The Sign of Prayer:
All religions pray. God and prayer are inseparable. Belief in God
and belief in prayer are elemental and intuitive. The ideas may be crude and cruel in primitive and pagan peoples, but they
belong to the universal intuitions of the human race. The teaching of the Old Testament is full of the subject of prayer.
Everywhere there are commands and inducements to pray, and the great stories of deliverance and victory, experience and vision,
are all examples of prevailing prayer. All the crises in the life of our Lord were linked with special seasons of prayer,
and His teaching set forth wonderful assurances to those who pray. He laid down the laws of prayer, though He never sought
to explain its mystery. Prayer was not a problem to Him. The two parables He spake about prayer are not very acceptable to
those who pray. There is something alien to the spirit of prayer in likening God to a heartless judge or a churlish friend.
God is neither. The parables were not spoken as representative of God, but to illustrate the reward of importunity. The basis
of prayer is sonship. Prayer is possible and reasonable because it is filial. It is natural for a child to ask of its father,
and it is reasonable for the father to listen to the request of his child. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew
7: 11; I Thessalonians 2:11). There are many problems about prayer, but they lie outside the fact and experience of prayer,
and apart from praying there is no solution of them. Prayer is a fact of experience, and through all the ages the testimony
of those who prayed has been that God hears and answers the prayers of His children.
What God Thinks About Prayer:
The thoughts of God are not as man's thoughts, neither are His ways
man's ways. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts"
(Isaiah 55: 9). God has made known His thoughts and His ways, in the revelation of His Word and in the Person of His Son.
The medium of the revelation is experience, and the occasion is in the events of life in individuals and in history. God has
never put his thoughts into a thesis of philosophy or metaphysics. He has interpreted in life and set forth His way in precepts,
principles, and example. There is one incident which tells us what God thinks of prayer. His mind concerning prayer is seen
in every command to pray, in every law of prayer, in every promise concerning prayer, and in every example of answered prayer.
Every part is part of the whole, but every subject of Scripture has its final and complete expression, and in the conversion
of Saul of Tarsus there is a unique revelation of the mind of God concerning prayer. There are three persons in that incident
of prayer. There are the man who prayed, the God who heard, and the man through whom the answer came. God is central. It is
to Him prayer is made, through Him prayer is interpreted, and by Him prayer is answered.
God speaks of prayer in terms of wonder: "Behold, he prayeth." The
language is that of humanity, but it is the only speech man knows, and however inadequate it may be, it stands for corresponding
reality in God. Can God wonder? Can there be in Him elements of surprise and amazement? Can it be that there are things that
to God are wonderful? That is how God speaks, and to Him there is nothing more gloriously wonderful than prayer. It would
seem as if the biggest thing in God's universe is a man who prays. There is only one thing more amazing, and that is, that
man, knowing this, should not pray. Behold! In that word there is wonder, rapture, exultation. In the estimate of God prayer
is more wonderful than all the wonders of the heavens, more glorious than all the mysteries of the earth, more mighty than
all the forces of creation.
God interprets prayer as a sign of all that happened to Saul of
Tarsus on the Damascus road The event is variously expressed To the church of Judaea it was a conversion that turned their
arch persecutor into a preacher. This is how Paul the apostle states it in writing to the Galatians: "Afterwards I came into
the regions of Syria and Cilicia; and was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ; but they had heard
only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified God in
me." That is a conversion that was the result of an experience. What was the experience? Paul says that in the experience
it pleased God to reveal His Son in him. That is what the Damascus road experience meant to him. When God speaks of it, He
sums it all up in the words, "Behold, he prayeth."
That is what it meant to God, and that is what it always means to
Him. Prayer is the symbol and proof and gauge of grace. All that happens in the converting work of grace whereby we receive
the adoption of sons is that, being sons, we begin to pray. Saul of Tarsus had been a praying man all his life, but it was
not until then that he began to pray as God interprets prayer. The children's hymn is equally applicable to grown-up people:
I often say my prayers, But do I ever pray?
