The
assertion voiced in the title given this chapter is but another way of declaring
that God has of His own motion placed Himself under the law of prayer, and has
obligated Himself to answer the prayers of men. He has ordained prayer as
a means whereby He will do things through men as they pray, which He would not
otherwise do. Prayer is a specific divine appointment, an ordinance of heaven,
whereby God purposes to carry out His gracious designs on earth and to execute
and make efficient the plan of salvation.
When we say that prayer puts God
to work, it is simply to say that man has it in his power by prayer to move God
to work in His own way among men, in which way He would not work if prayer was
not made. Thus while prayer moves God to work, at the same time God puts
prayer to work. As God has ordained prayer, and as prayer has no existence
separate from men, but involves men, then logically prayer is the one force which
puts God to work in earths affairs through men and their prayers.
Let these
fundamental truths concerning God and prayer be kept in mind in all allusions
to prayer, and in all our reading of the incidents of prayer in the Scriptures.
If
prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules
God out of the worlds affairs, and prevents Him from working. And if prayer
moves God to work in this worlds affairs, then prayerlessness excludes God from
everything concerning men, and leaves man on earth the mere creature of circumstances,
at the mercy of blind fate or without help of any kind from God. It leaves
man in this world with its tremendous responsibilities and its difficult problems,
and with all of its sorrows, burdens and afflictions, without any God at all.
In reality the denial of prayer is a denial of God Himself, for God and prayer
are so inseparable that they can never be divorced.
Prayer affects three
different spheres of existence - the divine, the angelic and the human.
It puts God to work, it puts angels to work, and it puts man to work. It
lays its hands upon God, angels and men. What a wonderful reach there is
in prayer! It brings into play the forces of heaven and earth. God,
angels and men are subjects of this wonderful law of prayer, and all these have
to do with the possibilities and the results of prayer. God has so far placed
Himself subject to prayer that by reason of His own appointment, He is induced
to work among men in a way in which He does not work if men do not pray.
Prayer lays hold upon God and influences Him to work. This is the meaning
of prayer as it concerns God. This is the doctrine of prayer, or else there
is nothing whatever in prayer.
Prayer puts God to work in all things prayed
for. While man in his weakness and poverty waits, trusts and prays, God
undertakes the work. For from old men have not heard, nor perceived by
the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God beside thee, which worketh for him that
waiteth for thee.
Jesus Christ commits Himself to the force of prayer.
Whatsoever ye ask in My Name, He says, that will I do, that the Father may
be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in My Name, I will do
it. And again: 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 no other energy is the promise
of God committed as to that of prayer. Upon no other force are the purposes
of God so dependent as this one of prayer. The Word of God dilates on the
results and necessity of prayer. The work of God stays or advances as prayer
puts forth its strength. Prophets and apostles have urged the utility, force
and necessity of prayer. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,
which shall never hold their peace day nor night. Ye that make mention of
the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till
he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
Prayer, with its antecedents and
attendants, is the one and only condition of the final triumph of the Gospel.
It is the one and only condition which honours the Father and glorifies the Son.
Little and poor praying has weakened Christs power on earth, postponed the glorious
results of His reign, and retired God from His sovereignty.
Prayer puts
Gods work in His hands, and keeps it there. It looks to Him constantly
and depends on Him implicitly to further His own cause. Prayer is but faith
resting in, acting with, and leaning on and obeying God. This is why God
loves it so well, why He puts all power into its hands, and why He so highly esteems.
men of prayer.
Every movement for the advancement of the Gospel must be
created by and inspired by prayer. In all these movements of God, prayer
precedes and attends as an invariable and necessary condition.
In this relation,
God makes prayer identical in force and power with Himself, and says to those
on earth who pray: You are on the earth to carry on My cause. I am in heaven,
the Lord of all, the Maker of all, the Holy One of all. Now whatever you
need for My cause, ask Me and I will do it. Shape the future by your prayers,
and all that you need for present supplies, command Me. I made heaven and
earth, and all things in them. Ask largely. Open thy mouth wide, and
I will fill it. It is MY work which you are doing. It concerns My
cause. Be prompt and full in praying. Do not abate your asking, and
I will not wince nor abate in My giving.
Everywhere in His Word God conditions
His actions on prayer. Everywhere in His Word His actions and attitude are
shaped by prayer. To quote all the Scriptural passages which prove the immediate,
direct and personal relation of prayer to God, would be to transfer whole pages
of the Scripture to this study. Man has personal relations with God.
Prayer is the divinely appointed means by which man comes into direct connection
with God. By His own ordinance God holds Himself bound to hear prayer.
God bestows His great good on His children when they seek it along the avenue
of prayer.
When Solomon closed his great prayer which he offered at the
dedication of the Temple, God appeared to him, approved him, and laid down the
universal principles of His action. In II Chronicles 7:12-15 we read as
follows:
And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto 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 to 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.
