Possibilities of Prayer

   * THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER
        o I. The Ministry of Prayer
        o II. Prayer and the Promises
        o III. Prayer and the Promises (Continued)
        o IV. Prayer -- Its Possibilities
        o V. Prayer -- Its Possibilities (Continued)
        o VI. Prayer -- Its Possibilities (Continued)
        o VII. Prayer -- Its Wide Range
        o VIII. Prayer -- Facts and History
        o IX. Prayer -- Facts and History (Continued)
        o X. Answered Prayer
        o XI. Answered Prayer (Continued)
        o XII. Answered Prayer (Continued)
        o XIII. Prayer Miracles
        o XIV. Wonders of God Through Prayer
        o XV. Prayer and Divine Providence
        o XVI. Prayer and Divine Providence (Continued)

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                        THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER

     E. M. Bounds

"The story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a
wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may
be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. Prayer
reaches to everything, takes in all things great and small which are
promised by God to the children of men. The only limits to prayer are the
promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises."

Discover for yourself the infinite possibilities of prayer. Chapters like
"Answered Prayer," "Prayer Miracles," and "Wonders of God Through Prayer"
will help you understand what can be accomplished if we will only pray.

A practical, challenging look at prayer and its power.

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835-1913) practiced law for three years until he
was called to preach the gospel. While serving as chaplain during the Civil
War, he was captured and held prisoner in Nashville, Tennessee. After his
release, he held several pastorates. His books on prayer have been continual
best-sellers for over fifty years.

                         The Possibilities of Prayer

                                E. M. Bounds

Scanned by Harry Plantinga, whp@wheaton.edu,

From the uncopyrighted

MOODY PRESS EDITION, 1980

ISBN 0-8024-6724-5

This etext is in the public domain.

                                  Contents

I. THE MINISTRY OF PRAYER

II. PRAYER AND THE PROMISES

III. PRAYER AND THE PROMISES (Continued)

IV. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES

V. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES (Continued)

VI. PRAYER -- ITS POSSIBILITIES (Continued)

VII. PRAYER -- ITS WIDE RANGE

VIII. PRAYER -- FACTS AND HISTORY

IX. PRAYER -- FACTS AND HISTORY (Continued)

X. ANSWERED PRAYER

XI. ANSWERED PRAYER (Continued)

XII. ANSWERED PRAYER (Continued)

XIII. PRAYER MIRACLES

XIV. WONDERS OF GOD THROUGH PRAYER

XV. PRAYER AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE

XVI. PRAYER AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE (Continued)

                          I. The Ministry of Prayer

     "Prayer should be the breath of our breathing, the thought of our
     thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living, the
     sound of our hearing, the growth of our growing." Prayer in its
     magnitude is length without end, width without bounds, height
     without top, and depth without bottom. Illimitable in its breadth,
     exhaustless in height, fathomless in depths and infinite in
     extension. -- HOMER W. HODGE

THE ministry of prayer has been the peculiar distinction of all of God's
saints. This has been the secret of their power. The energy and the soul of
their work has been the closet. The need of help outside of man being so
great, man's natural inability to always judge kindly, justly, and truly,
and to act the Golden Rule, so prayer is enjoined by Christ to enable man to
act in all these things according to the Divine will. By prayer, the ability
is secured to feel the law of love, to speak according to the law of love,
and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.
     God can help us. God is a Father. We need God's good things to help us
to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God." We need Divine
aid to act brotherly, wisely, and nobly, and to judge truly, and charitably.
God's help to do all these things in God's way is secured by prayer. "Ask,
and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened
unto you."
     In the marvellous output of Christian graces and duties, the result of
giving ourselves wholly to God, recorded in the twelfth chapter of Romans,
we have the words, "Continuing instant in prayer," preceded by "rejoicing in
hope, patient in tribulation," followed by, "Distributing to the necessity
of the saints, given to hospitality." Paul thus writes as if these rich and
rare graces and unselfish duties, so sweet, bright, generous, and unselfish,
had for their center and source the ability to pray.
     This is the same word which is used of the prayer of the disciples
which ushered in Pentecost with all of its rich and glorious blessings of
the Holy Spirit. In Colossians, Paul presses the word into the service of
prayer again, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving."
The word in its background and root means strong, the ability to stay, and
persevere steadfast, to hold fast and firm, to give constant attention to.
     In Acts, chapter six, it is translated, "Give ourselves continually to
prayer." There is in it constancy, courage, unfainting perseverance. It
means giving such marked attention to, and such deep concern to a thing, as
will make it conspicuous and controlling.
     This is an advance in demand on "continue." Prayer is to be incessant,
without intermission, assiduously, no check in desire, in spirit or in act,
the spirit and the life always in the attitude of prayer. The knees may not
always be bended, the lips may not always be vocal with words of prayer, but
the spirit is always in the act and intercourse of prayer.
     There ought to be no adjustment of life or spirit for closet hours. The
closet spirit should sweetly rule and adjust all times and occasions. Our
activities and work should be performed in the same spirit which makes our
devotion and which makes our closet time sacred. "Without intermission,
incessantly, assiduously," describes an opulence, and energy, and unabated
and ceaseless strength and fulness of effort; like the full and exhaustless
and spontaneous flow of an artesian stream. Touch the man of God who thus
understands prayer, at any point, at any time, and a full current of prayer
is seen flowing from him.
     But all these untold benefits, of which the Holy Spirit is made to us
the conveyor, go back in their disposition and results to prayer. Not on a
little process and a mere performance of prayer is the coming of the Holy
Spirit and of His great grace conditioned, but on prayer set on fire, by an
unquenchable desire, with such a sense of need as cannot be denied, with a
fixed determination which will not let go, and which will never faint till
it wins the greatest good and gets the best and last blessing God has in
store for us.
     The First Christ, Jesus, our Great High Priest, forever blessed and
adored be His Name, was a gracious Comforter, a faithful Guide, a gifted
Teacher, a fearless Advocate, a devoted Friend, and an all powerful
Intercessor. The other, "another Comforter," the Holy Spirit, comes into all
these blessed relations of fellowship, authority and aid, with all the
tenderness, sweetness, fulness and efficiency of the First Christ.
     Was the First Christ the Christ of prayer? Did He offer prayers and
supplications, with strong crying and tears unto God? Did He seek the
silence, the solitude and the darkness that He might pray unheard and
unwitnessed save by heaven, in His wrestling agony, for man with God? Does
He ever live, enthroned above at the Father's right hand, there to pray for
us?
     Then how truly does the other Christ, the other Comforter, the Holy
Spirit, represent Jesus Christ as the Christ of prayer! This other Christ,
the Comforter, plants Himself not in the waste of the mountain nor far into
the night, but in the chill and the night of the human heart, to rouse it to
the struggle, and to teach it the need and form of prayer. How the Divine
Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, puts into the human heart the burden of
earth's almighty need, and makes the human lips give voice to its mute and
unutterable groanings!
     What a mighty Christ of prayer is the Holy Spirit! How He quenches
every flame in the heart but the flame of heavenly desire! How He quiets,
like a weaned child, all the self-will, until in will, in brain, and in
heart, and by mouth, we pray only as He prays. "Making intercession for the
saints, according to the will of God."

                         II. Prayer and the Promises

     You need not utterly despair even of those who for the present
     "turn again and rend you." For if all your arguments and
     persuasives fail, there is yet another remedy left, and one that
     is frequently found effectual, when no other method avails. This
     is prayer. Therefore, whatsoever you desire or want, either for
     others or for your own soul, "Ask, and it shall be given you." --
     JOHN WESLEY


WITHOUT the promise prayer is eccentric and baseless. Without prayer, the
promise is dim, voiceless, shadowy, and impersonal. The promise makes prayer
dauntless and irresistible. The Apostle Peter declares that God has given to
us "exceeding great and precious promises." "Precious" and "exceeding great"
promises they are, and for this very cause we are to "add to our faith," and
supply virtue. It is the addition which makes the promises current and
beneficial to us. It is prayer which makes the promises weighty, precious
and practical. The Apostle Paul did not hesitate to declare that God's grace
so richly promised was made operative and efficient by prayer. "Ye also
helping together by prayer for us."
     The promises of God are "exceeding great and precious," words which
clearly indicate their great value and their broad reach, as grounds upon
which to base our expectations in praying. Howsoever exceeding great and
precious they are, their realization, the possibility and condition of that
realization, are based on prayer. How glorious are these promises to the
believing saints and to the whole Church! How the brightness and bloom, the
fruitage and cloudless midday glory of the future beam on us through the
promises of God! Yet these promises never brought hope to bloom or fruit to
a prayerless heart. Neither could these promises, were they a thousandfold
increased in number and preciousness, bring millennium glory to a prayerless
Church. Prayer makes the promise rich, fruitful and a conscious reality.
     Prayer as a spiritual energy, and illustrated in its enlarged and
mighty working, makes way for and brings into practical realization the
promises of God.
     God's promises cover all things which pertain to life and godliness,
which relate to body and soul, which have to do with time and eternity.
These promises bless the present and stretch out in their benefactions to
the illimitable and eternal future. Prayer holds these promises in keeping
and in fruition. Promises are God's golden fruit to be plucked by the hand
of prayer. Promises are God's incorruptible seed, to be sown and tilled by
prayer.
     Prayer and the promises are interdependent. The promise inspires and
energizes prayer, but prayer locates the promise, and gives it realization
and location. The promise is like the blessed rain falling in full showers,
but prayer, like the pipes, which transmit, preserve and direct the rain,
localizes and precipitates these promises, until they become local and
personal, and bless, refresh and fertilize. Prayer takes hold of the promise
and conducts it to its marvellous ends, removes the obstacles, and makes a
highway for the promise to its glorious fulfillment.
     While God's promises are "exceeding great and precious," they are
specific, clear and personal. How pointed and plain God's promise to
Abraham:

     "And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second
time,
     "And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou
hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son;
     "That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply
thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore;
and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
     "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because
thou hast obeyed my voice."

     But Rebekah through whom the promise is to flow is childless. Her
barren womb forms an invincible obstacle to the fulfillment of God's
promise. But in the course of time children are born to her.
     Isaac becomes a man of prayer through whom the promise is to be
realized, and so we read:

     "And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren, and
the Lord was entreated for him, and Rebekah his wife conceived."

     Isaac's praying opened the way for the fulfilment of God's promise, and
carried it on to its marvellous fulfillment, and made the promise effectual
in bringing forth marvellous results.
     God spoke to Jacob and made definite promises to him:

     "Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred, and I will be
with thee."

     Jacob promptly moves out on the promise, but Esau confronts him with
his awakened vengeance and his murderous intention, more dreadful because of
the long years, unappeased and waiting. Jacob throws himself directly on
God's promise by a night of prayer, first in quietude and calmness, and then
when the stillness, the loneliness and the darkness of the night are upon
him, he makes the all-night wrestling prayer.

          "With thee I mean all night to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day."


     God's being is involved, His promise is at stake, and much is involved
in the issue. Esau's temper, his conduct and his character are involved. It
is a notable occasion. Much depends upon it. Jacob pursues his case and
presses his plea with great struggles and hard wrestling. It is the highest
form of importunity. But the victory is gained at last. His name and nature
are changed and he becomes a new and different man. Jacob himself is saved
first of all. He is blessed in his life and soul. But more still is
accomplished. Esau undergoes a radical change of mind. He who came forth
with hate and revenge in his heart against his own brother, seeking Jacob's
destruction, is strangely and wonderfully affected, and he is changed and
his whole attitude toward his brother becomes radically different. And when
the two brothers meet, love takes the place of fear and hate, and they vie
with each other in showing true brotherly affection.
     The promise of God is fulfilled. But it took that all night of
importunate praying to do the deed. It took that fearful night of wrestling
on Jacob's part to make the promise sure and cause it to bear fruit. Prayer
wrought the marvellous deed. So prayer of the same kind will produce like
results in this day. It was God's promise and Jacob's praying which crowned
and crowded the results so wondrously.
     "Go show thyself to Ahab and I will send rain on the earth," was God's
command and promise to His servant Elijah after the sore famine had cursed
the land. Many glorious results marked that day of heroic faith and
dauntless courage on Elijah's part. The sublime issue with Israel had been
successful, the fire had fallen, Israel had been reclaimed, the prophets of
Baal had been killed, but there was no rain. The one thing, the only thing,
which God had promised, had not been given. The day was declining, and the
awestruck crowds were faint, and yet held by an invisible hand.
     Elijah turns from Israel to God and from Baal to the one source of help
for a final issue and a final victory. But seven times is the restless
eagerness of the prophet stayed. Not till the seventh repeated time is his
vigilance rewarded and the promise pressed to its final fulfillment.
Elijah's fiery, relentless praying bore to its triumphant results the
promise of God, and rain descended in full showers.

          "Thy promise, Lord, is ever sure,
               And they that in Thy house would dwell
          That happy station to secure,
               Must still in holiness excel."


     Our prayers are too little and feeble to execute the purposes or to
claim the promises of God with appropriating power. Marvellous purposes need
marvellous praying to execute them. Miracle-making promises need
miracle-making praying to realize them. Only Divine praying can operate
Divine promises or carry out Divine purposes. How great, how sublime, and
how exalted are the promises God makes to His people! How eternal are the
purposes of God! Why are we so impoverished in experience and so low in life
when God's promises are so "exceeding great and precious"? Why do the
eternal purposes of God move so tardily? Why are they so poorly executed?
Our failure to appropriate the Divine promises and rest our faith on them,
and to pray believingly is the solution. "We have not because we ask not."
"We ask and receive not because we ask amiss."
     Prayer is based on the purpose and promise of God. Prayer is submission
to God. Prayer has no sigh of disloyalty against God's will. It may cry out
against the bitterness and the dread weight of an hour of unutterable
anguish: "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But it is
surcharged with the sweetest and promptest submission. "Yet not my will, but
thine be done."
     But prayer in its usual uniform and deep current is conscious
conformity to God's will, based upon the direct promise of God's Word, and
under the illumination and application of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is surer
than that the Word of God is the sure foundation of prayer. We pray just as
we believe God's Word. Prayer is based directly and specifically upon God's
revealed promises in Christ Jesus. It has no other ground upon which to base
its plea. All else is shadowy, sandy, fickle. Not our feelings, not our
merits, not our works, but God's promise is the basis of faith and the solid
ground of prayer.

          "Now I have found the ground wherein
               Sure my soul's anchor may remain;
          The wounds of Jesus -- for my sin,
               Before the world's foundation slain."


     The converse of this proposition is also true. God's promises are
dependent and conditioned upon prayer to appropriate them and make them a
conscious realization. The promises are inwrought in us, appropriated by us,
and held in the arms of faith by prayer. Let it be noted that prayer gives
the promises their efficiency, localizes and appropriates them, and utilizes
them. Prayer puts the promises to practical and present uses. Prayer puts
the promises as the seed in the fructifying soil. Promises, like the rain,
are general. Prayer embodies, precipitates, and locates them for personal
use. Prayer goes by faith into the great fruit orchard of God's exceeding
great and precious promises, and with hand and heart picks the ripest and
richest fruit. The promises, like electricity, may sparkle and dazzle and
yet be impotent for good till these dynamic, life-giving currents are
chained by prayer, and are made the mighty forces which move and bless.

                  III. Prayer and the Promises (Continued)

     Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which may be
     pleaded before Him with this reasonable request: "Do as Thou hast
     said." The Creator will not cheat His creature who depends upon
     His truth; and, far more, the Heavenly Father will not break His
     word to His own child. "Remember the word unto Thy servant, on
     which Thou hast caused me to hope," is most prevalent pleading. It
     is a double argument: It is Thy Word, wilt Thou not keep it? Why
     hast Thou spoken of it if Thou wilt not make it good? Thou hast
     caused me to hope in it; wilt Thou disappoint the hope which Thou
     hast Thyself begotten in me? -- C. H. SPURGEON


THE great promises find their fulfillment along the lines of prayer. They
inspire prayer, and through prayer the promises flow out to their full
realization and bear their ripest fruit.
     The magnificent and sanctifying promise in Ezekiel, thirty-sixth
chapter, a promise finding its full, ripe, and richest fruit in the New
Testament, is an illustration of how the promise waits on prayer:

     "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from
all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you.
     "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give
you a heart of flesh.
     "And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.
     "And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye
shall be my people, and I will be your God."

     And concerning this promise, and this work, God definitely says:

     "I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it
for them."

     The more truly men have prayed for these rich things, the more fully
have they entered into this exceeding great and precious promise, for in its
initial, and final results as well as in all of its processes, realized, it
is entirely dependent on prayer.

          "Give me a new, a perfect heart,
               From doubt, and fear, and sorrow free;
          The mind which was in Christ impart,
               And let my spirit cleave to thee.

"O take this heart of stone away!
               Thy sway it doth not, cannot own;
          In me no longer let it stay;
               O take away this heart of stone!"


