do," and "of course" she got her request, and that is the spirit in which God invites us to approach him.
In contrast to that incident is the story told of the quaint Yorkshire class leader, Daniel Quorm, who was visiting a friend. One forenoon he came to the friend and said, "I am sorry you have met with such a great disappointment."
"Why, no," said the man, "I have not met with any disappointment."
"Yes," said Daniel, "you were expecting something remarkable today"
"What do you mean?" said the friend
"Why you prayed that you might be kept sweet and gentle all day long. And, by the way things have been going, I see you have been greatly disappointed."
"Oh," said the man, "I thought you meant something particular."
Prayer is mighty in its operations, and God never disappoints those who put their trust and confidence in him. They may have to wait long for the answer, and they may not live to see it, but the prayer of faith never misses its object.
"A friend of mine in Cincinnati had preached his sermon and sank back in his chair, when he felt impelled to make another appeal," says Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman.
A boy at the back of the church lifted his hand. My friend left the pulpit and went down to him, and said, "Tell me about yourself." The boy said, "I live in New York. I am a prodigal. I have disgraced my father's name and broken my mother's heart. I ran away and told them I would never come back until I became a Christian or they brought me home dead." That night there went from Cincinnati a letter telling his father and mother that their boy had turned to God.
Seven days later, in a black-bordered envelope, a reply came which read: "My dear boy, when I got the news that you had received Jesus Christ the sky was overcast; your father was dead." Then the letter went on to tell how the father had prayed for his prodigal boy with his last breath, and concluded, "You are a Christian tonight because your old father would not let you go.
A fourteen-year-old boy was given a task by his father. It so happened that a group of boys came along just then and wiled the boy away with them, and so the work went undone. But the father came home that evening and said, "Frank, did you do the work that I gave you?" "Yes, sir," said Frank. He told an untruth, and his father knew it, but said nothing. It troubled the boy but he went to bed as usual. Next morning his mother said to him, "Your father did not sleep all last night."
"Why didn't he sleep?" asked Frank.
His mother said, "He spent the whole night praying for you."
This sent the arrow into his heart. He was deeply convicted of his sin, and knew no rest until he had got right with God. Long afterward, when the boy became Bishop Warne, he said that his decision for Christ came from his father's prayer that night. He saw his father keeping his lonely and sorrowful vigil praying for his boy, and it broke his heart. Said he, "I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for that prayer."
An evangelist, much used of God, has put on record that he commenced a series of meetings in a little church of about twenty members who were very cold and dead, and much
"What do you mean?" said the friend
"Why you prayed that you might be kept sweet and gentle all day long. And, by the way things have been going, I see you have been greatly disappointed."
"Oh," said the man, "I thought you meant something particular."
Prayer is mighty in its operations, and God never disappoints those who put their trust and confidence in him. They may have to wait long for the answer, and they may not live to see it, but the prayer of faith never misses its object.
"A friend of mine in Cincinnati had preached his sermon and sank back in his chair, when he felt impelled to make another appeal," says Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman.
A boy at the back of the church lifted his hand. My friend left the pulpit and went down to him, and said, "Tell me about yourself." The boy said, "I live in New York. I am a prodigal. I have disgraced my father's name and broken my mother's heart. I ran away and told them I would never come back until I became a Christian or they brought me home dead." That night there went from Cincinnati a letter telling his father and mother that their boy had turned to God.
Seven days later, in a black-bordered envelope, a reply came which read: "My dear boy, when I got the news that you had received Jesus Christ the sky was overcast; your father was dead." Then the letter went on to tell how the father had prayed for his prodigal boy with his last breath, and concluded, "You are a Christian tonight because your old father would not let you go.
A fourteen-year-old boy was given a task by his father. It so happened that a group of boys came along just then and wiled the boy away with them, and so the work went undone. But the father came home that evening and said, "Frank, did you do the work that I gave you?" "Yes, sir," said Frank. He told an untruth, and his father knew it, but said nothing. It troubled the boy but he went to bed as usual. Next morning his mother said to him, "Your father did not sleep all last night."
"Why didn't he sleep?" asked Frank.
His mother said, "He spent the whole night praying for you."
This sent the arrow into his heart. He was deeply convicted of his sin, and knew no rest until he had got right with God. Long afterward, when the boy became Bishop Warne, he said that his decision for Christ came from his father's prayer that night. He saw his father keeping his lonely and sorrowful vigil praying for his boy, and it broke his heart. Said he, "I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for that prayer."
An evangelist, much used of God, has put on record that he commenced a series of meetings in a little church of about twenty members who were very cold and dead, and much
divided. A little prayer-meeting was kept up by two or three women. I preached, and closed at eight o'clock," he says. "There was no one to speak or pray The next evening one man spoke.
"The next morning I rode six miles to a minister's study, and kneeled in prayer. I went back, and said to the little church:
"If you can make out enough to board me, I will stay until God opens the windows of heaven. God has promised to bless these means, and I believe he will.
"Within ten days there were so many anxious souls that I met one hundred and fifty of them at a time in an inquiry meeting, while Christians were praying in another house of worship. Several hundred, I think, were converted. It is safe to believe God."
"The next morning I rode six miles to a minister's study, and kneeled in prayer. I went back, and said to the little church:
"If you can make out enough to board me, I will stay until God opens the windows of heaven. God has promised to bless these means, and I believe he will.
"Within ten days there were so many anxious souls that I met one hundred and fifty of them at a time in an inquiry meeting, while Christians were praying in another house of worship. Several hundred, I think, were converted. It is safe to believe God."
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