Prayer is the privilege of sons, and the test of sonship. It would
seem as if God divided all men into the simple classification of those who pray and those who do not. It is a very simple
test, but it is decisive, and divisive.
The Way God Answers Prayer:
God answers joyously. There is a ring of exultation in the words
He speaks to Ananias, like the joyous ring of our Lord's parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. Rejoice
with me! "Behold, he prayeth!" There is joy in the heart of God the Father when His lost children begin to pray. He answers
like the God He is. Ananias may parley with God, but God never parleys with man. The answering hand of God waits for the lifted
hand of man, and the heart that answers always transcends the heart that cries.
The answer to Saul of Tarsus was twofold: He gave a vision and sent
a messenger -- a vision, and a man, each corresponding to the other. That is God's way: first an assurance, and then the confirmation.
That is the prayer of faith that never fails. God's servants are partners with Him in the ministry of prayer. That is the
mystery of spiritual co-operation. The Lord goes before the man He sends. Saul was prepared and waiting for the man he had
already seen in a vision of God. Ananias found Saul prepared and waiting.
God gave to Ananias the sign of prayer as the proof of grace. It
was His own sign, and it is the sign He still gives. Is there any proof that a man is a man of God like the fact that he is
a man of prayer? Of Elijah it is said that he "prayed in his prayer" (James 5: 17, A.V., margin). Of some men it is said that
they live in at atmosphere of devotion; but it is one thing to live in an atmosphere of prayer and another to "pray in our
praying." Finney went to a weekly prayer meeting, where they prayed much and got no answers. Muller prayed and answers came,
and that is why all men believed him to be a man of God. When I was a very small boy, not more than six or seven years of
age, I was sent on an errand to the house of a neighbor named Davenport; it was about nine o'clock in the morning. I knocked,
lifted the latch, and stepped inside. On the hearth, kneeling at a chair on which was an open Bible, was Mrs. Davenport, praying.
She was unaware of my presence. I stood in silent awe for a moment, and then quietly stepped out and closed the door. It is
more than sixty years since that morning, but from then till now I have known that Mrs. Davenport was a saint of God, because
she prayed. It is God's infallible sign, and it is the only sign that even the world accepts as an infallible proof.
Prayer made all the difference to Saul of Tarsus, and it always
makes all the difference. It brought a new assurance of God, a new confirmation of faith, a new fellowship of the people of
God, a new experience of healing, a new vocation, a new inheritance, a new power. Prayer changes things; Prayer makes all
things possible, for it links the praying soul to the omnipotence of God. Do we pray? Do we pray in our praying? Does God
put His seal on our prayers?
Lord, teach us to pray!
Prayer
is the contrite sinner's voice
Returning from his ways,
While angels in their songs rejoice,
And cry, "Behold he
prays."
Prayer is the Christian's
vital breath,
The Christian's native air,
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters heaven with prayer.
Learning to Pray:
Can prayer be learned? Is it not of the very soul of prayer that
it shall be in the freedom of the Spirit? John the Baptist gave his disciples a form of prayer, and the disciples of Jesus
asked to be taught to pray. There were not many things they asked Him to do for them, and when they did, they were usually
wrong. Would He have given them a form of prayer if they had not asked Him? Why did they ask? His own praying awoke within
them a desire to be able to pray, and when they wanted to pray they found they did not know how. They felt the need of some
ordered form by which they could speak out of their heart to God. They quoted John. There are still disciples who quote John
the Baptist to Jesus. Forms are easier than a creative spirit. Prayers counted on a rosary are easier than the prayers of
a soul poured out in unrestrained speech to God. The Prayer Book helps the inarticulate to expression. Such praying may be
perfectly sincere, and the devout may find in provided prayers a real help to devotion, and it may be that such praying may
need to be learned at the feet of instructors. Indeed, that is the kind of prayer that needs to be learned. The rosary prayers
are recited, and the Free Churchman seldom knows his way through Morning or Evening Prayers in the Prayer Book. All praying
begins with forms of prayer. There is hardly a soul but remembers the simple, earnest prayers repeated at the mother's knee
with reverent wonder and joy.