     No new heart ever throbbed with its pulsations of Divine life in one
whose lips have never sought in prayer with contrite spirit, that precious
boon of a perfect heart of love and cleanness. God never has put His Spirit
into the realm of a human heart which had never invoked by ardent praying
the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A prayerless spirit has no
affinity for a clean heart. Prayer and a pure heart go hand in hand. Purity
of heart follows praying, while prayer is the natural, spontaneous
outflowing of a heart made clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.
     In this connection let it be noted that God's promises are always
personal and specific. They are not general, indefinite, vague. They do not
have to do with multitudes and classes of people in a mass, but are directed
to individuals. They deal with persons. Each believer can claim the promise
as his own. God deals with each one personally. So that every saint can put
the promises to the test. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord." No need
of generalizing, nor of being lost in vagueness. The praying saint has the
right to put his hand upon the promise and claim it as his own, one made
especially to him, and one intended to embrace all his needs, present and
future.

          "Though troubles assail,
               And dangers affright,
          Though friends should all fail,
               And foes all unite,

Yet one thing secures us,
               Whatever betide,
          The promise assures us,
               The Lord will provide."


     Jeremiah once said, speaking of the captivity of Israel and of its
ending, speaking for Almighty God: "After seventy years be accomplished at
Babylon, I will visit you, and will perform my good word toward you, in
causing you to return to this place."
     But this strong and definite promise of God was accompanied by these
words, coupling the promise with prayer: "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye
shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me
and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." This seems to
indicate very clearly that the promise was dependent for its fulfillment on
prayer.
     In Daniel we have this record, "I, Daniel, understood by books the
number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, the
prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of
Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and
supplications with fastings and sackcloth and ashes."
     So Daniel, as the time of the captivity was expiring, set himself in
mighty prayer in order that the promise should be fulfilled and the
captivity be brought to an end. It was God's promise by Jeremiah and
Daniel's praying which broke the chains of Babylonish captivity, set Israel
free and brought God's ancient people back to their native land. The promise
and prayer went together to carry out God's purpose and to execute His
plans.
     God had promised through His prophets that the coming Messiah should
have a forerunner. How many homes and wombs in Israel had longed for the
coming to them of this great honour! Perchance Zacharias and Elizabeth were
the only ones who were trying to realize by prayer this great dignity and
blessing. At least we do know that the angel said to Zacharias, as he
announced to him the coming of this great personage, "Thy prayer is heard."
It was then that the word of the Lord as spoken by the prophets and the
prayer of the old priest and his wife brought John the Baptist into the
withered womb, and into the childless home of Zacharias and Elizabeth.
     The promise given to Paul, engraven on his apostolic commission, as
related by him after his arrest in Jerusalem, when he was making his defense
before King Agrippa, was on this wise: "Delivering thee from the people and
from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee.'' How did Paul make this
promise efficient? How did he make the promise real? Here is the answer. In
trouble by men, Jew and Gentile, pressed by them sorely, he writes to his
brethren at Rome, with a pressing request for prayer:

     "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for
the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to
God for me;
     "That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea."

     Their prayers, united with his prayer, were to secure his deliverance
and secure his safety, and were also to make the apostolic promise vital and
cause it to be fully realized.
     All is to be sanctified and realized by the Word of God and prayer.
God's deep and wide river of promise will turn into the deadly miasma or be
lost in the morass, if we do not utilize these promises by prayer, and
receive their full and life-giving waters into our hearts.
     The promise of the Holy Spirit to the disciples was in a very marked
way the "Promise of the Father," but it was only realized after many days of
continued and importunate praying. The promise was clear and definite that
the disciples should be endued with power from on high, but as a condition
of receiving that power of the Holy Spirit, they were instructed to "tarry
in the city of Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from on high." The
fulfillment of the promise depended upon the "tarrying." The promise of this
"enduement of power" was made sure by prayer. Prayer sealed it to glorious
results. So we find it written, "These continued with one accord, in prayer
and supplication, with the women." And it is significant that it was while
they were praying, resting their expectations on the surety of the promise,
that the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they were all "filled with the Holy
Ghost." The promise and the prayer went hand in hand.
     After Jesus Christ made this large and definite promise to His
disciples, He ascended on high, and was seated at His Father's right hand of
exaltation and power. Yet the promise given by Him of sending the Holy
Spirit was not fulfilled by His enthronement merely, nor by the promise
only, nor by the fact that the Prophet Joel had foretold with transported
raptures of the bright day of the Spirit's coming. Neither was it that the
Spirit's coming was the only hope of God's cause in this world. All these
all-powerful and all-engaging reasons were not the immediate operative cause
of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The solution is found in the attitude of
the disciples. The answer is found in the fact that the disciples, with the
women, spent several days in that upper room, in earnest, specific,
continued prayer. It was prayer that brought to pass the famous day of
Pentecost. And as it was then, so it can be now. Prayer can bring a
Pentecost in this day if there be the same kind of praying, for the promise
has not exhausted its power and vitality. The "promise of the Father" still
holds good for the present-day disciples.
     Prayer, mighty prayer, united, continued, earnest prayer, for nearly
two weeks, brought the Holy Spirit to the Church and to the world in
Pentecostal glory and power. And mighty continued and united prayer will do
the same now.

          "Lord God, the Holy Ghost,
               In this accepted hour;
          As on the day of Pentecost,
               Descend in all Thy power.

"We meet with one accord,
               In our appointed place,
          And wait the promise of our Lord,
               The Spirit of all grace."


     Nor must it be passed by that the promises of God to sinners of every
kind and degree are equally sure and steadfast, and are made real and true
by the earnest cries of all true penitents. It is just as true with the
Divine promises made to the unsaved when they repent and seek God, that they
are realized in answer to the prayers of broken-hearted sinners, as it is
true that the promises to believers are realized in answer to their prayers.
The promise of pardon and peace was the basis of the prayers of Saul of
Tarsus during those days of darkness and distress in the house of Judas,
when the Lord told Ananias in order to allay his fears, "Behold he prayeth."
     The promise of mercy and an abundant pardon is tied up with seeking God
and caring upon Him by Isaiah:

     "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, and call ye upon him while he
is near.
     "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy, and to our God,
for he will abundantly pardon."

     The praying sinner receives mercy because his prayer is grounded on the
promise of pardon made by Him whose right it is to pardon guilty sinners.
The penitent seeker after God obtains mercy because there is a definite
promise of mercy to all who seek the Lord in repentance and faith. Prayer
always brings forgiveness to the seeking soul. The abundant pardon is
dependent upon the promise made real by the promise of God to the sinner.
     While salvation is promised to him who believes, the believing sinner
is always a praying sinner. God has no promise of pardon for a prayerless
sinner just as He has no promise for the prayerless professor of religion.
"Behold he prayeth" is not only the unfailing sign of sincerity and the
evidence that the sinner is proceeding in the right way to find God, but it
is the unfailing prophecy of an abundant pardon. Get the sinner to praying
according to the Divine promise, and he then is near the kingdom of God. The
very best sign of the returning prodigal is that he confesses his sins and
begins to ask for the lowliest place in his father's house.
     It is the Divine promise of mercy, of forgiveness and of adoption which
gives the poor sinner hope. This encourages him to pray. This moves him in
distress to cry out, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me."

          "Thy promise is my only plea,
               With this I venture nigh;
          Thou call'st the burdened soul to Thee,
               And such, O Lord, am I."


     How large are the promises made to the saint! How great the promises
given to poor, hungry-hearted, lost sinners, ruined by the fall! And prayer
has arms sufficient to encompass them all, and prove them. How great the
encouragement to all souls, these promises of God! How firm the ground on
which to rest our faith! How stimulating to prayer! What firm ground on
which to base our pleas in praying!

          The Lord hath promised good to me,
               His word my hope secures;
          He will my shield and portion be
               As long as life endures."

                       IV. Prayer -- Its Possibilities

     The Holy Ghost comes down into our hearts sometimes in prayer with
     a beam from heaven, whereby we see more at once of God and His
     glory, more astounding thoughts and enlarged apprehensions God,
     many beams meeting in one and falling to the center of our hearts.
     By these coming downs or divine influxes, God slides into our
     hearts by beams of Himself; we come not to have communion with God
     by way of many broken thoughts put together, but there is a
     contraction of many beams from heaven, which is shed into our
     souls, so that we know more of God and have more communion with
     Him in a quarter-hour than we could know in a year by the way of
     wisdom only. -- THOS. GOODWIN


HOW vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide is its reach! What great
things are accomplished by this divinely appointed means of grace! It lays
its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not otherwise do
if prayer was not offered. It brings things to pass which would never
otherwise occur. The story of prayer is the story of great achievements.
Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His
saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve
unusual results. Prayer reaches to everything, takes in all things great and
small which are promised by God to the children of men. The only limits to
prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises.
"Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it."
     The records of prayer's achievements are encouraging to faith, cheering
to the expectations of saints, and an inspiration to all who would pray and
test its value. Prayer is no mere untried theory. It is not some strange
unique scheme, concocted in the brains of men, and set on foot by them, an
invention which has never been tried nor put to the test. Prayer is a Divine
arrangement in the moral government of God, designed for the benefit of men
and intended as a means for furthering the interests of His cause on earth,
and carrying out His gracious purposes in redemption and providence. Prayer
proves itself. It is susceptible of proving its virtue by those who pray.
Prayer needs no proof other than its accomplishments. "If any man will do
his will, he shall know of the doctrine." If any man will know the virtue of
prayer, if he will know what it will do, let him pray. Let him put prayer to
the test.
     What a breadth is given to prayer! What heights it reaches! It is the
breathing of a soul inflamed for God, and inflamed for man. It goes as far
as the Gospel goes, and is as wide, compassionate and prayerful as is that
Gospel.
     How much of prayer do all these unpossessed, alienated provinces of
earth demand in order to enlighten them, to impress them and to move them
toward God and His Son, Jesus Christ? Had the professed disciples of Christ
only have prayed in the past as they ought to have done, the centuries would
not have found these provinces still bound in death, in sin, and in
ignorance.
     Alas! how the unbelief of men has limited the power of God to work
through prayer! What limitations have disciples of Jesus Christ put upon
prayer by their prayerlessness! How the Church, with her neglect of prayer,
has hedged about the Gospel and shut up doors of access!
     Prayer possibilities open doors for the entrance of the Gospel: "Withal
praying also for us that God would open to us a door of utterance." Prayer
opened for the Apostles doors of utterance, created opportunities and made
openings to preach the Gospel. The appeal by prayer was to God, because God
was moved by prayer. God was thereby moved to do His own work in an enlarged
way and by new ways. Prayer possibility gives not only great power, and
opens doors to the Gospel, but gives facility as well to the Gospel. Prayer
makes the Gospel to go fast and to move with glorious fastness. A Gospel
projected by the mighty energies of prayer is neither slow, lazy nor dull.
It moves with God's power, with God's effulgence and with angelic swiftness.
     "Brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course
and be glorified," is the request of the Apostle Paul, whose faith reached
to the possibilities of prayer for the preached Word. The Gospel moves
altogether too slowly, often timidly, and with feeble steps. What will make
this Gospel go rapidly like a race runner? What will give this Gospel Divine
effulgence and glory, and cause it to move worthy of God and of Christ? The
answer is at hand. Prayer, more prayer, better prayer will do the deed. This
means of grace will give fast going, splendour and divinity to the Gospel.
     The possibilities of prayer reach to all things. Whatever concerns
man's highest welfare, and whatever has to do with God's plans and purposes
concerning men on earth, is a subject for prayer. In "whatsoever ye shall
ask," is embraced all that concerns us or the children of men and God. And
whatever is left out of "whatsoever" is left out of prayer. Where will we
draw the lines which leave out or which will limit the word "whatsoever"?
Define it, and search out and publish the things which the word does not
include. If "whatsoever" does not include all things, then add to it the
word "anything." "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."

     What riches of grace, what blessings, spiritual and temporal, what good
for time and eternity, would have been ours had we learned the possibilities
of prayer and our faith had taken in the wide range of the Divine promises
to us to answer prayer! What blessings on our times and what furtherance to
God's cause had we but learned how to pray with large expectations! Who will
rise up in this generation and teach the Church this lesson? It is a child's
lesson in simplicity, but who has learned it well enough to put prayer to
the test? It is a great lesson in its matchless and universal good. The
possibilities of prayer are unspeakable, but the lesson of prayer which
realizes and measures up to these possibilities, who has learned?
     In His discourse in John, fifteenth chapter, our Lord seems to connect
friendship for Him with that of prayer, and His choosing of His disciples
seemed to have been with a design that through prayer they should bear much
fruit.

     "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.
     "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that
ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that
whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you."

     Jesus puts fruit-bearing and fruit-remaining, ripe, unwithered, and
rich fruit, that prayer might come to its full possibilities in order that
the Father might give. Here we have again the undefined and unlimited word,
"whatsoever," as covering the rights and the things for which we are to pray
in the possibilities of prayer.
     We have still another declaration from Jesus:

     "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in
my name, he will give it to you.
     "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be full."

     Here is a very definite exhortation from our Lord to largeness in
praying. Here we are definitely urged by Him to ask for large things, and
announced with the dignity and solemnity indicated by the double amen,
"Verily, Verily." Why these marvellous urgencies in this last recorded and
vital conversation of our Lord with His disciples? The answer is that our
Lord might prepare them for the New Dispensation, in which prayer was to
have such marvellous results, and in which prayer was to be the chief agency
to conserve and make aggressive His Gospel.
     In our Lord's language to His disciples about choosing them that should
bear fruit, in this affluent statement of our Lord, He clearly teaches us
that this matter of praying and fruit-bearing is not a petty business of our
choice, or a secondary matter in relation to other matters, but that He has
chosen us for this very business of praying. He had specially in mind our
praying, and He has chosen us of His own Divine selection, and He expects us
to do this one thing of praying and to do it intelligently and well. For He
before says that He had made us His friends, and had brought us into bosom
confidence with Him, and also into free and full conference with Him. The
main object of choosing us as His disciples and of friendship for Him was
that we might be the better fitted to bear the fruit of prayer.
     Let us not forget that we are noting the possibilities of the true
praying ones. "Anything" is the word of area and circumference. How far it
reaches we may not know. How wide it spreads, our minds fail to discover.
What is there which is not within its reach? Why does Jesus repeat and
exhaust these words, all-inclusive and boundless words, if He does not
desire to emphasize the unbounded magnificence and illimitable munificence
of prayer? Why does He press men to pray, so that our very poverty might be
enriched and our limitless inheritance by prayer be secured?
     We affirm with absolute certainty that Almighty God answers prayer. The
vast possibilities and the urgent necessity of prayer lie in this stupendous
fact that God hears and answers prayer. And God hears and answers all
prayer. He hears and answers every prayer, where the true conditions of
praying are met. Either this is so or it is not. If not, then is there
nothing in prayer. Then prayer is but the recitation of words, a mere verbal
performance, an empty ceremony. Then prayer is an altogether useless
exercise. But if what we have said is true, then are there vast
possibilities in prayer. Then is it far reaching in its scope, and wide is
its range. Then is it true that prayer can lay its hand upon Almighty God
and move Him to do great and wonderful things.
     The benefits, the possibilities and the necessity of prayer are not
merely subjective but are peculiarly objective in their character. Prayer
aims at a definite object. Prayer has a direct design in view. Prayer always
has something specific before the mind's eye. There may be some subjective
benefits which accrue from praying, but this is altogether secondary and
incidental. Prayer always drives directly at an object and seeks to secure a
desired end. Prayer is asking, seeking and knocking at a door for something
we have not, which we desire, and which God has promised to us.
     Prayer is a direct address to God. "In everything let your requests be
made known unto God." Prayer secures blessings, and makes men better because
it reaches the ear of God. Prayer is only for the betterment of men when it
has affected God and moved Him to do something for men. Prayer affects men
by affecting God. Prayer moves men because it moves God to move men. Prayer
influences men by influencing God to influence them. Prayer moves the hand
that moves the world.

          "That power is prayer, which soars on high,
               Through Jesus to the throne;
          And moves the hand which moves the world,
               To bring salvation down."


     The utmost possibilities of prayer have rarely been realized. The
promises of God are so great to those who truly pray, when He puts Himself
so fully into the hands of the praying ones, that it almost staggers our
faith and causes us to hesitate with astonishment. His promise to answer,
and to do and to give "all things," "anything," "whatsoever," and "all
things whatsoever," are so large, so great, so exceeding broad, that we
stand back in amazement and give ourselves to questioning and doubt. We
"stagger at the promises through unbelief." Really the promises of God to
prayer have been pared down by us to our little faith, and have been brought
down to the low level of our narrow notions about God's ability, liberality
and resources. Let us ever keep in mind and never for one moment allow
ourselves to doubt the statement that God means what He says in all of His
promises. God's promises are His own word. His veracity is at stake in them.
To question them is to doubt His veracity. He cannot afford to prove
faithless to His word. "In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie,
promised before the world began." His promises are for plain people, and He
means to do for all who pray just what He says He will do. "For He is
faithful that hath promised."
     Unfortunately we have failed to lay ourselves out in praying. We have
limited the Holy One of Israel. The ability to pray can be secured by the
grace and power of the Holy Spirit, but it demands so strenuous and high a
character that it is a rare thing for a man or woman to be on "praying
ground and on pleading terms with God." It is as true to-day as it was in
the days of Elijah, that "the fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man
availeth much." How much such a prayer avails, who can tell?
     The possibilities of prayer are the possibilities of faith. Prayer and
faith are Siamese twins. One heart animates them both. Faith is always
praying. Prayer is always believing. Faith must have a tongue by which it
can speak. Prayer is the tongue of faith. Faith must receive. Prayer is the
hand of faith stretched out to receive. Prayer must rise and soar. Faith
must give prayer the wings to fly and soar. Prayer must have an audience
with God. Faith opens the door, and access and audience are given. Prayer
asks. Faith lays its hand on the thing asked for.
     God's omnipotent power is the basis of omnipotent faith and omnipotent
praying. "All things are possible to him that believeth," and "all things
whatsoever" are given to him who prays. God's decree and death yield readily
to Hezekiah's faith and prayer. When God's promise and man's praying are
united by faith, then "nothing shall be impossible." Importunate prayer is
so all-powerful and irresistable that it obtains promises, or wins where the
prospect and the promise seem to be against it. In fact, the New Testament
promise includes all things in heaven and in earth. God, by promise, puts
all things He possesses into man's hands. Prayer and faith put man in
possession of this boundless inheritance.
     Prayer is not an indifferent or a small thing. It is not a sweet little
privilege. It is a great prerogative, far-reaching in its effects. Failure
to pray entails losses far beyond the person who neglects it. Prayer is not
a mere episode of the Christian life. Rather the whole life is a preparation
for and and the result of prayer. In its condition, prayer is the sum of
religion. Faith is but a channel of prayer. Faith gives it wings and
swiftness. Prayer is the lungs through which holiness breathes. Prayer is
not only the language of spiritual life, but makes its very essence and
forms its real character.