In His purposes concerning the Jews
in the Babylonish captivity (Jer. 29:10-13) God asserts His unfailing principles:
For thus saith the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished, at Babylon,
I will visit you, and perform MY good word toward you, in causing you to return
to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the
Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. 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.
In Bible terminology prayer means calling upon God for
things we desire, asking things of God. Thus we read: Call upon me and
I will answer thee, and will show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest
not (Jer. 33:3). Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I Will deliver
thee (Ps. 50:15). Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou
shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am (Isa. 58:9).
Prayer is revealed
as a direct application to God for some temporal or spiritual good. It is
an appeal to God to intervene in lifes affairs for the good of those for whom
we pray. God is recognized as the source and fountain of all good, and prayer
implies that all His good is held in His keeping for those who call upon Him in
truth.
That prayer is an application to God, intercourse with God, and communion
with God, comes out strongly and simply in the praying of Old Testament saints.
Abrahams intercession for Sodom is a striking illustration of the nature of prayer,
intercourse with God, and showing the intercessory side of prayer. The declared
purpose of God to destroy Sodom confronted Abraham, and his soul within him was
greatly moved because of his great interest in that fated city. His nephew
and family resided there. That purpose of God must be changed. Gods
decree for the destruction of this evil citys inhabitants must be revoked.
It
was no small undertaking which faced Abraham when he conceived the idea of beseeching
God to spare Sodom. Abraham sets himself to change Gods purpose and to
save Sodom with the other cities of the plain. It was certainly a most difficult
and delicate work for him to undertake to throw his influence with God in favour
of those doomed cities so as to save them.
He bases his plea on the simple
fact of the number of righteous men who could be found in Sodom, and appeals to
the infinite rectitude of God not to destroy the righteous with the wicked. That
be far from thee to slay the righteous with the wicked. Shall not the judge
of all the earth do right? With what deep self-abasement and reverence
does Abraham enter upon his high and divine work! He stood before God in
solemn awe, and meditation, and then drew near to God and spake. He advanced
step by step in faith, in demand and urgency, and God granted every request which
he made. It has been well said that Abraham left off asking before God
left off granting. It seems that Abraham had a kind of optimistic view
of the piety of Sodom. He scarcely expected when he undertook this matter
to have it end in failure. He was greatly in earnest, and had every encouragement
to press his case. In his final request he surely thought that with Lot,
his wife, his daughters, his sons, and his sons-in-law, he had his ten righteous
persons for whose sake God would spare the city. But alas! The count
failed when the final test- came. There were not ten righteous people in
that large population.
But this was true. If he did not save Sodom
by his importunate praying, the purposes of God were stayed for a season, and
possibly had not Abrahams goodness of heart over-estimated the number of pious
people in that devoted city, God might have saved it had he reduced his figures
still further.
This is a representative case illustrative of Old Testament
praying, and disclosing Gods mode of working through prayer. It shows further
how God is moved to work in answer to prayer in this world even when it comes
to changing His purposes concerning a sinful community. This praying of
Abraham was no mere performance, no dull, lifeless ceremony, but an earnest plea,
a strong advocacy, to secure a desired end, to have an influence, one person with
another person.
How full of meaning is this series of remarkable intercessions
made by Abraham! Here we have arguments designed to convince God, and pleas
to persuade God to change His purpose. We see deep humility, but holy boldness
as well, perseverance, and advances made based on victory in each petition.
Here we have enlarged asking encouraged by enlarged answers. God stays and
answers as long as Abraham stays and asks. To Abraham God is existent, approachable,
and all powerful, but at the same time He defers to men, acts favourably on their
desires, and grants them favours asked for. Not to pray is a denial of God,
a denial of His existence, a denial of His nature, and a denial of His purposes
toward mankind.
God has specifically to do with prayer promises in their
breadth, certainty and limitations. Jesus Christ presses us into the presence
of God with these prayer promises, not only by the assurance that God will answer,
but that no other being but God can answer. He presses us to God because
only in this way can we move God to take a hand in earths affairs, and induce
Him to intervene in our behalf.
All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive, says Jesus, and this all comprehensive condition
not only presses us to pray for all things, everything great and small, but it
sets us on and shuts us up to God, for who but God can cover the illimitable of
universal things, and can assure us certainly of receiving the very thing for
which we may ask in all the Thesaurus of earthly and heavenly good?
It is
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who makes demands on us to pray, and it is He who
puts Himself and all He has so fully in the answer. He it is who puts Himself
at our service and answers our demands when we pray.
And just as He puts
Himself and the Father at our command in prayer, to come directly into our lives
and to work for our good, so also does He engage to answer the demands of two
or more believers who are agreed as touching any one thing. If two of you
shall agree on earth as touching anything, that they shall ask, it shall be done
for them of my Father which is in heaven. None but God could put Himself in a
covenant so binding as that, for God only could fulfil such a promise and could
reach to its exacting and all controlling demands. God only can answer for
the promises.