Personality In Prayer:
It is not other people's prayers that make the man of prayer. All
true prayer, the prayer that prevails, is personal, intimate and original. Hannah protested that she had poured out her soul
to God. That is prayer, and yet it is not the whole of prayer. Receptivity is as real a part of prayer as expression. Saul
of Tarsus had been a praying man from his youth, but he never really prayed till he met the risen Lord on the Damascus road.
From the heavenward side the whole change that had been wrought was summed up in the words, "Behold, he prayeth."
The secret of Elijah's power in prayer was that he "prayed in his
prayer." That is the translation given in the margin of the Authorized Version. He "prayed earnestly" is given in the text,
and "fervently" in the Revised Version, with the note in the margin that says the Greek literally is, "with prayer." He prayed
with prayer; he prayed in his prayer. That is to say, he really prayed his prayers. He did not say prayers; he prayed in praying.
His whole personality was in his supplication. He really wanted what he asked, and fervently meant what he said. Can that
kind of prayer be taught?
It is the prayer that prevails. Formal routine of temple-service
and the regular reading of words of second-hand inspiration and no understanding are neither acceptable to God nor profitable
to man. They are vain repetitions. There is much praying that avails nothing, so far as we can judge. During the baccarat
scandal, W. E. Stead computed the number and value of the prayers offered every day in the Anglican Church for the Prince
of Wales, and the computation of value was not in proportion to their number. He was probably wrong, for prayer is not accounted
in terms of arithmetic. The real problem is not there. Prayers are measured neither by time nor by number, but by intensity.
There are prayers that are impassioned and there is no answer, and there are things for which we know we ought to pray in
an agony of prayer, and there is no power to pray. We do not know how to pray.
Prayer Learned By Praying:
There is no way to learn to pray but by praying. No reasoned philosophy
of prayer ever taught a soul to pray. The subject is beset with problems, but there are no problems of prayer to the man who
prays. They are all met in the fact of answered prayer and the joy of fellowship with God. We know not what we should pray
for as we ought, and if prayer waits for understanding, it will never begin. We live by faith. We walk by faith. Edison wrote
in 1921: "We don't know the millionth part of one per cent about anything. We don't know what water is. We don't know what
light is. We don't know what gravitation is. We don't know what enables us to keep on our feet when we stand up. We don't
know what electricity is. We don't know what heat is. We don't know anything about magnetism. We have a lot of hypotheses
about these things, but that is all. But we do not let our ignorance about all these things deprive us of their use." We discover
by using. We learn by practice. Though a man should have all knowledge about prayer, and though he understand all mysteries
about prayer, unless he prays he will never learn to pray.
There have been souls that were mighty in prayer, and they learned
to pray. There was a period in their lives when they were as others in the matter of prayer, but they became mighty with God
and prevailed. In every instance there was a crisis of grace, but it was in the discipline of grace that they discovered the
secret of power. They were known as men of God, because they were men of prayer. Some of them were renamed, like Jacob and
Simon and Saul. They were called "Praying John," "Praying Mary," "Praying Bramwell," and "Praying Hyde." Our Methodist fathers
were mighty in prayer. They saved England by prayer. They shook the gates of hell by prayer. They opened the windows of heaven
by prayer. How did they learn to pray? They learned to pray by being much in prayer. They did not talk about prayer; they
prayed. They did not argue about prayer; they prayed.
Trained In Prayer:
Prayer touches infinite extremes. It is so simple that a little
child can pray, and it is so profound that none but a child-heart can pray. Montgomery's hymn has immortalized its profound
simplicity:
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,
The
motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
Prayer is the simplest form of speech
That infant lips can try;
Prayer
the sublimest strains that reach
The Majesty on high.
That is gloriously true. A cry brings God. A cry is mightier than
the polished phrase. The Pharisee prayed within himself. His prayers revolved on ruts of vanity in his own mind and heart.