          "O for a faith that will not shrink
               Though pressed by every foe;
          That will not tremble on the brink
               Of any earthly woe.

"Lord, give us such a faith as this,
               And then, whate'er may come,
          We'll taste e'en here, the hallowed bliss
               Of our eternal home."

                 V. Prayer -- Its Possibilities (Continued)

     He who has the spirit of prayer has the highest interest in the
     court of heaven. And the only way to retain it is to keep it in
     constant employment. Apostasy begins in the closet. No man ever
     backslid from the life and power of Christianity who continued
     constant and fervent in private prayer. He who prays without
     ceasing is likely to rejoice evermore. -- ADAM CLARKE


AFTER a comprehensive and cursory view of the possibilities of prayer, as
mapped out in what has been said, it is important to descend to particulars,
to Bible facts and principles in regard to this great subject. What are the
possibilities of prayer as disclosed by Divine revelation? The necessity of
prayer and its being are coexistent with man. Nature, even before a clear
and full revelation, cries out in prayer. Man is, therefore prayer is. God
is, therefore prayer is. Prayer is born of the instincts, the needs and the
cravings and the very being of man.
     The prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple is the product of
inspired wisdom and piety, and gives a lucid and powerful view of prayer in
the wideness of its range, the minuteness of its details, and its abounding
possibilities and its urgent necessity. How minute and exactly comprehending
is this prayer! National and individual blessings are in it, and temporal
and spiritual good is embraced by it. Individual sins, national calamities,
sins, sickness, exile, famine, war, pestilence, mildew, drought, insects,
damage to crops, whatever affects husbandry, enemies-whatsoever sickness,
one's own sore, one's own guilt, one's own sin -- one and all are in this
prayer, and all are for prayer.
     For all these evils prayer is the one universal remedy. Pure praying
remedies all ills, cures all diseases, relieves all situations, however
dire, most calamitous, most fearful and despairing. Prayer to God, pure
praying, relieves dire situations because God can relieve when no one else
can. Nothing is too hard for God. No cause is hopeless which God undertakes.
No case is mortal when Almighty God is the physician. No conditions are
despairing which can deter or defy God.
     Almighty God heard this prayer of Solomon, and committed Himself to
undertake, to relieve and to remedy if real praying be done, despite all
adverse and inexorable conditions. He will always relieve, answer and bless
if men will pray from the heart, and if they will give themselves to real,
true praying.
     After Solomon had finished his magnificent, illimitable and
all-comprehending prayer, this is the record of what God said to him:

     "And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him, I have
heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for a house of
sacrifice.
     "If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts
that they devour the land, or if I send pestilence among the people;
     "If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and
pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear
from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land;
     "Now my eyes shall be open, and my ears attentive to the prayer that is
made in this place.
     "For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be
there forever."

     God put no limitation to His ability to save through true praying. No
hopeless conditions, no accumulation of difficulties, and no desperation in
distance or circumstance can hinder the success of real prayer. The
possibilities of prayer are linked to the infinite rectitude and to the
omnipotent power of God. There is nothing too hard for God to do. God is
pledged that if we ask, we shall receive. God can withhold nothing from
faith and prayer.

          "The thing surpasses all my thought,
               But faithful is my Lord;
          Through unbelief I stagger not,
               For God hath spoke the word.

          "Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
               And looks to that alone;
          Laughs at impossibilities,
               And cries, 'It shall be done!'"


     The many statements of God's Word fully set forth the possibilities and
far-reaching nature of prayer. How full of pathos! "Call upon me in the day
of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." Again, read the
cheering words: "He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be
with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honour him."
     How diversified the range of trouble! How almost infinite its extent!
How universal and dire its conditions! How despairing its waves! Yet the
range of prayer is as great as trouble, is as universal as sorrow, as
infinite as grief. And prayer can relieve all these evils which come to the
children of men. There is no tear which prayer cannot wipe away or dry up.
There is no depression of spirits which it cannot relieve and elevate. Where
is no despair which it cannot dispel.
     "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great things and
difficult, which thou knowest not." How broad these words of the Lord, how
great the promise, how cheering to faith! They really challenge the faith of
the saint. Prayer always brings God to our relief to bless and to aid, and
brings marvellous revelations of His power. What impossibilities are there
with God? Name them. "Nothing," He says, "is impossible to the Lord." And
all the possibilities in God are in prayer.
     Samuel, under the Judges of Israel, will fully illustrate the
possibility and the necessity of prayer. He himself was the beneficiary of
the greatness of faith and prayer in a mother who knew what praying meant.
Hannah, his mother, was a woman of mark, in character and in piety, who was
childless. That privation was a source of worry and weakness and grief. She
sought unto God for relief, and prayed and poured out her soul before the
Lord. She continued her praying, in fact she multiplied her praying, to such
an extent that to Old Eli she seemed to be intoxicated, almost beside
herself in the intensity of her supplications. She was specific in her
prayers. She wanted a child. For a man child she prayed.
     And God was specific in His answer. A man child God gave her, a man
indeed he became. He was the creation of prayer, and grew himself to a man
of prayer. He was a mighty intercessor, especially in emergencies in the
history of God's people. The epitome of his life and character is found in
the statement, "Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard
him." The victory was complete, and the Ebenezer was the memorial of the
possibilities and necessity of prayer.
     Again, at another time, Samuel called unto the Lord, and thunder and
rain came out of season in wheat harvest. Here are some statements
concerning this mighty intercessor, who knew how to pray, and whom God
always regarded when he prayed: "Samuel cried unto the Lord all night."
     Says he at another time in speaking to the Lord's people, "Moreover, as
for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for
you."
     These great occasions show how this notable ruler of Israel made prayer
a habit, and that this was a notable and conspicuous characteristic of his
dispensation. Prayer was no strange exercise to Samuel. He was accustomed to
it. He was in the habit of praying, knew the way to God, and received
answers from God. Through him and his praying God's cause was brought out of
its low, depressed condition, and a great national revival began, of which
David was one of its fruits.
     Samuel was one of the notable men of the Old Dispensation who stood out
prominently as one who had great influence with God in prayer. God could not
deny him anything he asked of Him. Samuel's praying always affected God, and
moved God to do what would not have otherwise been done had he not prayed.
Samuel stands out as a striking illustration of the possibilities of prayer.
He shows conclusively the achievements of prayer.
     Jacob is an illustration for all time of the commanding and conquering
forces of prayer. God came to him as an antagonist. He grappled Jacob, and
shook him as if he were in the embrace of a deadly foe. Jacob, the deceitful
supplanter, the wily, unscrupulous trader, had no eyes to see God. His
perverted principles, and his deliberate overreaching and wrong-doing had
blinded his vision.
     To reach God, to know God, and to conquer God, that was the demand of
this critical hour. Jacob was alone, and all night witnessed to the
intensity of the struggle, its changing issues, and its veering fortunes, as
well as the receding and advancing lines in the conflict. Here was the
strength of weakness, the power of self-despair, the energy of perseverance,
the elevation of humility, and the victory of surrender. Jacob's salvation
issued from the forces which he massed in that all-night conflict.
     He prayed and wept and importuned until the fiery hate of Esau's heart
died and it was softened into love. A greater miracle was wrought on Jacob
than on Esau. His name, his character and his destiny were all changed by
that all-night praying. Here is the record of the results of that night's
praying struggle: "As a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and
hast prevailed." "By his strength he had power with God, yea, he had power
over the angel and prevailed."
     What forces lie in importunate prayer! What mighty results are gained
by it in one night's struggle in praying! God is affected and changed in
attitude, and two men are transformed in character and destiny.

                 VI. Prayer -- Its Possibilities (Continued)

     Satan dreads nothing but prayer. . . . The Church that lost its
     Christ was full of good works. Activities are multiplied that
     meditation may be ousted, and organizations are increased that
     prayer may have no chance. Souls may be lost in good works, as
     surely as in evil ways. The one concern of the devil is to keep
     the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies,
     prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks
     at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. -- SAMUEL CHADWICK


THE possibilities of prayer are seen in its results in temporal matters.
Prayer reaches to everything which concerns man, whether it be his body, his
mind or his soul. Prayer embraces the very smallest things of life. Prayer
takes in the wants of the body, food, raiment, business, finances, in fact
everything which belongs to this life, as well as those things which have to
do with the eternal interests of the soul. Its achievements are seen not
only in the large things of earth, but more especially in what might be
called the little things of life. It brings to pass not only large things,
speaking after the manner of men, but also the small things.
     Temporal matters are of a lower order than the spiritual, but they
concern us greatly. Our temporal interests make up a great part of our
lives. They are the main source of our cares and worries. They have much to
do with our religion. We have bodies, with their wants, their pains, their
disabilities and their limitations. That which concerns our bodies
necessarily engages our minds. These are subjects of prayer, and prayer
takes in all of them, and large are the accomplishments of prayer in this
realm of our king.
     Our temporal matters have much to do with our health and happiness.
They form our relations. They are tests of honesty and belong to the sphere
of justice and righteousness. Not to pray about temporal matters is to leave
God out of the largest sphere of our being. He who cannot pray in
everything, as we are charged to do by Paul in Philippians, fourth chapter,
has never learned in any true sense the nature and worth of prayer. To leave
business and time out of prayer is to leave religion and eternity out of it.
He who does not pray about temporal matters cannot pray with confidence
about spiritual matters. He who does not put God by prayer in his struggling
toil for daily bread will never put Him in his struggle for heaven. He who
does not cover and supply the wants of the body by prayer will never cover
and supply the wants of his soul. Both body and soul are dependent on God,
and prayer is but the crying expression of that dependence.
     The Syrophenician woman prayed for the health things. In fact the Old
Testament is but the record of God in dealing with His people through the
Divine appointment of prayer. Abraham prayed that Sodom might be saved from
destruction. Abraham's servant prayed and received God's direction in
choosing a wife for Isaac. Hannah prayed, and Samuel was given unto her.
Elijah prayed, and no rain came for three years. And he prayed again, and
the clouds gave rain. Hezekiah was saved from a mortal sickness by his
praying. Jacob's praying saved him from Esau's revenge. The Old Bible is the
history of prayer for temporal blessings as well as for spiritual blessings.
     In the New Testament we have the same principles illustrated and
enforced. Prayer in this section of God's Word covers the whole realm of
good, both temporal and spiritual. Our Lord, in His universal prayer, the
prayer for humanity, in every clime, in every age and for every condition,
puts in it the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." This embraces
all necessary earthly good.
     In the Sermon on the Mount, a whole paragraph is taken up by our Lord
about food and raiment, where He is cautioned against undue care or anxiety
for these things, and at the same time encouraging to a faith which takes in
and claims all these necessary bodily comforts and necessaries. And this
teaching stands in close connection with His teachings about prayer. Food
and raiment are taught as subjects of prayer. Not for one moment is it even
hinted that they are things beneath the notice of a great God, nor too
material and earthly for such a spiritual exercise as prayer.
     The Syrophenician woman prayed for the health of her daughter. Peter
prayed for Dorcas to be brought back to life. Paul prayed for the father of
Publius on his way to Rome, when cast on the island by a shipwreck, and God
healed the man who was sick with a fever. He urged the Christians at Rome to
strive with him together in prayer that he might be delivered from bad men.
     When Peter was put in prison by Herod, the Church was instant in prayer
that Peter might be delivered from the prison, and God honoured the praying
of these early Christians. John prayed that Gaius might "prosper and be in
health, even as his soul prospered."
     The Divine directory in James, fifth chapter, says: "Is any among you
afflicted, let him pray. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders
of the Church, and let them pray over him."
     Paul, in writing to the Philippians, fourth chapter, says: "Be careful
for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." This provides for all
kinds of cares business cares, home cares, body cares, and soul cares. All
are to be brought to God by prayer, and at the mercy seat our minds and
souls are to be disburdened of all that affects us or causes anxiety or
uneasiness. These words of Paul stand in close connection with what he says
about temporal matters specially: "But now I rejoiced in the Lord greatly
that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again: wherein ye were
also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect to
want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."
     And Paul closes his Epistle to these Christians with the words, which
embrace all temporal needs as well as spiritual wants:

     "But my God shall supply all your need, according to his riches in
glory, by Christ Jesus."

     Unbelief in the doctrine that prayer covers all things which have to do
with the body and business affairs, breeds undue anxiety about earth's
affairs, causes unnecessary worry, and creates very unhappy states of mind.
How much needless care would we save ourselves if we but believed in prayer
as the means of relieving those cares, and would learn the happy art of
casting all our cares in prayer upon God, "who careth for us!" Unbelief in
God as one who is concerned about even the smallest affairs which affect our
happiness and comfort limits the Holy One of Israel, and makes our lives
altogether devoid of real happiness and sweet contentment.
     We have in the instance of the failure of the disciples to cast the
devil out of the lunatic son, brought to them by his father, while Jesus was
on the Mount of Transfiguration, a suggestive lesson of the union of faith,
prayer and fasting, and the failure to reach the possibilities and
obligations of an occasion. The disciples ought to have cast the devil out
of the boy. They had been sent out to do this very work, and had been
empowered by their Lord and Master to do it. And yet they signally failed.
Christ reproved them with sharp upbraidings for not doing it. They had been
sent out on this very specific mission. This one thing was specified by our
Lord when He sent them out. Their failure brought shame and confession on
them, and discounted their Lord and Master and His cause. They brought Him
into disrepute, and reflected very seriously upon the cause which they
represented. Their faith to cast out the devil had signally failed, simply
because it had not been nurtured by prayer and fasting. Failure to pray
broke the ability of faith, and failure came because they had not the energy
of a strong authoritative faith.
     The promise reads, and we cannot too often refer to it, for it is the
very basis of our faith and the ground on which we stand when we pray: "All
things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." What
enumeration table can tabulate, itemize, and aggregate "all things
whatsoever"? The possibilities of prayer and faith go to the length of the
endless chain, and cover the unmeasurable area.
     In Hebrews, eleventh chapter, the sacred penman, wearied with trying to
specify the examples of faith, and to recite the wonderful exploits of
faith, pauses a moment, and then cries out, giving us almost unheard-of
achievements of prayer and faith as exemplified by the saints of the olden
times. Here is what he says:

     "And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephtha, of David also; and-Samuel, and the
prophets;
     "Who through faith, subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions;
     "Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the
armies of the aliens;
     "Women received their dead raised to life again, and others were
tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better
resurrection."

     What an illustrious record is this! What marvellous accomplishments,
wrought not by armies, or by man's superhuman strength, nor by magic, but
all accomplished simply by men and women noted alone for their faith and
prayer! Hand in hand with these records of faith's illimitable range are the
illustrious records of prayer, for they are all one. Faith has never won a
victory nor gained a crown where prayer was not the weapon of the victory,
and where prayer did not jewel the crown. If "all things are possible to him
that believeth," then all things are possible to him that prayeth.

          "Depend on him; thou canst not fail;
               Make all thy wants and wishes known:
          Fear not; his merits must prevail;
               Ask but in faith, it shall be done."

                        VII. Prayer -- Its Wide Range

     Nothing so pleases God in connection with our prayer as our
     praise, . . . and nothing so blesses the man who prays as the
     praise which he offers. I got a great blessing once in China in
     this connection. I had received bad and sad news from home, and
     deep shadows had covered my soul. I prayed, but the darkness did
     not vanish. I summoned myself to endure, but the darkness only
     deepened. Just then I went to an inland station and saw on the
     wall of the mission home these words: "Try Thanksgiving." I did,
     and in a moment every shadow was gone, not to return. Yes, the
     Psalmist was right, "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the
     Lord." -- HENRY W. FROST


THE possibilities of prayer are gauged by faith in God's ability to do.
Faith is the one prime condition by which God works. Faith is the one prime
condition by which man prays. Faith draws on God to its full extent. Faith
gives character to prayer. A feeble faith has always brought forth feeble
praying. Vigorous faith creates vigorous praying. At the close of a parable,
"And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men always ought to
pray, and not to faint," in which He stressed the necessity of vigorous
praying, Christ asks this pointed question, "When the Son of Man cometh,
shall he find faith on the earth?"
     In the case of the lunatic child which the father brought first to the
disciples, who could not cure him, and then to the Lord Jesus Christ, the
father cried out with all the pathos of a declining faith and of a great
sorrow, "If thou canst do anything for us, have compassion on us and help
us." And Jesus said unto him, "If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth." The healing turned on the faith in the
ability of Christ to heal the boy. The ability to do was in Christ
essentially and eternally, but the doing of the thing turned on the ability
of the faith. Great faith enables Christ to do great things.
     We need a quickening faith in God's power. We have hedged God in till
we have little faith in His power. We have conditioned the exercise of His
power till we have a little God, and a little faith in a little God.
     The only condition which restrains God's power, and which disables Him
to act, is unfaith. He is not limited in action nor restrained by the
conditions which limit men.
     The conditions of time, place, nearness, ability and all others which
could possibly be named, upon which the actions of men hinge, have no
bearing on God. If men will look to God and cry to Him with true prayer, He
will hear and can deliver, no matter how dire soever may be the state, how
remediless their conditions may be.
     Strange how God has to school His people in His ability to do! He made
a promise to Abraham and Sarah that Isaac would be born. Abraham was then
nearly one hundred years old, and Sarah was barren by natural defect, and
had passed into a barren, wombless age. She laughed at the thought of having
a child as preposterous. God asked, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too
hard for the Lord?" And God fulfilled His promise to these old people to the
letter.
     Moses hesitated to undertake God's purpose to liberate Israel from
Egyptian bondage, because of his inability to talk well. God checks him at
once by an inquiry:

     "And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; but I am slow of
speech and of a slow tongue.
     "And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh
the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?
     "Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what
thou shalt say."

     When God said He would feed the children of Israel a whole month with
meat, Moses questioned His ability to do it. The Lord said unto Moses, "Is
the Lord's hand waxed short? Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come
to pass unto thee or not."
     Nothing is too hard for the Lord to do. As Paul declared, "He is able
to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think." Prayer has
to do with God, with His ability to do. The possibility of prayer is the
measure of God's ability to do.
     The "all things," the "all things whatsoever," and the "anything," are
all covered by the ability of God. The urgent entreaty reads, "Ask
whatsoever ye will," because God is able to do anything and all things that
my desires may crave, and that He has promised. In God's ability to do, He
goes far beyond man's ability to ask. Human thoughts, human words, human
imaginations, human desires and human needs, cannot in any way measure God's
ability to do.
     Prayer in its legitimate possibilities goes out on God Himself. Prayer
goes out with faith not only in the promise of God, but faith in God
Himself, and in God's ability to do. Prayer goes out not on the promise
merely, but "obtains promises," and creates promises.
     Elijah had the promise that God would send the rain, but no promise
that He would send the fire. But by faith and prayer he obtained the fire,
as well as the rain, but the fire came first.
     Daniel had no specific promise that God would make known to him the
dream of the king, but he and his associates joined in united prayer, and
God revealed to Daniel the king's dream and the interpretation, and their
lives were spared thereby.
     Hezekiah had no promise that God would cure him of his desperate
sickness which threatened his life. On the contrary the word of the Lord
came to him by the mouth of the prophet, that he should die. However, he
prayed against this decree of Almighty God, with faith, and he succeeded in
obtaining a reversal of God's word and lived.
     God makes it marvellous when He says by the mouth of His prophet: "Thus
saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and his Maker: Ask me of things to
come, concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye
me." And in this strong promise in which He commits Himself into the hands
of His praying people, He appeals in it to His great creative power: "I have
created the earth and made man upon it. I, even my hands, have stretched out
the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded."
     The majesty and power of God in making man and man's world, and
constantly upholding all things, are ever kept before us as the basis of our
faith in God, and as an assurance and urgency to prayer. Then God calls us
away from what He Himself has done, and turns our minds to Himself
personally. The infinite glory and power of His Person are set before our
contemplation: "Remember ye not the former things neither consider the
things of old?" He declares that He will do a "new thing," that He does not
have to repeat Himself, that all He has done neither limits His doing nor
the manner of His doing, and that if we have prayer and faith, He will so
answer our prayers and so work for us, that His former work shall not be
remembered nor come into mind. If men would pray as they ought to pray, the
marvels of the past would be more than reproduced. The Gospel would advance
with a facility and power it has never known. Doors would be thrown open to
the Gospel, and the Word of God would have a conquering force rarely if ever
known before.
     If Christians prayed as Christians ought, with strong commanding faith,
with earnestness and sincerity, men, God-called men, God-empowered men
everywhere, would be all burning to go and spread the Gospel world-wide. The
Word of the Lord would run and be glorified as never known heretofore. The
God-influenced men, the God-inspired men, the God-commissioned men, would go
and kindle the flame of sacred fire for Christ, salvation and heaven,
everywhere in all nations, and soon all men would hear the glad tidings of
salvation and have an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as their personal
Saviour. Let us read another one of those large illimitable statements in
God's Word, which are a direct challenge to prayer and faith:

     "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how
shall he not with him freely give us all things?"

     What a basis have we here for prayer and faith, illimitable,
measureless in breadth, in depth and in height! The promise to give us all
things is backed up by the calling to our remembrance of the fact that God
freely gave His only Begotten Son for our redemption. His giving His Son is
the assurance and guarantee that He will freely give all things to him who
believes and prays.
     What confidence have we in this Divine statement for inspired asking!
What holy boldness we have here for the largest asking! No commonplace
tameness should restrain our largest asking. Large, larger, and largest
asking magnifies grace and adds to God's glory. Feeble asking impoverishes
the asker, and restrains God's purposes for the greatest good and obscures
His glory.
     How enthroned, magnificent and royal the intercession of our Lord Jesus
Christ at His Father's right hand in heaven! The benefits of His
intercession flow to us through our intercessions. Our intercession ought to
catch by contagion, and by necessity the inspiration and largeness of
Christ's great work at His Father's right hand. His business and His life
are to pray. Our business and our lives ought to be to pray, and to pray
without ceasing.
     Failure in our intercession affects the fruits His intercession. Lazy,
heartless, feeble, and indifferent praying by us mars and hinders the
effects of Christ's praying.

                      VIII. Prayer -- Facts and History

     The particular value of private prayer consists in being able to
     approach God with more freedom, and unbosom ourselves more fully
     than in any other way. Between us and God there are private and
     personal interests, sins to confess and wants to be supplied,
     which it would be improper to disclose to the world. This duty is
     enforced by the example of good men in all ages. -- AMOS BINNEY


THE possibilities of prayer are established by the facts and the history of
prayer. Facts are stubborn things. Facts are the true things. Theories may
be but speculations. Opinions may be wholly at fault. But facts must be
deferred to. They cannot be ignored. What are the possibilities of prayer
judged by the facts? What is the history of prayer? What does it reveal to
us? Prayer has a history, written in God's Word and recorded in the
experiences and lives of God's saints. History is truth teaching by example.
We may miss the truth by perverting the history, but the truth is in the
facts of history.

          "He spake with Abraham at the oak,
               He called Elisha from the plough;
          David he from the sheepfolds took,
               Thy day, thine hour of grace, is now."


     God reveals the truth by the facts. God reveals Himself by the facts of
religious history. God teaches us His will by the facts and examples of
Bible history. God's facts, God's Word and God's history are all in perfect
harmony, and have much of God in them all. God has ruled the world by
prayer; and God still rules the world by the same divinely ordained means.
     The possibilities of prayer cover not only individuals but reach to
cities and nations. They take in classes and peoples. The praying of Moses
was the one thing which stood between the wrath of God against the
Israelites and His declared purpose to destroy them and the execution of
that Divine purpose, and the Hebrew nation still survived. Notwithstanding
Sodom was not spared, because ten righteous men could not be found inside
its limits, yet the little city of Zoar was spared because Lot prayed for it
as he fled from the storm of fire and brimstone which burned up Sodom.
Nineveh was saved because the king and its people repented of their evil
ways and gave themselves to prayer and fasting.
     Paul in his remarkable prayer in Ephesians, chapter three, honours the
illimitable possibilities of prayer and glorifies the ability of God to
answer prayer. Closing that memorable prayer, so far-reaching in its
petitions, and setting forth the very deepest religious experience, he
declares that "God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can
ask or think." He makes prayer all-inclusive, comprehending all things,
great and small. Where is no time nor place which prayer does not cover and
sanctify. All things in earth and in heaven, everything for time and for
eternity, all are embraced in prayer. Nothing is too great and nothing is
too small to be subject of prayer. Prayer reaches down to the least things
of life and includes the greatest things which concern us.

          "If pain afflict or wrongs oppress,
               If cares distract, or fears dismay;
          If guilt deject, or sin distress,
               In every case still watch and pray."


     One of the most important, far-reaching, peace-giving, necessary and
practical prayer possibilities we have in Paul's words in Philippians,
chapter four, dealing with prayer as a cure for undue care:

     "Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God."
     "And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your
hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

     "Cares" are the epidemic evil of mankind. They are universal in their
reach. They belong to man in his fallen condition. The predisposition to
undue anxiety is the natural result of sin. Care comes in all shapes, at all
times, and from all sources. It comes to all of every age and station. There
are the cares of the home circle, from which there is no escape save in
prayer. There are the cares of business, the cares of poverty, and the cares
of riches. Ours is an anxious world, and ours is an anxious race. The
caution of Paul is well addressed, "In nothing be anxious." This is the
Divine injunction, and that we might be able to live above anxiety and freed
from undue care, "In everything, by prayer and supplication, let your
requests be made known unto God." This is the divinely prescribed remedy for
all anxious cares, for all worry, for all inward fretting.
     The word, "careful," means to be drawn in different directions,
distraction, anxious, disturbed, annoyed in spirit. Jesus had warned against
this very thing in the Sermon on the Mount, where He had earnestly urged His
disciples, "Take no thought for the morrow," in things concerning the needs
of the body. He was endeavouring to show them the true secret of a quiet
mind, freed from anxiety and unnecessary care about food and raiment.
To-morrow's evils were not to be considered. He was simply teaching the same
lesson found in Psalm 37: 3, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." In cautioning against the
fears of to-morrow's prospective evils, and the material wants of the body,
our Lord was teaching the great lesson of an implicit and childlike
confidence in God. "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him, and he
shall bring it to pass."

          "'Day by day,' the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs
Cast foreboding fears away;
Take the manna of to-day."


     Paul's direction is very specific, "Be careful for nothing." Be careful
for not one thing. Be careful for not anything, for any condition, chance or
happening. Be troubled about not anything which creates one disturbing
anxiety. Have a mind freed from all anxieties, all cares, all fretting, and
all worries. Cares divide, distract, bewilder, and destroy unity, forces and
quietness of mind. Cares are fatal to weak piety and are enfeebling to
strong piety. What great need to guard against them and learn the one secret
of their cure, even prayer!
     What boundless possibilities there are in prayer to remedy the
situation of mind of which Paul is speaking! Prayer over everything can
quiet every distraction, hush every anxiety, and lift every care from
care-enslaved lives and from care-bewildered hearts. The prayer specific is
the perfect cure for all ills of this character which belong to anxieties,
cares and worries. Only prayer in everything can drive dull care away,
relieve of unnecessary heart burdens, and save from the besetting sin of
worrying over things which we cannot help. Only prayer can bring into the
heart and mind the "peace which passeth all understanding," and keep mind
and heart at ease, free from carking care.
     Oh, the needless heart burdens borne by fretting Christians! How few
know the real secret of a happy Christian life, filled with perfect peace,
hid from the storms and billows of a fretting careworn life! Prayer has a
possibility of saving us from "carefulness," the bane of human lives. Paul
in writing to the Corinthians says, "I would have you without carefulness,"
and this is the will of God. Prayer has the ability to do this very thing.
"Casting all your care on him, for he careth for you," is the way Peter puts
it, while the Psalmist says, "Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil." Oh,
the blessedness of a heart at ease from all inward care, exempt from undue
anxiety, in the enjoyment of the peace of God which passeth all
understanding!
     Paul's injunction which includes both God's promise and His purpose,
and which immediately precedes his entreaty to be "careful for nothing,"
reads on this wise:

     "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.
     "Let your moderation be made known to all men. The Lord is at hand."

     In a world filled with cares of every kind, where temptation is the
rule, where there are so many things to try us, how is it possible to
rejoice always? We look at the naked, dry command, and we accept it and
reverence it as the Word of God, but no joy comes. How are we to let our
moderation, our mildness, and our gentleness be universally and always
known? We resolve to be benign and gentle. We remember the nearness of the
Lord, but still we are hasty, quick, hard and salty. We listen to the Divine
charge, "Be careful for nothing," yet still we are anxious, care-worn,
care-eaten, and care-tossed. How can we fulfill the Divine word, so sweet
and so large in promise, so beautiful in the eye, and yet so far from being
realized? How can we enter upon the rich patrimony of being true, honest,
just, pure, and possess lovely things? The recipe is infallible, the remedy
is universal, and the cure is unfailing. It is found in the words which we
have so often herein referred to of Paul: "Be careful for nothing, but in
everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be made known unto God."
     This joyous, care-free, peaceful experience bringing the believer into
a joyousness, living simply by faith day by day, is the will of God. Writing
to the Thessalonians, Paul tells them: "Rejoice evermore; pray without
ceasing, and in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus concerning you." So that not only is it God's will that we
should find full deliverance from all care and undue anxiety, but He has
ordained prayer as the means by which we can reach that happy state of
heart.
     The Revised Version makes some changes in the passage of Paul, about
which we have been speaking. The reading there is" In nothing be anxious,"
and "the peace of God shall guard your hearts and your minds." And Paul puts
the antecedent in the air of prayer, which is "Rejoice in the Lord always."
That is, be always glad in the Lord, and be happy with Him. And that you may
thus be happy, "Be careful for nothing." This rejoicing is the doorway for
prayer, and its pathway too. The sunshine and buoyancy of joy in the Lord
are the strength and boldness of prayer, the peans of its victory.
"Moderation" makes the rainbow of prayer. The word means mildness, fairness,
gentleness, sweet reasonableness. The Revised Version changes it to
"forbearance," with the margin reading "gentleness." What rare ingredients
and beautiful colourings! These are colourings and ingredients which make a
strong and beautiful character and a wide and positive reputation. A
rejoicing, gentle spirit, positive in reputation, is well fitted for prayer,
rid of the distractions and unrest of care.

                 IX. Prayer -- Facts and History (Continued)

     The neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness. "We have
     not because we ask not." Oh, how meek and gentle, how lowly in
     heart, how full of love both to God and to man, might you have
     been at this day, if you had only asked! If you had continued
     instant in prayer! Ask, that you may thoroughly experience and
     perfectly practice the whole of that religion which our Lord has
     so beautifully described in the Sermon on the Mount. -- JOHN
     WESLEY


IT is to the closet Paul directs us to go. The unfailing remedy for all
carking, distressing care is prayer. The place where the Lord is at hand is
the closet of prayer. There He is always found, and there He is at hand to
bless, to deliver and to help. The one place where the Lord's presence and
power will be more fully realized than any other place is the closet of
prayer.
     Paul gives the various terms of prayer, supplication and giving of
thanks as the complement of true praying. The soul must be in all of these
spiritual exercises. There must be no half-hearted praying, no abridging its
nature, and no abating its force, if we would be freed from this undue
anxiety which causes friction and internal distress, and if we would receive
the rich fruit of that peace which passeth all understanding. He who prays
must be an earnest soul, all round in spiritual attributes.
     "In everything, let your requests be made known unto God," says Paul.
Nothing is too great to be handled in prayer, or to be sought in prayer.
Nothing is too small to be weighed in the secret councils of the closet, and
nothing is too little for its final arbitrament. As care comes from every
source, so prayer goes to every source. As there are no small things in
prayer, so there are no small things with God. He who counts the hairs of
our head, and who is not too lofty and high to notice the little sparrow
which falls to the ground, is not too great and high to note everything
which concerns the happiness, the needs and the safety of His children.
Prayer brings God into what men are pleased to term the little affairs of
life. The lives of people are made up of these small matters, and yet how
often do great consequences come from small beginnings?

          "There is no sorrow, Lord, too light
               To bring in prayer to Thee;
          There is no anxious care too slight
               To wake Thy sympathy.

          "There is no secret sigh we breathe,
               But meets Thine ear Divine,
          And every cross grows light beneath
               The shadow, Lord, of Thine."