The publican cried and was heard. It is not of emergency exits of the soul we are thinking, but the sustained habit and experience
of the man of prayer. Such prayer comes by training, and there is no discipline so exacting. Coleridge says of such praying
that it is the very highest energy of which the human heart is capable, and it calls for the total concentration of all the
faculties. The great mass of worldly men and learned men he pronounced incapable of prayer. To pray as God would have us pray
is the greatest achievement on earth.
Such a life of prayer costs. It takes time. Hurried prayers and
muttered litanies can never produce souls mighty in prayer. To become skilled in art and mechanism, learners give hours regularly
every day that they may become proficient. Our Lord rose before daybreak that He might pray, and not infrequently He spent
all night in prayer. All praying saints have spent hours every day in prayer. One is afraid to quote examples. In these days
there is no time to pray; but without time, and a lot of it, we shall never learn to pray. It ought to be possible to give
God one hour out of twenty-four all to Himself. Anyway, let us make a start in the discipline of training in prayer by setting
apart a fixed time every day for the exercise of prayer. We must seriously set our hearts to learn how to pray. "To pray with
all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ,
and verily do the thing He pleaseth thereupon -- this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare upon
earth." Teach us to pray, O Lord, we beseech thee.
The Praying Spirit breathe,
The
watching power impart,
From all entanglements beneath,
Call off my anxious heart.
My feeble mind sustain,
By
worldly thoughts oppressed,
Appear, and bid me turn again
To my eternal rest.
When you feel the strain of discipline remember these words:
Thou art oft most present,
Lord,
In weak, distracted prayer;
A sinner out of heart with self,
Most often finds thee there.
For prayer that humbles,
sets the soul
From all delusions free,
And teaches it how utterly
Dear Lord, it hangs on thee.
Praying in Secret:
If prayer is the greatest achievement on earth, we may be sure it
will call for a discipline that corresponds to its power. The School of Prayer has its conditions and demands. It is a forbidden
place to all but those of set purpose and resolute heart. Strong men often break down under the strain of study. Concentration
is a heavier task than handling a hammer or guiding a plow. The discipline curbs freedom, and drills the mind to attention.
Understanding is more taxing than doing, and meditation is a severer tax than service. The reason so many people do not pray
is because of its cost. The cost is not so much in the sweat of agonizing supplication as in the daily fidelity to the life
of prayer. It is the acid test of devotion. Nothing in the life of faith is so difficult to maintain. There are those who
resent the association of discipline and intensity with prayer. They do not pray like that, and certainly they would not like
their children to entreat and plead for anything they wanted with "strong crying and tears." That is quite likely, but then
no one suspects them of praying like that, and the analogy of their children may not be the whole truth. Nothing can be farther
from the truth than a false analogy. The School of Prayer is for those who really want to learn to pray.
Those who come to learn are disciples. They put themselves under
the yoke of Him from whom they seek to learn, and the first condition of learning is a teachable spirit. Our Lord has the
authority to teach, and He Himself is Example as well as Instructor. There is no appeal beyond Him. Having besought Him to
teach us how to pray, we surrender mind and heart to His teaching and yield all to the discipline of loyal and believing obedience.
What does our Lord teach us as to prayer?
One of the first things he commands is that there shall be a place
of prayer. It is quite true that the whole earth is the Lord's, and that there is no place where prayer may not be heard.
God wills that men should pray everywhere. Wherever we may be, he is nigh at hand, and not afar off, and wherever there is
a praying heart, the soul finds the sanctuary of God. No one would suggest that Jesus did not appreciate the sacredness of
the earth, which He said was the footstool of God, but it was His habit to withdraw into a solitary place to pray. He needed
the fenced spaces of silence. To His disciples He said: "And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love
to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you,
They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray
to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee" (Matthew 6:5,6).
Why does He insist upon this inner chamber and the closed door?