     As everything by prayer is to be brought to the notice of Almighty God,
so we are assured that whatever affects us concerns Him. How comprehensive
is this direction about prayer! "In everything by prayer." There is no
distinction here between temporal and spiritual things. Such a distinction
is against faith, wisdom and reverence. God rules everything in nature and
in grace. Man is affected for time and eternity by things secular as well as
by things spiritual. Man's salvation hangs on his business as well as on his
prayers. A man's business hangs on his prayers just as it hangs on his
diligence.
     The chief hindrances to piety, the wiliest and the deadliest
temptations of the devil, are in business, and lie alongside the things of
time. The heaviest, the most confusing and the most stupefying cares lie
beside secular and worldly matters. So in everything which comes to us and
which concerns us, in everything which we want to come to us, and in
everything which we do not want to come to us, prayer is to be made for all.
Prayer blesses all things, brings all things, relieves all things and
prevents all things. Everything as well as every place and every hour is to
be ordered by prayer. Prayer has in it the possibility to affect everything
which affects us. Here are the vast possibilities of prayer.
     How much is the bitter of life sweetened by prayer! How are the feeble
made strong by prayer! Sickness flees before the health of prayer. Doubts,
misgivings, and trembling fears retire before prayer. Wisdom, knowledge,
holiness and heaven are at the command of prayer. Nothing is outside of
prayer. It has the power to gain all things in the provision of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul covers all departments and sweeps the entire field of
human concernment, conditions, and happenings by saying, "In everything by
prayer."
     Supplications and thanksgiving are to be joined with prayer. It is not
the dignity of worship, the gorgeousness of ceremonials, the magnificence of
its ritual, nor the plainness of its sacraments, which avail. It is not
simply the soul's hallowed and lowly abasement before God, neither the
speechless awe, which benefits in this prayer service, but the intensity of
supplication, the looking and the lifting of the soul in ardent plea to God
for the things desired and for which request is made.
     The radiance and gratitude and utterance of thanksgiving must be there.
This is not simply the poetry of praise, but the deep-toned words and the
prose of thanks. There must be hearty thanks, which remembers the past, sees
God in it, and voices that recognition in sincere thanksgiving. The hidden
depths within must have utterance. The lips must speak the music of the
soul. A heart enthused of God, a heart illumined by His presence, a life
guided by His right hand, must have something to say for God in gratitude.
Such is to recognize God in the events of past life, to exalt God for His
goodness, and to honour God who has honoured it.
     "Make known your requests unto God." The "requests" must be made known
unto God. Silence is not prayer. Prayer is asking God for something which we
have not, which we desire, and which He has promised to give in answer to
prayer. Prayer is really verbal asking. Words are in prayer. Strong words
and true words are found in prayer. Desires in prayer are put in words. The
praying one is a pleader. He urges his prayer by arguments, promises, and
needs.
     Sometimes loud words are in prayer. The Psalmist said, "Evening,
morning and at noon will I pray, and cry aloud." The praying one wants
something which he has not got. He wants something which God has in His
possession, and which he can get by praying. He is beggared, bewildered,
oppressed and confused. He is before God in supplication, in prayer, and in
thanksgiving. These are the attitudes, the incense, the paraphernalia, and
the fashion of this hour, the court attendance of his soul before God.
     "Requests" mean to ask for one's self. The man is in a strait. He needs
something, and he needs it badly. Other help has failed. It means a plea for
something to be given which has not been done. The request is for the Giver,
-- not alone His gifts but Himself. The requests of the praying one are to
be made known unto God. The requests are to be brought to the knowledge of
God. It is then that cares fly away, anxieties disappear, worries depart,
and the soul gets at ease. Then it is there steals into the heart "the peace
of God that passeth all understanding."

          "Peace! doubting heart, my God's I am,
               Who formed me man, forbids my fear;
          The Lord hath called me by my name;
               The Lord protects, forever near;
          His blood for me did once atone,
And still He loves and guards His own."


     In James, chapter five, we have another marvellous description of
prayer and its possibilities. It has to do with sickness and health, sin and
forgiveness, and rain and drouth. Here we have James' directory for praying:

     "Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing
psalms.
     "Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the Church, and
let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
     "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick; and the Lord shall raise
him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
     "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye
may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth
much.
     "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed
earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the
space of three years and six months.
     "And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought
forth her fruit."

     Here is prayer for one's own needs and intercessory prayer for others;
prayer for physical needs and prayer for spiritual needs; prayer for drouth
and prayer for rain; prayer for temporal matters and prayer for spiritual
things. How vast the reach of prayer! How wonderful under these words its
possibilities!
     Here is the remedy for affliction and depression of every sort, and
here we find the remedy for sickness and for rain in the time of drouth.
Here is the way to obtain forgiveness of sins. A stroke of prayer paralyzes
the energies of nature, stays its clouds, rain and dew, and blasts field and
farm like the simoon. Prayer brings clouds, and rain and fertility to the
famished and wasted earth.
     The general statement, "The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much," is a statement of prayer as an energetic force. Two
words are used. One signifies power in exercise, operative power, while the
other is power as an endowment. Prayer is power and strength, a power and
strength which influences God, and is most salutary, widespread and
marvellous in its gracious benefits to man. Prayer influences God. The
ability of God to do for man is the measure of the possibility of prayer.

          "Thou art coming to a king,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such
None can ever ask too much."

                             X. Answered Prayer

     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."

                       XI. Answered Prayer (Continued)

     Constrained at the darkest hour to confess humbly that without
     God's help I was helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest solitude
     that I would confess His aid before men. A silence as a death was
     around me; it was midnight, I was weakened by illness, prostrated
     with fatigue and worn with anxiety for my white and black
     companions, whose fate was a mystery. In this physical and mental
     distress I besought God to give me back my people. Nine hours
     later we were exulting with rapturous joy. In full view of all was
     the crimson flag with the crescent and beneath its waving folds
     was the long-lost rear column. -- HENRY M. STANLEY


GOD has committed Himself to us by His Word in our praying. The Word of God
is the basis and the inspiration and the heart of prayer. Jesus Christ
stands as the illustration of God's Word, its illimitable good in promise as
well as in realization. God takes nothing by halves. He gives nothing by
halves. We can have the whole of Him when He has the whole of us. His words
of promise are so far-reaching, and so all-comprehending, that they seem to
have deadened our comprehension and have paralyzed our praying. This appears
when we consider those large words, when He almost exhausts human language
in promises, as in "whatever," "anything," and in the all-inclusive
"whatsoever," and "all things." These oft-repeated promises, so very great,
seem to daze us, and instead of allowing them to move us to asking, testing,
and receiving, we turn away full of wonder, but empty handed and with empty
hearts.
     We quote another passage from our Lord's teaching about prayer. By the
most solemn verification, He declares as follows:

     "And in that day ye shall ask me nothing; Verily, Verily, I say unto
you: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
     "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be full."

     Twice in this passage He declares the answer, and pledging His Father,
"He will give it to you," and declaring with impressive and most suggestive
iteration, "Ask, and ye shall receive." So strong and so often did Jesus
declare and repeat the answer as an inducement to pray, and as an inevitable
result of prayer, the Apostles held it as so fully and invincibly
established, that prayer would be answered, they held it to be their main
duty to urge and command men to pray. So firmly were they established as to
the truth of the law of prayer as laid down by our Lord, that they were led
to affirm that the answer to prayer was involved in and necessarily bound up
with all right praying. God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Son, are both
strongly committed by all the truth of their word and by the fidelity of
their character, to answer prayer.
     Not only do these and all the promises pledge Almighty God to answer
prayer, but they assure us that the answer will be specific, and that the
very thing for which we pray will be given.
     Our Lord's invariable teaching was that we receive that for which we
ask, and obtain that for which we seek, and have that door opened at which
we knock. This is according to our Heavenly Father's direction to us, and
His giving to us for our asking. He will not disappoint us by not answering,
neither will He deny us by giving us some other thing for which we have not
asked, or by letting us find some other thing for which we have not sought,
or by opening to us the wrong door, at which we were not knocking. If we ask
bread, He will give us bread. If we ask an egg, He will give us an egg. If
we ask a fish, He will give us a fish. Not something like bread, but bread
itself will be given unto us. Not something like a fish, but a fish will be
given. Not evil will be given us in answer to prayer, but good.
     Earthly parents, though evil in nature, give for the asking, and answer
to the crying of their children. The encouragement to prayer is transferred
from our earthly father to our Heavenly Father, from the evil to the good,
to the supremely good; from the weak to the omnipotent, our Heavenly Father,
centering in Himself all the highest conceptions of Fatherhood, abler,
readier, and much more than the best, and much more than the ablest earthly
father. "How much more," who can tell? Much more than our earthly father,
will He supply all our needs, give us all good things, and enable us to meet
every difficult duty and fulfill every law, though hard to flesh and blood,
but made easy under the full supply of our Father's beneficent and
exhaustless help.
     Here we have in symbol and as initial, more than an intimation of the
necessity, not only of perseverance in prayer, but of the progressive stages
of intentness and effort in the outlay of increasing spiritual force.
Asking, seeking, and knocking. Here is an ascending scale from the mere
words of asking, to a settled attitude of seeking, resulting in a
determined, clamorous and vigorous direct effort of praying.
     Just as God has commanded us to pray always, to pray everywhere, and to
pray in everything, so He will answer always, everywhere and in everything.
     God has plainly and with directness committed Himself to answer prayer.
If we fulfill the conditions of prayer, the answer is bound to come. The
laws of nature are not so invariable and so inexorable as the promised
answer to pray. The ordinances of nature might fail, but the ordinances of
grace can never fail. There are no limitations, no adverse conditions, no
weakness, no inability, which can or will hinder the answer to prayer. God's
doing for us when we pray has no limitations, is not hedged about, by
provisos in Himself, or in the peculiar circumstances of any particular
case. If we really pray, God masters and defies all things and is above all
conditions.
     God explicitly says, "Call unto me, and I will answer." There are no
limitations, no hedges, no hindrances in the way of God fulfilling the
promise. His word is at stake. His word is involved. God solemnly engages to
answer prayer. Man is to look for the answer, be inspired by the expectation
of the answer, and may with humble boldness demand the answer. God, who
cannot lie, is bound to answer. He has voluntarily placed Himself under
obligation to answer the prayer of him who truly prays.

          "To God your every want
               In instant prayer display;
          Pray always; pray, and never faint;
               Pray, without ceasing, pray.

"In fellowship, alone,
               To God with faith draw near;
          Approach His courts, beseech His throne,
               With all the power of prayer."


     The prophets and the men of God of Old Testament times were unshaken in
their faith in the absolute certainty of God fulfilling His promises to
them. They rested in security on the word of God, and had no doubt whatever
either as to the fidelity of God in answering prayer or of His willingness
or ability. So that their history is marked by repeated asking and receiving
at the hands of God,
     The same is true of the early Church. They received without question
the doctrine their Lord and Master had so often affirmed that the answer to
prayer was sure. The certainty of the answer to prayer was as fixed as God's
Word was true. The Holy Ghost dispensation was ushered in by the disciples
carrying this faith into practice. When Jesus told them to "Tarry at
Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high," they received it
as a sure promise that if they obeyed the command, they would certainly
receive the Divine power. So in prayer for ten days they tarried in the
upper room, and the promise was fulfilled. The answer came just as Jesus
said.
     So when Peter and John were arrested for healing the man who sat at the
beautiful gate of the temple, after being threatened by the rulers in
Jerusalem, they were released. "And being let go, they went to their own
company," they went to those with whom they were in affinity, those of like
minds, and not to men of the world. Still believing in prayer and its
efficacy, they gave themselves to prayer, the prayer itself being recorded
in Acts, chapter four. They recited some things to the Lord, and "when they
had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and
they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with
boldness."
     Here they were refilled for this special occasion with the Holy Ghost.
The answer to prayer responded to their faith and prayer. The fullness of
the Spirit always brings boldness. The cure for fear in the face of
threatenings of the enemies of the Lord is being filled with the Spirit.
This gives power to speak the word of the Lord with boldness. This gives
courage and drives away fear.

                      XII. Answered Prayer (Continued)

     A young man had been called to the foreign field. He had not been
     in the habit of preaching, but he knew one thing, how to prevail
     with God; and going one day to a friend he said: "I don't see how
     God can use me on the field. I have no special talent." His friend
     said: "My brother, God wants men on the field who can pray. There
     are too many preachers now and too few pray-ers." He went. In his
     own room in the early dawn a voice was heard weeping and pleading
     for souls. All through the day, the shut door and the hush that
     prevailed made you feel like walking softly, for a soul was
     wrestling with God. Yet to this home, hungry souls would flock,
     drawn by some irresistible power. Ah, the mystery was unlocked. In
     the secret chamber lost souls were pleaded for and claimed. The
     Holy Ghost knew just where they were and sent them along. -- J.
     HUDSON TAYLOR


WE put it to the front. We unfold it on a banner never to be lowered or
folded, that God does hear and answer prayer. God has always heard and
answered prayer. God will forever hear and answer prayer. He is the same
yesterday, to-day and forever, ever blessed, ever to be adored. Amen. He
changes not. As He has always answered prayer, so will He ever continue to
do so.
     To answer prayer is God's universal rule. It is His unchangeable and
irrepealable law to answer prayer. It is His invariable, specific and
inviolate promise to answer prayer. The few denials to prayer in the
Scriptures are the exceptions to the general rule, suggestive and startling
by their fewness, exception and emphasis.
     The possibilities of prayer, then, lie in the great truth, illimitable
in its broadness, fathomless in its depths, exhaustless in its fullness,
that God answers every prayer from every true soul who truly prays.
     God's Word does not say, "Call unto me, and you will thereby be trained
into the happy art of knowing how to be denied. Ask, and you will learn
sweet patience by getting nothing." Far from it. But it is definite, clear
and positive: "Ask, and it shall be given unto you."
     We have this case among many in the Old Testament:

     "Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless
me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thy hand might be with me, and
that thou wouldst keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me."

     And God readily granted him the things which he had requested.
     Hannah, distressed in soul because she was childless, and desiring a
man child, repaired to the house of prayer, and prayed, and this is the
record she makes of the direct answer she received: "For this child I
prayed, and the Lord hath given me the petition which I asked of him."
     God's promises and purposes go direct to the fact of giving for the
asking. The answer to our prayers is the motive constantly presented in the
Scriptures to encourage us to pray and to quicken us in this spiritual
exercise. Take such strong, clear passages as these:

     "Call unto me, and I will answer thee."
     "He shall call unto me, and I will answer."
     "Ask; and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it
shall be opened unto you."

     This is Jesus Christ's law of prayer. He does not say, "Ask, and
something shall be given you." Nor does He say, "Ask, and you will be
trained into piety." But it is that when you ask, the very thing asked for
will be given. Jesus does not say, "Knock, and some door will be opened."
But the very door at which you are knocking will be opened. To make this
doubly sure, Jesus Christ duplicates and reiterates the promise of the
answer: "For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth;
and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened."
     Answered prayer is the spring of love, and is the direct encouragement
to pray. "I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my
supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I
call upon him as long as I live."
     The certainty of the Father's giving is assured by the Father's
relation, and by the ability and goodness of the Father. Earthly parents,
frail, infirm, and limited in goodness and ability, give when the child asks
and seeks. The parental heart responds most readily to the cry for bread.
The hunger of the child touches and wins the father's heart. So God, our
Heavenly Father, is as easily and strongly moved by our prayers as the
earthly parent. "If ye being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your father in heaven give good gifts unto
them that ask him?" "Much more," just as much more does God's goodness,
tenderness and ability exceed that of man's.
     Just as the asking is specific, so also is the answer specific. The
child does not ask for one thing and get another. He does not cry for bread,
and get a stone. He does not ask for an egg, and receive a scorpion. He does
not ask for a fish, and get a serpent. Christ demands specific asking. He
responds to specific praying by specific giving.
     To give the very thing prayed for, and not something else, is
fundamental to Christ's law of praying. No prayer for the cure of blind eyes
did He ever answer by curing deaf ears. The very thing prayed for is the
very thing which He gives. The exceptions to this are confirmatory of this
great law of prayer. He who asks for bread gets bread, and not a stone. If
he asks for a fish, he receives a fish, and not a serpent. No cry is so
pleading and so powerful as the child's cry for bread. The cravings of
hunger, the appetite felt, and the need realized, all create and propel the
crying of the child. Our prayers must be as earnest, as needy, and as hungry
as the hungry child's cry for bread. Simple, artless and direct and specific
must be our praying, according to Christ's law of prayer and His teaching of
God's Fatherhood.
     The illustration and enforcement of the law of prayer are found in the
specific answers given to prayer. Gethsemane is the only seeming exception.
The prayer of Jesus Christ in that awful hour of darkness and hell was
conditioned on these words, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me."
But beyond these utterances of our Lord was the soul and life prayer of the
willing, suffering Divine victim, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou
wilt." The prayer was answered, the angel came, strength was imparted, and
the meek sufferer in silence drank the bitter cup.
     Two cases of unanswered prayer are recorded in the Scriptures in
addition to the Gethsemane prayer of our Lord. The first was that of David
for the life of his baby child, but for good reasons to Almighty God the
request was not granted. The second was that of Paul for the removal of the
thorn in the flesh, which was denied. But we are constrained to believe
these must have been notable as exceptions to God's rule, as illustrated in
the history of prophet, priest, apostle and saint, as recorded in the Divine
Word. There must have been unrevealed reasons which moved God to veer from
His settled and fixed rule to answer prayer by giving the specific thing
prayed for.
     Our Lord did not hold the Syrophenician woman in the school of
unanswered prayer in order to test and mature her faith, neither did He
answer her prayer by healing or saving her husband. She asks for the healing
of her daughter, and Christ healed the daughter. She received the very thing
for which she asked the Lord Jesus Christ. It was in the school of answered
prayer our Lord disciplined and perfected her faith, and it was by giving
her a specific answer to her prayer. Her prayer centered on her daughter.
She prayed for the one thing, the healing of her child. And the answer of
our Lord centered likewise on the daughter.
     We tread altogether too gingerly upon the great and precious promises
of God, and too often we ignore them wholly. The promise is the ground on
which faith stands in asking of God. This is the one basis of prayer. We
limit God's ability. We measure God's ability and willingness to answer by
prayer by the standard of men. We limit the Holy One of Israel. How full of
benefaction and remedy to suffering mankind are the promises as given us by
James in his Epistle, fifth chapter! How personal and mediate do they make
God in prayer! They are a direct challenge to our faith. They are
encouraging to large expectations in all the requests we make of God. Prayer
affects God in a direct manner, and has its aim and end in affecting Him.
Prayer takes hold of God, and induces Him to do large things for us, whether
personal or relative, temporal or spiritual, earthly or heavenly.
     The great gap between Bible promises to prayer and the income from
praying is almost unspeakably great, so much so that it is a prolific source
of infidelity. It breeds unbelief in prayer as a great moral force, and
begets doubt really as to the efficacy of prayer. Christianity needs to-day,
above all things else, men and women who can in prayer put God to the test
and who can prove His promises. When this happy day for the world begins, it
will be earth's brightest day, and will be heaven's dawning day on earth.
These are the sort of men and women needed in this modern day in the Church.
It is not educated men who are needed for the times. It is not more money
that is required. It is not more machinery, more organization, more
ecclesiastical laws, but it is men and women who know how to pray, who can
in prayer lay hold upon God and bring Him down to earth, and move Him to
take hold of earth's affairs mightily and put life and power into the Church
and into all of its machinery.
     The Church and the world greatly need saints who can bridge this wide
gap between the praying done and the small number of answers received.
Saints are needed whose faith is bold enough and sufficiently far-reaching
to put God to the test. The cry comes even now out of heaven to the people
of the present-day Church, as it sounded forth in the days of Malachi:
"Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts." God is waiting to be put
to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put to the test on
His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to prove the
reliability of His promises. Nothing worthy of God nor of great value to men
will be accomplished till this is done.
     Our Gospel belongs to the miraculous. It was projected on the
miraculous plane. It cannot be maintained but by the supernatural. Take the
supernatural out of our holy religion, and its life and power are gone, and
it degenerates into a mere mode of morals. The miraculous is Divine power.
Prayer has in it this same power. Prayer brings this Divine power into the
ranks of men and puts it to work. Prayer brings into the affairs of earth a
supernatural element. Our Gospel when truly presented is the power of God.
Never was the Church more in need of those who can and will test Almighty
God. Never did the Church need more than now those who can raise up
everywhere memorials of God's supernatural power, memorials of answers to
prayer, memorials of promises fulfilled. These would do more to silence the
enemy of souls, the foe of God and the adversary of the Church than any
modern scheme or present-day plan for the success of the Gospel. Such
memorials reared by praying people would dumbfound God's foes, strengthen
weak saints, and would fill strong saints with triumphant rapture.
     The most prolific source of infidelity, and that which traduces and
hinders praying, and that which obscures the being and glory of God most
effectually, is unanswered prayer. Better not to pray at all than to go
through a dead form, which secures no answer, brings no glory to God, and
supplies no good to man. Nothing so indurates the heart and nothing so
blinds us to the unseen and the eternal, as this kind of prayerless praying.

                            XIII. Prayer Miracles

     George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway, living at Derby,
     was standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being
     stationary, when his foot slipped; he fell on the space between
     the lines. He heard the express coming on, and had only time
     enough to lie full length on the "six-foot" when it rushed by, and
     he escaped unhurt. He returned to his home in the middle of the
     night and as he was going up-stairs he heard one of his children,
     a girl about eight years old, crying and sobbing. "Oh, father,"
     she said, "I thought somebody came and told me that you were going
     to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that God would not
     let you die." Was it only a dream, a coincidence? George Benfield
     and others believed that he owed his life to that prayer. -- DEAN
     HOLE


THE earthly career of our Lord Jesus Christ was no mere episode, a sort of
interlude, in His eternal life. What He was and what He did on earth was
neither abnormal nor divergent, but characteristic. What He was and what He
did on earth is but the figure and the illustration of what He is and what
He is doing in heaven. He is "the same yesterday and to-day, and forever."
This statement is the Divine summary of the eternal unity and changelessness
of His character. His earthly life was made up largely of hearing and
answering prayer. His heavenly life is devoted to the same Divine business.
Really the Old Testament is the record of God hearing and answering prayer.
The whole Bible deals largely with this all important subject.
     Christ's miracles are object lessons. They are living pictures. They
talk to us. They have hands which take hold of us. Many valuable lessons do
these miracles teach us. In their diversity, they refresh us. They show us
the matchless power of Jesus Christ, and at the same time discover to us His
marvellous compassion for suffering humanity. These miracles disclose to us
His ability to endlessly diversify His operations. God's method in working
with man is not the same in all cases. He does not administer His grace in
rigid ruts. There is endless variety in His movements. There is marvellous
diversity in His operations. He does not fashion His creations in the same
mould. Just so our Lord is not circumscribed in His working nor trammelled
by models. He works independently. He is His own architect. He furnishes His
own patterns which have unlimited variety.
     When we consider our Lord's miracles, we discover that quite a number
were performed unconditionally. At least there were no conditions
accompanying them so far as the Divine record shows. At His own instance,
without being solicited to do so, in order to glorify God and to manifest
His own glory and power, this class of miracles was wrought. Many of His
mighty works were performed at the moving of His compassion and at the call
of suffering and need, as well as at the call of His power. But a number of
them were performed by Him in answer to prayer. Some were wrought in answer
to the personal prayers of those who were afflicted. Others were performed
in answer to the prayers of the friends of those who were afflicted. Those
miracles wrought in answer to prayer are very instructive in the uses of
prayer.
     In these conditional miracles, faith holds the primacy and prayer is
faith's vicegerent. We have an illustration of the importance of faith as
the condition on which the exercise of Christ's power was based, or the
channel through which it flowed, in the incident of a visit He made to
Nazareth with its results, or rather its lack of results. Here is the record
of the case:

     "And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon
a few sick folk, and healed them.
     "And he marvelled because of their unbelief."

     Those people at Nazareth may have prayed our Lord to raise their dead,
or open the eyes of the blind, or heal the lepers, but it was all in vain.
The absence of faith, however much of performance may be seen, restrains the
exercise of God's power, paralyzes the arm of Christ, and turns to death all
signs of life. Unbelief is the one thing which seriously hinders Almighty
God in doing mighty works. Matthew's record of this visit to Nazareth says,
"And he did not any mighty works there because of their unbelief." Lack of
faith ties the hands of Almighty God in His working among the children of
men. Prayer to Christ must always be based, backed and impregnated with
faith.
     The miracle of miracles in the earthly career of our Lord, the raising
of Lazarus from the dead, was remarkable for its prayer accompaniment. It
was really a prayer issue, something after the issue between the prophets of
Baal and Elijah. It was not a prayer for help. It was one of thanksgiving
and assured confidence. Let us read it:

     "And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee that thou
hast heard me.
     "And I know 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."

     It was a prayer mainly for the benefit of those who were present, that
they might know that God was with Him because He had answered His prayers,
and that faith in God might be radiated in their hearts.
     Answered prayers are sometimes the most convincing and faith-creating
forces. Unanswered prayers chill the atmosphere and freeze the soil of
faith. If Christians knew how to pray so as to have answers to their
prayers, evident, immediate, and demonstrative answers from God, faith would
be more widely diffused, would become more general, would be more profound,
and would be a much more mighty force in the world.
     What a valuable lesson of faith and intercessory prayer does the
miracle of the healing of the centurion's servant bring to us! The
simplicity and strength of the faith of this Roman officer are remarkable,
for He believed that it was not needful for our Lord to go directly to his
house in order to have his request granted, "But speak the word only, and my
servant shall be healed." And our Lord puts His mark upon this man's faith
by saying, "Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not
in Israel." This man's prayer was the expression of his strong faith, and
such faith brought the answer promptly.
     The same invaluable lesson we get from the prayer miracle of the case
of the Syrophenician woman who went to our Lord in behalf of her stricken
daughter, making her daughter's case her own, by pleading, "Lord, help me."
Here was importunity, holding on, pressing her case, refusing to let go or
to be denied. A strong case it was of intercessory prayer and its benefits.
Our Lord seemingly held her off for a while but at last yielded, and put His
seal upon her strong faith: "O woman, great is thy faith! Be it unto thee
even as thou wilt." What a lesson on praying for others and its large
benefits!
     Individual cases could be named, where the afflicted persons interceded
for themselves, illustrations of wonderful things wrought by our Lord in
answer to the cries of those who were afflicted. As we read the Evangelists'
record, the pages fairly glisten with records of our Lord's miracles wrought
in answer to prayer, showing the wonderful things accomplished by the use of
this divinely appointed means of grace.
     If we turn back to Old Testament times, we have no lack of instances of
prayer miracles. The saints of those days were well acquainted with the
power of prayer to move God to do great things. Natural laws did not stand
in the way of Almighty God when He was appealed to by His praying ones. What
a marvellous record is that of Moses as those successive plagues were
visited upon Egypt in the effort to make Pharaoh let the children of Israel
go that they might serve God! As one after another of these plagues came,
Pharaoh would beseech Moses, "Entreat the Lord your God that he may take
away this death." And as the plagues themselves were miracles, prayer
removed them as quickly as they were sent by Almighty God. The same hand
which sent these destructive agencies upon Egypt was moved by the prayers of
His servant Moses to remove these same plagues. And the removal of the
plagues in answer to prayer was as remarkable a display of Divine power as
was the sending of the plagues in the first instance. The removal in answer
to prayer would do as much to show God's being and His power as would the
plagues themselves. They were miracles of prayer.
     All down the line in Old Testament days we see these prayer miracles.
God's praying servants had not the least doubt that prayer would work
marvellous results and bring the supernatural into the affairs of earth.
Miracles and prayer went hand in hand. They were companions. The one was the
cause, the other was the effect. The one brought the other into existence.
The miracle was the proof that God heard and answered prayer. The miracle
was the Divine demonstration that God, who was in heaven, interfered in
earth's affairs, intervened to help men, and worked supernaturally if need
be to accomplish His purposes in answer to prayer.
     Passing to the days of the early Church, we find the same Divine record
of prayer miracles. The sad news came to Peter that Dorcas was dead and he
was wanted at Joppa. Promptly he made his way to that place. Peter put
everybody out of the room, and then he kneeled down and prayed, and with
faith said, "Tabitha, arise," and she opened her eyes and sat up. Knee work
on the part of Peter did the work. Prayer brought things to pass and saved
Dorcas for further work on earth.
     Paul was on that noted journey to Rome under guard, and had been
shipwrecked on an island. The chief man of the island was Publius, and his
old father was critically ill of a bloody flux. Paul laid his hands on the
old man, and prayed for him, and God came to the rescue and healed the sick
man. Prayer brought the thing desired to pass. God interfered with the laws
of nature, either suspending or setting them aside for a season, and
answered the prayer of this praying servant of His. And the answer to prayer
among those heathen people convinced them that a supernatural power was at
work among them. In fact so true was this that they seemed to think a
supernatural being had come among them.
     Peter was put in prison by Herod after he had killed James with the
sword. The young Church was greatly concerned, but they neither lost heart
nor gave themselves over to needless fretting and worrying. They had learned
before this from whence their help came. They had been schooled in the
lesson of prayer. God had intervened before in the behalf of His servants
and interfered when His cause was at stake. "Prayer was made without ceasing
of the Church unto God for him." An angel on swift wings comes to the
rescue, and in a marvellous and supernatural way releases Peter and leaves
the prison doors locked. Locks and prison doors and an unfriendly king
cannot stand in the way of Almighty God when His people cry in prayer unto
Him. Miracles if need be will be wrought in their behalf to fulfill His
promises and to carry forward His plans. After this order does the Word of
God illustrate and enlarge and confirm the possibilities of prayer by what
may be termed "Prayer miracles."
     How quickly to our straits follow our enlargements! God wrought a
wonderful work through Samson in enabling him with a crude instrument, the
jaw bone of an ass, to slay a thousand men, giving him a great deliverance.
Shortly afterward he was abnormally thirsty, and he was unable to obtain any
water. It seemed as if he would perish with thirst. God had saved him from
the hands of the Philistines. Could he not as well save him from thirst? So
Samson cried unto the Lord, and "God clave a hollow place that was in the
jaw, and there came water thereout, and when he had drunk, his spirit came
again and he revived." God could bring water out of the jaw bone just as
well as He could give victory by it to Samson. God could change that which
had been death-dealing to His enemies and make it life-giving to His
servant. God can and will work a miracle in answer to prayer in order to
deliver His friends, sooner than He will work one to destroy His enemies. He
does both, however, in answer to prayer.
     All natural forces are under God's control. He did not create the world
and put it under law, and then retire from it, to work out its own destiny,
irrespective of the welfare of His intelligent creatures. Natural laws are
simply God's laws, by which He governs and regulates all things in nature.
Nature is nothing but God's servant. God is above nature, God is not the
slave of nature. This being true, God can and will suspend the working of
nature's laws, can hold them in abeyance by His almighty hand, can for the
time being set them aside, to fulfill His higher purposes in redemption. It
is no violation of nature's laws when, in answer to prayer, He who is above
nature makes nature His servant, and causes nature to tarry out His plans
and purposes.
     This is the explanation of that wonderful prayer miracle of Old
Testament times, when Joshua, in the strength and power of the Lord God,
commanded the sun and moon to stand still in order to give time to complete
the victory over the enemies of Israel. Why should it be thought a thing
incredible that the God of nature and of grace should interfere with His own
natural laws for a short season in answer to prayer, and for the good of His
cause? Is God tied hand and foot? Has He so circumscribed Himself that He
cannot operate the law of prayer? Is the law of nature superior to the law
of prayer? Not by any means. He is the God of prayer as well as the God of
nature. Both prayer and nature have God as their Maker, their Ruler and
their Executor. And prayer is God's servant, just as nature is His servant.
     The prayer force in God's government is as strong as any other force,
and all natural and other forces must give way before the force of prayer.
Sun, moon and stars are under God's control in answer to prayer. Rain,
sunshine and drouth obey His will. "Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy
wind fulfilling his word." Disease and health are governed by Him. All, all
things in heaven and earth, are absolutely under the control of Him who made
heaven and earth, and who governs all things according to His own will.
     Prayer still works miracles among men and brings to pass great things.
It is as true now as when James wrote his Epistle, "The fervent, effectual
prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And when the records of eternity
are read out to an assembled world, then will it appear how much prayer has
wrought in this world. Little is now seen of the fruits of prayer compared
to all that it has accomplished and is accomplishing. At the judgment day,
then will God disclose the things which were brought to pass in this world
through the prayers of the saints. Many occurrences which are now taken as a
matter of course will then be seen to have happened because of the Lord's
praying ones.
     The work of George Muller in Bristol, England, was a miracle of the
nineteenth century. It will take the opening of the books at the great
judgment day to disclose all he wrought through prayer. His orphanage, in
which hundreds of fatherless and motherless children were cared for, to
sustain which this godly man never asked any one for money with which to pay
its running expenses, is a marvel of modern times. His practice was always
to ask God for just what was needed, and the answers which came to him read
like a record of apostolic times. He prayed for everything and trusted
implicitly to God to supply all his needs. And it is a matter of record that
never did he and the orphans ever lack for any good thing.
     Of a holy man who has done so much for Christ and suffering humanity,
it was said at the grave about him:

     "He prayed up the walls of an hospital, and the hearts of the nurses.
He prayed mission stations into being, and missionaries into faith. He
prayed open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands."

     Luther is quoted as once saying: "The Christian's trade is praying."
Certainly, for a great reason, the preacher's trade should be praying. We
fear greatly that many preachers know nothing of this trade of praying, and
hence they never succeed at this trade. A severe apprenticeship in the trade
of praying must be served in order to become a journeyman in it. Not only is
it true that there are few journeymen at work at this praying trade, but
numbers have never even been apprentices at praying. No wonder so little is
accomplished by them. God and the supernatural are left out of their
programmes.
     Many do not understand this trade of praying because they have never
learned it, and hence do not work at it. Many miracles ought to be worked by
our praying. Why not? Is the arm of the Lord shortened that He cannot save?
Is His ear heavy that He cannot hear? Has prayer lost its power because
iniquity abounds and the love of many has grown cold? Has God changed from
what He once was? To all these queries we enter an emphatic negative. God
can as easily to-day work miracles by praying as He did in the days of old.
"I am the Lord; I change not." "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
     He who works miracles by praying will first of all work the chief
miracle on himself. Oh, that we might fully understand well the Christian's
trade of praying, and follow the trade day by day and thus make to ourselves
great spiritual wealth!