The first reason is that the first quality God requires in prayer is reality. Hypocrites never pray in secret. Prayers that
are a pretense require an audience. They are intended to be heard of men, and they have their reward in skill of phrasing,
a show of earnestness, and a reputation for piety. These things do not count with God. They cannot live in His presence. Prayer
is between the soul and God alone.
The Silent Spaces of The Soul:
The soul needs its silent spaces. It is in them we learn to pray.
There, alone, shut in with God, our Lord bids us pray to our Father who is in secret, and seeth in secret. There is no test
like solitude. Fear takes possession of most minds in the stillness of the solitary place. The heart shrinks from being alone
with God who seeth in secret! Who shall abide in His presence? Who can dwell with God, who is shadowless light? Hearts must
be pure and hands clean that dare shut the door and be alone with God. It would revolutionize the lives of most men if they
were shut in with God in some secret place for half an hour a day.
For such praying all the faculties of the soul need to be awake
and alert. When our Lord took Peter and James and John with Him to the secret place of prayer, they were heavy with sleep.
It was the same in the mount of glory and the garden of agony, and it was not until they were fully awake that they saw the
glory or realized the anguish. There are some silent places of rare wisdom where men may not talk, but they find it possible
to sleep. Mooning is not meditation, and drowsy repose is not praying. The secret place of prayer calls for every faculty
of mind and heart.
Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And
all that is within me,
Bless His holy name.
As for praise, so for prayer the whole being is called. There is
a vital difference between private and corporate prayer. Each kind of prayer brings blessing after its kind, but there is
a difference. Corporate prayer is less exacting. There is a sense of fellowship that gives courage and inspires expression.
Guided prayer is companionable, but it has a tendency to do its thinking by proxy. In private prayer the soul stands naked
and alone in the presence of God. Thought is personal, prayer is original, motive is challenged. Corporate prayer gives a
spirit of fellowship; private prayer disciplines personality. Who can measure the influence of an hour a day spent alone with
God?
The Hill of The Lord:
The way into the Holy Presence is not a thoroughfare. The inner
chamber into which a man goes is his own, but it is the presence of God that makes it a holy place. To a secular mind there
would be no Presence. It is the seeking soul that finds. There are some people to whom no audience is given. There are souls
that cannot pray. James says of some men that they need not think they can receive anything of the Lord. Even before Christ
taught men to pray, the psalmist declared, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear" (Psalms 66: 18). The
Judgment Seat of God is in the inner chamber; but the throne of grace is there also, or none would ever dare to enter in.
Forgotten sins start into life, and hidden things stand naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. All who would enter
the Holy Presence and live must have a sincere desire for God and a conscience set on dwelling in the light.
Our Lord laid emphasis upon the forgiving spirit. The one thing
above all others that bolts and bars the way into the presence chamber of prayer is unwillingness to forgive from the heart.
No gift can be accepted of God until reconciliation has been made. "If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar,
and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first
be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matthew 5:23,24).
Again, when Jesus stated the law of faith in relation to prayer,
he said: "Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye
shall have them. And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against anyone; that your Father also which is
in heaven may forgive you your trespasses" (Mark 11: 24-26). "But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:15).
Why did He lay such emphasis upon forgiveness? Was it not for the
same reason that the law and the prophets placed the emphasis upon righteousness? All who would come to the Holy One must
be holy, and whoever will come to the God of mercy must be merciful. The petitioner for grace must believe in grace.
Thine Inner Chamber:
Let no soul be discouraged from making a beginning. Schools are
graded to the capacity of the learners. The great souls who became mighty in prayer, and rejoiced to spend three and four
hours a day alone with God, were once beginners. They went from strength to strength. For our comfort let us remember that
it is into our own inner chamber we enter, and the God who is there is our Father. Many years ago a sweet little girl stole
into my bedroom in the house where I was staying. She prattled blithely over all the wonders of her child world, but when
I asked if father was up, she looked radiantly and reverently into my eyes and said, "Oh, my daddy always talks with God in
the drawing room before breakfast."
Happy father! Happy
child! Happy God!