                     XIV. Wonders of God Through Prayer

     Wisdom and Revelation distinguished by Experience and Scripture.
     By Experience. Take a weak understanding (but one exceeding holy),
     having little knowledge of God by way of discursive wisdom and
     laying this thing to that, and so knowing God: such poor soul is
     oftentimes hardly able to speak wisely and he will know more of
     God in one prayer than a great scholar (though also very holy)
     hath known of Him in all his life; God often deals thus with the
     weak who are very holy; for if such were shut up to knowing God by
     way of a sanctified reason, large understandings would have
     infinite advantage of them and they would grow little in grace and
     holiness; therefore God makes a supply by breaking in upon their
     spirits by such irradiations as these. -- THOS. GOODWIN


IN the fearful contest in this world between God and the devil, between good
and evil, and between heaven and hell, prayer is the mighty force for
overcoming Satan, giving dominion over sin, and defeating hell. Only praying
leaders are to be counted on in this dreadful conflict. Praying men alone
are to be put to the front. These are the only sort who are able to
successfully contend with all the evil forces.
     The "prayers of all saints" are a perpetual force against all the
powers of darkness. These prayers are a mighty energy in overcoming the
world, the flesh and the devil and in shaping the destiny of God's
movements, to overcome evil and get the victory over the devil and all his
works. The character and energy of God's movements lie in prayer. Victory is
to come at the end of praying.
     The wonders of God's power are to be kept alive, made real and present,
and repeated only by prayer. God is not now so evident in the world, so
almighty in manifestation as of old, not because miracles have passed away,
nor because God has ceased to work, but because prayer has been shorn of its
simplicity, its majesty, and its power. God still lives, and miracles still
live while God lives and acts, for miracles are God's ways of acting. Prayer
is dwarfed, withered and petrified when faith in God is staggered by doubts
of His ability, or through the shrinking caused by fear. When faith has a
telescopic, far-off vision of God, prayer works no miracles, and brings no
marvels of deliverance. But when God is seen by faith's closest, fullest
eye, prayer makes a history of wonders.
     Think about God. Make much of Him, till He broadens and fills the
horizon of faith. Then prayer will come into its marvellous inheritance of
wonders. The marvels of prayer are seen when we remember that God's purposes
are changed by prayer, God's vengeance is stayed by prayer, and God's
penalty is remitted by prayer. The whole range of God's dealing with man is
affected by prayer. Here is a force which must be increasingly used, that of
prayer, a force to which all the events of life ought to be subjected.
     To "pray without ceasing," to pray in everything, and to pray
everywhere -- these commands of continuity are expressive of the sleepless
energy of prayer, of the exhaustless possibilities of prayer, and of its
exacting necessity. Prayer can do all things. Prayer must do all things.

          "Prayer is the simplest form of speech
               That infant lips can try;
          Prayer the sublimest strains that reach
               The majesty on high."


     Prayer is asking God for something, and for something which He has
promised. Prayer is using the divinely appointed means for obtaining what we
need and for accomplishing what God proposes to do on earth.

          "Prayer is appointed to convey
               The blessings God designs to give;
          Long as they live should Christians pray,
               They learn to pray when first they live."


     And prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can
give, and which prayer can alone convey to us.
     In their broadest fullness, the possibilities of prayer are to be found
in the very nature of prayer. This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a
ceremony through which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God
for something needed and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us
what He has promised us He will do if we ask Him. The answer is a part of
prayer, and is God's part of it. God's doing the thing asked for is as much
a part of the prayer as the asking of the thing is prayer. Asking is man's
part. Giving is God's part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to
God.
     Man makes the plea and God makes the answer. The plea and the answer
compose the prayer. God is more ready, more willing and more anxious to give
the answer than man is to give the asking. The possibilities of prayer lie
in the ability of man to ask large things and in the ability of God to give
large things.
     God's only condition and limitation of prayer is found in the character
of the one who prays. The measure of our faith and praying is the measure of
His giving. Like as our Lord said to the blind man, "According to your faith
be it unto you," so it is the same in praying, "According to the measure of
your asking, be it unto you." God measures the answer according to the
prayer. He is limited by the law of prayer in the measure of the answers He
gives to prayer. As is the measure of prayer, so will be the answer.
     If the person praying has the characteristics which warrant praying,
then the possibilities are illimitable. They are declared to be "all things
whatsoever." Here is no limitation in character or kind, in circumference or
condition. The man who prays can pray for anything and for everything, and
God will give everything and anything. If we limit God in the asking, He
will be limited in the giving.
     Looking ahead, God declares in His Word that the wonder of wonders will
be so great in the last days that everything animate and inanimate will be
excited by His power:

     "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall
not be remembered nor come to mind.
     "But be ye glad and rejoice, forever, in that which I create; for
behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy."

     But these days of God's mighty working, the days of His magnificent and
wonder-creating power, will be days of magnificent praying.

     "And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and
while they are yet speaking, I will hear."

     It has ever been so. God's marvellous, miracle-working times have been
times of marvellous, miracle-working praying. The greatest thing in God's
worship by His own estimate is praying. Its chief service and its
distinguishing feature is prayer:

     "Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my
house of prayer; their burnt offering and their sacrifices shall be accepted
upon my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all
people."

     This was true under all the gorgeous rites and parade of ceremonies
under the Jewish worship. Sacrifice, offering and the atoning blood were all
to be impregnated with prayer. The smoke of burnt offering and perfumed
incense which filled God's house was to be but the flame of prayer, and all
of God's people were to be anointed priests to minister at His altar of
prayer. So all things were to be done with mighty prayer, because mighty
prayer was the fruitage and inspiration of mighty faith. But much more is it
now true every way under the more simple service of the Gospel.
     The course of nature, the movements of the planets, and the clouds,
have yielded to the influence of prayer, and God has changed and checked the
order of the sun and the seasons under the mighty energies of prayer. It is
only necessary to note the remarkable incident when Joshua, through this
divine means of prayer, caused the sun and the moon to stand still in order
that a more complete victory could be given to the armies of Israel in the
contest with the armies of the Amorites.
     If we believe God's word, we are bound to believe that prayer affects
God, and affects Him mightily; that prayer avails, and that prayer avails
mightily. There are wonders in prayer because there are wonders in God.
Prayer has no talismanic influence. It is no mere fetish. It has no
so-called powers of magic. It is simply making known our requests to God for
things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ. It is just yielding our
requests to a Father, who knows all things, who has control of all things,
and who is able to do all things. Prayer is infinite ignorance trusting to
the wisdom of God. Prayer is the voice of need crying out to Him who is
inexhaustible in resources. Prayer is helplessness reposing with childlike
confidence on the word of its Father in heaven. Prayer is but the verbal
expression of the heart of perfect confidence in the infinite wisdom, the
power and the riches of Almighty God, who has placed at our command in
prayer everything we need.
     How all the gracious results of such gracious times are to come to the
world through prayer, we are taught in God's Word. God's heart seems to
overflow with delight at the prospect of thus blessing His people. By the
mouth of the Prophet Joel, God thus speaks:

     "Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice; for the Lord will do great
things.
     "Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field; for the pastures of the
wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and the
vine do yield their strength.
     "Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God;
for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come
down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first
month.
     "And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow
with wine and oil.
     "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the
canker worm and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army which I
sent among you.
     "And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of
the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you; and my people shall
never be ashamed.
     "And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the
Lord your God, and none else; and my people shall never be ashamed."

     What wonderful material things are these which God proposes to bestow
upon His people! They are marvellous temporal blessings He promises to
bestow on them. They almost astonish the mind when they are studied. But God
does not restrict His large blessings to temporal things. Looking down the
ages, He foresees Pentecost, and makes these exceeding great and precious
promises concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, these very words
being quoted by Peter on that glad day of Pentecost:

     "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit
upon all flesh; and your sons shall prophesy, your old men shall dream
dreams, your young men shall see visions;
     "And also upon the servants and upon the handmaidens in those days will
I pour out my Spirit.
     "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and
fire, and pillars of smoke;
     "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before
the great and the terrible day of the Lord shall come.
     "And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the
Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be
deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall
call."

     But these marvellous blessings will not be bestowed upon the people by
sovereign power, nor be given unconditionally. God's people must do
something precedent to such glorious results. Fasting and prayer must play
an important part as conditions of receiving such large blessings. By the
mouth of the same prophet, God thus speaks:

     "Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye to me with all your heart,
and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning;
     "And rend your heart, and not your garments; and turn unto the Lord
your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great
kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.
     "Who knoweth if he will turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind
him, even a meat offering, and a drink offering, unto the Lord your God?
     "Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly.
     "Gather the people; sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders;
gather the children; and those that suck the breasts; let the bridegroom go
forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.
     "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and
the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine
heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them; Wherefore
should they say among the people, Where is their God?
     "Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.
     "Yea, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, Behold I will send
you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith; and I will
no more make you a reproach among the heathen."

     Prayer reaches even as far as does the presence of God go. It reaches
everywhere because God is everywhere. Let us read from Psalm 139:1:

     "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell,
behold thou art there.
     "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of
the sea;
     "Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

     This may be said as truly of prayer as it is said of the God of prayer.
The mysteries of death have been fathomed by prayer, and its victims have
been brought back to life by the power of prayer, because God holds dominion
over death, and prayer reaches where God reigns. Elisha and Elijah both
invaded the realms of death by their prayers, and asserted and established
the power of God as the power of prayer. Peter by prayer brings back to life
the saintly Dorcas to the early Church. Paul doubtless exercised the power
of prayer as he fell upon and embraced Eutychus who fell out of the window
when Paul preached at night.
     Our Lord several times explicitly declared the far-reaching
possibilities and the illimitable nature of prayer as covering "all things
whatsoever." The conditions of prayer are exalted into a personal union with
Himself. That successful praying glorified God was the condition upon which
labourers of first quality and sufficient in numbers were to be secured in
order to press forward God's work in the world. The giving of all good
things is conditioned upon asking for them. The giving of the Holy Spirit to
God's children is based upon the asking of the children of God. God's will
on earth can only be secured by prayer. Daily bread is obtained and
sanctified by prayer. Reverence, forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from
the evil one, and salvation from temptation, are in the hands of prayer.
     The first jewelled foundation Christ lays as the basic principle of His
religion in the Sermon on the Mount reads on this wise: "Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." As prayer follows from
the inner sense of need, and prayer is the utterance of a deep
poverty-stricken spirit, so it is evident he who is "poor in spirit" is
where he can pray and where he does pray.
     Prayer is a tremendous force in the world. Take this picture of prayer
and its wonderful possibilities. God's cause is quiet and motionless on the
earth. An angel, strong and impatient to be of service, waits round about
the throne of God in heaven, and in order to move things on earth and give
impetus to the movements of God's cause in this world, he gathers all the
prayers of all God's saints in all ages, and puts them before God just like
Aaron used to cloud, flavour and sweeten himself with the delicious incense
when he entered the holy sanctuary, made awful by the immediate presence of
God. The angel impregnates all the air with that holy offering of prayers,
and then takes its fiery body and casts it on the earth.
     Note the remarkable result. "There were voices and thunderings and
lightnings and an earthquake." What tremendous force is this which has thus
convulsed the earth? The answer is that it is the "prayers of the saints,"
turned loose by the angel round about the throne, who has charge of those
prayers. This mighty force is prayer, like the power of earth's mightiest
dynamite.
     Take another fact showing the wonders of prayer wrought by Almighty God
in answer to the praying of His true prophet. The nation of God's people was
fearfully apostate in head and heart and life. A man of God went to the
apostate king with the fearful message which meant so much to the land,
"There shall not be rain nor dew these years but according to my word."
Whence this mighty force which can stay the clouds, seal up the rain, and
hold back the dew? Who is this who speaks with such authority? Is there any
force which can do this on earth? Only one, and that force is prayer,
wielded in the hands of a praying prophet of God. It is he who has influence
with God and over God in prayer, who thus dares to assume such authority
over the forces of nature. This man Elijah is skilled in the use of that
tremendous force. "And Elijah prayed earnestly, and it rained not on the
earth for three years and six months."
     But this is not all the story. He who could by prayer lock up the
clouds and seal up the rain, could also unlock. the clouds and unseal the
rain by the same mighty power of prayer. "And he prayed again, and the
heaven gave rain, and the earth gave forth her fruit."
     Mighty is the power of prayer. Wonderful are its fruits. Remarkable
things are brought to pass by men of prayer. Many are the wonders of prayer
wrought by an Almighty hand. The evidences of prayer's accomplishments
almost stagger us. They challenge our faith. They encourage our expectations
when we pray.
     From a cursory compend like this, we get a bird's-eye view of the large
possibilities of prayer and the urgent necessity of prayer. We see how God
commits Himself into the hands of those who truly pray. Great are the
wonders of prayer because great is the God who hears and answers prayer.
Great are these wonders because great are the rich promises made by a great
God to those who pray.
     We have seen prayer's far-reaching possibilities and its absolute,
unquestioned necessity, and we have also seen that the foregoing particulars
and elaboration were requisite in order to bring the subject more clearly,
truly and strongly before our minds. The Church more than ever needs
profound convictions of the vast importance of prayer in prosecuting the
work committed to it. More praying must be done and better praying if the
Church shall be able to perform the difficult, delicate and responsible task
given to it by her Lord and Master. Defeat awaits a non-praying Church.
Success is sure to follow a Church given to much prayer. The supernatural
element in the Church, without which it must fail, comes only through
praying. More time, in this busy bustling age, must be given to prayer by a
God-called Church. More thought must be given to prayer in this thoughtless,
silly age of superficial religion. More heart and soul must be in the
praying that is done if the Church would go forth in the strength of her
Lord and perform the wonders which is her heritage by Divine promise.

          "O Spirit of the Living God,
               In all thy plenitude of grace,
          Where'er the foot of man hath trod,
               Descend on our apostate race.

"Give tongues of fire and hearts of love,
               To preach the reconciling word,
          Give power and unction from above,
               Where'er the joyful sound is heard."


     It might be in order to give an instance or two in the life of Rev.
John Wesley, showing some remarkable displays of spiritual power. Many times
it is stated this noted man gathered his company together, and prayed all
night, or till the mighty power of God came upon them. It was at a Watch
Night service, at Fetter Lane, December 31, 1738, when Charles and John
Wesley, with Whitfield, sat up till after midnight singing and praying. This
is the account:

     "About three o'clock in the morning, as we were continuing instant in
prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, so that many cried out for
exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we had recovered a
little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke
out with one voice, 'We praise thee, O God! We acknowledge thee to be the
Lord!'"

     On another occasion, Mr. Wesley gives us this account:

     "After midnight, about a hundred of us walked home together, singing,
rejoicing and praising God."

     Often does this godly man make the record to this effect, "We continued
in ministering the Word and in prayer and praise till morning."
     One of his all-night wrestlings in prayer alone with God is said to
have greatly affected a Catholic priest, who was really awakened by the
occurrence to a realization of his spiritual condition.
     As often as God manifested His power in Scriptural times in working
wonders through prayer, He has not left Himself without witness in modern
times. Prayer brings the Holy Spirit upon men to-day in answer to
importunate, continued prayer just as it did before Pentecost. The wonders
of prayer have not ceased.

                      XV. Prayer and Divine Providence

     Again a poor soul is tempted to doubt the being of a God;
     arguments by way of reason and wisdom may convince him he may get
     a little light from them; but sometimes God will come into his
     soul with an immediate beam and scatter all his doubts, more than
     a thousand arguments can do; the way of wisdom thus of knowing
     there is a God, that unties the knot; but the other cuts it in
     pieces presently; so it is in all temptations else a man goes the
     way of wisdom and sanctified reason, and looks into his own heart
     and there sees the work of grace and argues from all God's
     dealings with him; yet all these satisfy not a man: but God comes
     with a light in his spirit and all his bolts and shackles are
     knocked off in a moment; here we see the way of Wisdom and the way
     of Revelation. -- THOS. GOODWIN


PRAYER and the Divine providence are closely related. They stand in close
companionship. They cannot possibly be separated. So closely connected are
they that to deny one is to abolish the other. Prayer supposes a providence,
while providence is the result of and belongs to prayer. All answers to
prayer are but the intervention of the providence of God in the affairs of
men. Providence has to do specially with praying people. Prayer, providence
and the Holy Spirit are a trinity, which cooperate with each other and are
in perfect harmony with one another. Prayer is but the request of man for
God through the Holy Spirit to interfere in behalf of him who prays.
     What is termed providence is the Divine superintendence over earth and
its affairs. It implies gracious provisions which Almighty God makes for all
His creatures, animate and inanimate, intelligent or otherwise. Once admit
that God is the Creator and Preserver of all men, and concede that He is
wise and intelligent, and logically we are driven to the conclusion that
Almighty God has a direct superintendence of those whom He has created and
whom He preserves in being. In fact creation and preservation suppose a
superintending providence. What is called Divine providence is simply
Almighty God governing the world for its best interests, and overseeing
everything for the good of mankind.
     Men talk about a "general providence" as separate from a "special
providence." There is no general providence but what is made up of special
providences. A general supervision on the part of God supposes a special and
individual supervision of each person, yea, even every creature, animal and
all alike.
     God is everywhere, watching, superintending, overseeing, governing
everything in the highest interest of man, and carrying forward His plans
and executing His purposes in creation and redemption. He is not an absentee
God. He did not make the world with all that is in it, and turn it over to
so-called natural laws, and then retire into the secret places of the
universe having no regard for it or for the working of His laws. His hand is
on the throttle. The work is not beyond His control. Earth's inhabitants and
its affairs are not running independent of Almighty God.
     Any and all providences are special providences, and prayer and this
sort of providences work hand in hand. God's hand is in everything. None are
beyond Him nor beneath His notice. Not that God orders everything which
comes to pass. Man is still a free agent, but the wisdom of Almighty God
comes out when we remember that while man is free, and the devil is abroad
in the land, God can superintend and overrule earth's affairs for the good
of man and for His glory, and cause even the wrath of man to praise Him.
     Nothing occurs by accident under the superintendence of an all-wise and
perfectly just God. Nothing happens by chance in God's moral or natural
government. God is a God of order, a God of law, but none the less a
superintendent in the interest of His intelligent and redeemed creatures.
Nothing can take place without the knowledge of God.

          "His all surrounding sight surveys
               Our rising and our rest;
          Our public walks, our private ways,
               The secrets of our breasts."


     Jesus Christ sets this matter at rest when He says, "Are not two
sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground
without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear
ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."
     God cannot be ruled out of the world. The doctrine of prayer brings Him
directly into the world, and moves Him to a direct interference with all of
this world's affairs.
     To rule Almighty God out of the providences of life is to strike a
direct blow at prayer and its efficacy. Nothing takes place in the world
without God's consent, yet not in a sense that He either approves everything
or is responsible for all things which happen. God is not the author of sin.
     The question is sometimes asked, "Is God in everything?" as if there
are some things which are outside of the government of God, beyond His
attention, with which He is not concerned. If God is not in everything, what
is the Christian doing praying according to Paul's directions to the
Philippians?

     "Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God."

     Are we to pray for some things and about things with which God has
nothing to do? According to the doctrine that God is not in everything, then
we are outside the realm of God when "in everything we make our requests
unto God."
     Then what will we do with that large promise so comforting to all of
God's saints in all ages and in all climes, a promise which belongs to
prayer and which is embraced in a special providence: "And we know that all
things work together for good to them that love God"?
     If God is not in everything, then what are the things we are to expect
from the "all things" which "work together for good to them that love God"?
And if God is not in everything in His providence what are the things which
are to be left out of our praying? We can lay it down as a proposition,
borne out by Scripture, which has a sure foundation, that nothing ever comes
into the life of God's saints without His consent. God is always there when
it occurs. He is not far away. He whose eye is on the sparrow is also upon
His saints. His presence which fills immensity is always where His saints
are. "Certainly I will be with thee," is the word of God to every child of
His.
     "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and
delivereth them." And nothing can touch those who fear God only with the
permission of the angel of the Lord. Nothing can break through the
encampment without the permission of the captain of the Lord's hosts.
Sorrows, afflictions, want, trouble, or even death, cannot enter this Divine
encampment without the consent of Almighty God, and even then it is to be
used by God in His plans for the good of His saints and for carrying out His
plans and purposes:

     "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
     "Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

     These evil things, unpleasant and afflictive, may come with Divine
permission, but God is on the spot, His hand is in all of them, and He sees
to it that they are woven into His plans. He causes them to be overruled for
the good of His people, and eternal good is brought out of them. These
things, with hundreds of others, belong to the disciplinary processes of
Almighty God in administering His government for the children of men.
     The providence of God reaches as far as the realm of prayer. It has to
do with everything for which we pray. Nothing is too small for the eye of
God, nothing too insignificant for His notice and His care. God's providence
has to do with even the stumbling of the feet of His saints:

     "For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in
all thy ways.
     "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot
against a stone."

     Read again our Lord's words about the sparrow, for He says, "Five
sparrows are sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before
God." Paul asks the pointed question, "Doth God care for oxen?" His care
reaches to the smallest things and has to do with the most insignificant
matters which concern men. He who believes in the God of providence is
prepared to see His hand in all things which come to him, and can pray over
everything.
     Not that the saint who trusts the God of providence, and who takes all
things to God in prayer, can explain the mysteries of Divine providence, but
the praying ones recognize God in everything, see Him in all that comes to
them, and are ready to say as John said to Peter at the Sea of Galilee, "It
is the Lord."
     Praying saints do not presume to interpret God's dealings with them nor
undertake to explain God's providences, but they have learned to trust God
in the dark as well as in the light, to have faith in God even when "cares
like a wild deluge come, and storms of sorrow fall."
     "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." Praying saints rest
themselves upon the words of Jesus to Peter, "What I do thou knowest not
now, but thou shalt know hereafter." None but the praying ones can see God's
hands in the providences of life. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God," shall see God here in His providences, in His Word, in His
Church. These are they who do not rule God out of earth's affairs, and who
believe God interferes with matters of earth for them.
     While God's providence is over all men, yet His supervision and
administration of His government are peculiarly in the interest of His
people.
     Prayer brings God's providence into action. Prayer puts God to work in
overseeing and directing earth's affairs for the good of men. Prayer opens
the way when it is shut up or straitened.
     Providence deals more especially with temporalities. It is in this
realm that the providence of God shines brightest and is most apparent. It
has to do with food and raiment, with business difficulties, with strangely
interposing and saving from danger, and with helping in emergencies at very
opportune and critical times.
     The feeding of the Israelites during the wilderness journey is a
striking illustration of the providence of God in taking care of the
temporal wants of His people. His dealings with those people show how He
provided for them in that long pilgrimage.

          "Day by day the manna fell,
O to learn this lesson well!
Still by constant mercy fed,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.

"Day by day the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs;
Cast foreboding fears away,
Take the manna of to-day."


     Our Lord teaches this same lesson of a providence which clothes and
feeds His people, in the Sermon on the Mount, when He says, "Take no thought
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on." Then He directs attention to the fact that it is God's
providence which feeds the fowls of the air, clothes the lilies of the
field, and asks if God does all this for birds and flowers, will He not care
for them?
     All of this teaching leads up to the need of a childlike, implicit
trust in an overruling providence, which looks after the temporal wants of
the children of men. And let it be noted specially that all this teaching
stands closely connected in the utterances of our Lord with what He says
about prayer, thus closely connecting a Divine oversight with prayer and its
promises.
     We have an impressive lesson on Divine providence in the case of Elijah
when he was sent to the brook Cherith, where God actually employed the
ravens to feed His prophet. Here was an interposition so plain that God
cannot be ruled out of life's temporalities. Before God will allow His
servant to want bread, He moves the birds of the air to do His bidding and
take care of His prophet.
     Nor was this all. When the brook ran dry, God sent him to a poor widow,
who had just enough meal and oil for the urgent needs of the good woman and
her son. Yet she divided with him her last morsel of bread. What was the
result? The providence of God interposed, and as long as the drouth lasted,
the cruse of oil never failed nor did the meal in the barrel give out.
     The Old Testament sparkles with illustrations of the provisions of
Almighty God for His people, and show clearly God's overruling providence.
In fact the Old Testament is largely the account of a providence which dealt
with a peculiar people, anticipating their every temporal want, which
ministered to them when in emergencies, and which sanctified to them their
troubles.
     It is worth while to read that old hymn of Newton's, which has in it so
much of the providence of God:

          "Though troubles assail, and dangers affright,
Though friends should all fail, and foes all unite,
Yet one thing secures me, whatever betide,
The promise assures us, the Lord will provide.

"The birds without barns, or storehouse are fed,
From them let us learn, to trust for our bread;
His saints what is fitting, shall ne'er be denied,
So long as it's written, the Lord will provide."


     In fact many of our old hymns are filled with sentiments in song about
a Divine providence, which are worth while to be read and sung even in this
day.
     God is in the most afflictive and sorrowing events of life. All such
events are subjects of prayer, and this is so for the reason that everything
which comes into the life of the praying one is in the providence of God,
and takes place under His superintending hand. Some would rule God out of
the sad and hard things of life. They tell us that God has nothing to do
with certain events which bring such grief to us. They say that God is not
in the death of children, that they die from natural causes, and that it is
but the working of natural laws.
     Let us ask what are nature's laws but the laws of God, the laws by
which God rules the world? And what is nature anyway? And who made nature?
How great the need to know that God is above nature, is in control of
nature, and is in nature? We need to know that nature or natural laws are
but the servants of Almighty God who made these laws, and that He is
directly in them, and they are but the Divine servants to carry out God's
gracious designs, and are made to execute His gracious purposes. The God of
providence, the God to whom the Christians pray, and the God who interposes
in behalf of the children of men for their good, is above nature, in perfect
and absolute control of all that belongs to nature. And no law of nature can
crush the life out of even a child without God giving His consent, and
without such a sad event occurring directly under His all-seeing eye, and
without His being immediately present.
     David believed this doctrine when he fasted and prayed for the life of
his child, for why pray and fast for a baby to be spared, if God has nothing
to do with its death should it die?
     Moreover, "does care for oxen," and have a direct oversight of the
sparrows which fall to the ground, and yet have nothing to do with the going
out of this world of an immortal child? Still further, the death of a child,
no matter if it should come alone as some people claim by the operation of
the laws of nature, let it be kept in mind that it is a great affliction to
the parents of the child. Where do these innocent parents come in under any
such doctrine? It becomes a great sorrow to mother and father. Are they not
to recognize the hand of God in the death of the child? And is there no
providence or Divine oversight in the taking away of their child to them?
David recognized the facts clearly that God had to do with keeping his child
in life; that prayer might avail in saving his child from death, and that
when the child died it was because God had ordered it. Prayer and providence
in all this affair worked in harmonious cooperation, and David thoroughly
understood it. No child ever dies without the direct permission of Almighty
God, and such an event takes place in His providence for wise and beneficent
ends. God works it into His plans concerning the child himself and the
parents and all concerned. Moreover, it is a subject of prayer whether the
child lives or dies.

          "In each event of life how clear,
Thy ruling hand I see;
Each blessing to my soul most dear,
Because conferred by Thee."

                XVI. Prayer and Divine Providence (Continued)

     A proper idea of prayer is the pouring out of the soul before God,
     with the hand of faith placed on the head of the Sacrificial
     Offering, imploring mercy, and presenting itself a free-will
     offering of itself unto God, giving up body, soul and spirit, to
     be guided and governed as may seem good to His heavenly wisdom,
     desiring only perfectly to love Him, and to serve Him with all its
     powers, at all times, while He has a being. -- ADAM CLARKE


TWO kinds of providences are seen in God's dealings with men, direct
providences and permissive providences. God orders some things, others He
permits. But when He permits an afflictive dispensation to come into the
life of His saint, even though it originate in a wicked mind, and it be the
act of a sinner, yet before it strikes His saint and touches him, it becomes
God's providence to the saint. In other words, God consents to some things
in this world, without in the least being responsible for them, or in the
least excusing him who originates them, many of them very painful and
afflictive, but such events or things always become to the saint of God the
providence of God to him. So that the saint can say in each and all of these
sad and distressing experiences, "It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth
him good." Or with the Psalmist, he may say, "I was dumb; I opened not my
mouth, because thou didst it."
     This was the explanation of all of Job's severe afflictions. They came
to him in the providence of God, even though they had their origin in the
mind of Satan, who devised them and put them into execution. God gave Satan
permission to afflict Job, to take away his property, and to rob him of his
children. But Job did not attribute these things to blind chance, nor to
accident, neither did he charge them to Satanic agency, but said, "The Lord
hath given, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
He took these things as coming from his God, whom he feared and served and
trusted.
     And to the same effect are Job's words to his wife when she left God
out of the question, and wickedly told her husband, "Curse God and die." Job
replied, "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What! Shall we
receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?"
     It is no surprise under such a view of God's dealings with Job that it
should be recorded of this man of faith, "In all this did not Job sin with
his lips," and in another place was it said, "In all this Job sinned not,
nor charged God foolishly." In nothing concerning God and the events of life
do men talk more foolishly and even wickedly than in ignorantly making up
their judgments on the providences of God in this world. O that we had men
after the type of Job, who though afflictions and privations are severe in
the extreme, yet they see the hand of God in providence and openly recognize
God in it.
     The sequel to all these painful experiences are but illustrations of
that familiar text of Paul, "And we know that all things work together for
good to them that love God." Job received back more in the end than was ever
taken away from him. He emerged from under these tremendous troubles with
victory, and became till this day the exponent and example of great patience
and strong faith in God's providences. "Ye have heard of the patience of
Job," rings down the line of Divine revelation. God took hold of the evil
acts of Satan, and worked them into His plans and brought great good out of
them. He made evil work out for good without in the least endorsing the evil
or conniving at it.
     We have the same gracious truth of Divine providence evidenced in the
story of Joseph and his brethren, who sold him wickedly into Egypt and
forsook him and deceived their old father. All this had its origin in their
evil minds. And yet when it reached God's plans and purposes, it became
God's providence both to Joseph and to the future of Jacob's descendants.
Hear Joseph as he spoke to his brethren after he had discovered himself to
them down in Egypt, -- in which he traces all the painful events back to the
mind of God and made them have to do with fulfilling God's purposes
concerning Jacob and his posterity:

     "Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me
hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. And God sent me
before you to preserve you a posterity on the earth, and to save your lives
by a great deliverance.
     "So that it was not you that sent me hither, but God."

     Cowper's well-known hymn might well be read in this connection, one
verse of which is sufficient just now:

          "God moves in a mysterious way,
               His wonders to perform;
          He plants His footsteps in the sea,
               And rides upon the storm."


     The very same line of argument appears in the betrayal of our Lord by
Judas. Of course it was the wicked act of an evil man, but it never touched
our Lord till the Father gave His consent, and God took the evil design of
Judas and worked it into His own plans for the redemption of the world. It
did not excuse Judas in the least that good came out of his wicked act, but
it does magnify the wisdom and greatness of God in so overruling it as that
man's redemption was secured. It is so always in God's dealings with man.
Things which come to us from second causes are no surprise to God, nor are
they beyond His control. His hand can take hold of them in answer to prayer
and lie can make afflictions, from whatever quarter they may come, "work for
us a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
     The providence of God goes before His saints, opens the way, removes
difficulties, solves problems and brings deliverances when escape seems
hopeless. God brought Israel out of Egypt by the hand of Moses, His chosen
leader of that people. They came to the Red Sea. But there were the waters
in front, with no crossing nor bridges. On one side were high mountains, and
behind came the hosts of Pharaoh. Every avenue of escape was closed. There
seemed no hope. Despair almost reigned. But there was one way open which men
overlooked, and that was the upward way. A man of prayer, Moses, the man of
faith in God, was on the ground. This man of prayer, who recognized God in
providence, with commanding force, spoke to the people on this wise:
     "Fear ye not; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."
     With this he lifted up his rod, and according to Divine command, he
stretched his hand over the sea. The waters divided, and the command issued
forth, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." And Israel
went over the sea dry shod. God had opened a way, and what seemed an
impossible emergency was remarkably turned into a wonderful deliverance. Nor
is this the only time that God has interposed in behalf of His people when
their way was shut up.
     The whole history of the Jews is the story of God's providence. The Old
Testament cannot be accepted as true without receiving the doctrine of a
Divine, overruling providence. The Bible is preeminently a Divine
revelation. It reveals things. It discovers, uncovers, brings to light
things concerning God, His character and His manner of governing this world,
and its inhabitants, not discoverable by human reason, by science or by
philosophy. The Bible is a book in which God reveals Himself to men. And
this is particularly true when we consider God's care of His creatures and
His oversight of the world, His superintendence of its affairs. And to
dispute the doctrine of providence is to discredit the entire revelation of
God's Word. Everywhere this Word discovers God's hand in man's affairs.
     The Old Testament especially, but also the New Testament, is the story
of prayer and providence. It is the tale of God's dealings with men of
prayer, men of faith in His direct interference in earth's affairs, and with
God's manner of superintending the world in the interest of His people and
in carrying forward His work in His plans and purposes in creation and
redemption.
     Praying men and God's providence go together. This was thoroughly
understood by the praying ones of the Scripture. They prayed over everything
because God had to do with everything. They took all things to God in prayer
because they believed in a Divine providence which had to do with all
things. They believed in an ever present God, who had not retired into the
secret recesses of space, leaving His saints and His creatures to the mercy
of a tyrant, called nature, and its laws, blind, unyielding, with no regard
for any one who stood in its way. If that be the correct conception of God,
why pray to Him? He is too far away to hear them when they pray, and too
unconcerned to trouble Himself about those on earth.
     These men of prayer had an implicit faith in a God of special
providence, who would gladly, promptly and readily respond to their cries
for help in times of need and in seasons of distress.
     The so-called "laws of nature" did not trouble them in the least. God
was above nature, in control of nature, while nature was but the servant of
Almighty God. Nature's laws were but His own laws, since nature was but the
offspring of the Divine hand. Laws of nature might be suspended and no evil
would result. Every intelligent person is conversant every day when he sees
man overruling and overcoming the law of gravitation, and no one is
surprised or raises his hand or voice in horror at the thought of nature's
laws being violated. God is a God of law and order, and all His laws in
nature, in providence and in grace work together in perfect accord, with no
clash nor disharmony.
     God suspends or overcomes the laws of disease and rain often without or
independent of prayer. But quite often He does this in answer to prayer.
Prayer for rain or for dry weather is not outside the moral government of
God, nor is it asking God to violate any law which He has made, but only
asking Him to give rain in His own way, according to His own laws. So also
the prayer for the rebuking of disease is not a request at war with law
either natural or otherwise, but is a prayer in accordance with law, even
the law of prayer, a law set in operation by Almighty God as the so-called
natural law which governs rain or which controls disease.
     The believer in the law of prayer has strong ground on which to base
his plea. And the believer in a Divine providence, the companion of prayer,
stands equally on strong granite foundations, from which he need not be
shaken. These twin doctrines stand fast and will abide forever.

          "In every condition, in sickness, in health,
In poverty's vale or abounding in wealth;
At home or abroad, on the land or the sea,
As thy days may demand shall thy strength ever be."