God needs prayer, and man needs prayer, too. It is indispensable
to Gods work in this world, and is essential to getting God to work in earth
affairs. So God binds men to pray by the most solemn obligations.
God commands men to pray, and so not to pray is plain disobedience to an imperative
command of Almighty God. Prayer is such a condition without which the graces,
the salvation and the good of God are not bestowed on men. Prayer is a high
privilege, a royal prerogative and manifold and eternal are the losses by failure
to exercise it. Prayer is the great, universal force to advance Gods cause;
the reverence which hallows Gods name; the ability to do Gods will, and the
establishment of Gods kingdom in the hearts of the children of men. These,
and their co-incidents and agencies, are created and affected by prayer.
One
of the constitutional enforcements of the Gospel is prayer. Without prayer,
the Gospel can neither be preached effectively, promulgated faithfully, experienced
in the heart, nor be practiced in the life. And for the very simple reason
that by leaving prayer out of the catalogue of religious duties, we leave God
out, and His work cannot progress without Him.
The movements which God purposed
under Cyrus, king of Persia, prophesied about by Isaiah many years before Cyrus
was born, are conditioned on prayer. God declares His purpose, power, independence
and defiance of obstacles in the way of Him carrying out those purposes.
His omnipotent and absolutely infinite power is set to encourage prayer.
He has been ordering all events, directing all conditions, and creating all things,
that He might answer prayer, and then turns Himself over to His praying ones to
be commanded. And then all the results and power He holds in His hands will
be bestowed in lavish and unmeasured munificence to carry out prayers and to make
prayer the mightiest energy in the world.
The passage in Isaiah (chapter
46) is too lengthy to be quoted in its entirety but it is well worth reading.
It closes with such strong words as these, words about prayer, which are the climax
of all which God has been saying concerning His purposes in connection with Cyrus:
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.
I have made the earth, and created man upon it; I, even my hands, have stretched
out the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded.
In the conclusion
of the history of Job, we see how God intervenes in behalf of Job and calls upon
his friends to present themselves before Job that he may pray for them.
My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends, is Gods statement,
with the further words added, My servant Job shall pray for you, for him will
I accept, a striking illustration of God intervening to deliver Jobs friends
in answer to Jobs prayer.
We have heretofore spoken of prayer affecting
God, angels and men. Christ wrote nothing while living. Memoranda,
notes, sermon writing, sermon making, were alien to Him. Autobiography was
not to His taste. The Revelation of John was His last utterance. In
that book we have pictured the great importance, the priceless value, and the
high position which prayer obtains in the movements history, and unfolding progress
of Gods Church in this world. We have this picture in Revelation 8:3, disclosing
the interest the angels in heaven have in the prayers of the saints and in accomplishing
the answers to those prayers:
And another angel came and stood at the altar,
having a golden censer, and there was given unto him much incense, that he should
offer it with the prayers of all saints, upon the golden altar which was before
the throne. And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of
the saints, ascended up before God, out of the angels hand. And the angel
took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth,
and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake.
Translated
into the prose of everyday life, these words show how the capital stock by which
heaven carries on the business of salvation under Christ, is made up of the prayers
of Gods saints on earth, and discloses how these prayers in flaming power come
back to earth and produce its mighty commotions, influences and revolutions.
Praying
men are essential to Almighty God in all His plans and purposes. Gods secrets,
councils and cause have never been committed to prayerless men. Neglect
of prayer has always brought loss of faith, loss of love, and loss of prayer.
Failure to pray has been the baneful, inevitable cause of backsliding and estrangement
from God. Prayerless men have stood in the way of God fulfilling His Word
and doing His will on earth. They tie divine hands and interfere with God
in His gracious designs. As praying men are a help to God, so prayerless
men are a hindrance to Him.
We press the Scriptural view of the necessity
of prayer, even at the cost of repetition. The subject is too important
for repetition to weaken or tire, too vital to be trite or tame. We must
feel it anew. The fires of prayer have burned low. Ashes and not flames
are on its altars.
No insistence in the Scriptures is more pressing than
prayer. No exhortation is oftener reiterated, none is more hearty, none
is more solemn and stirring, than to pray. No principle is more strongly
and broadly declared than that which urges us to prayer. There is no duty
to which we are more strongly obliged than the obligation to pray. There
is no command more imperative and insistent than that of praying. Art thou
praying in everything without ceasing, in the closet, hidden from the eyes of
men, and praying always and everywhere? That is the personal, pertinent
and all-important question for every soul.
Many instances occur in Gods
Word showing that God intervenes in this world in answer to prayer. Nothing
is clearer when the Bible is consulted than that Almighty God is brought directly
into the things of this world by the praying of His people. Jonah flees
from duty and takes ship for a distant port. But God follows him, and by
a strange providence this disobedient prophet is cast out of the vessel, and the
God who sent him to Nineveh prepares a fish to swallow him. In the fishs
belly he cries out to the God against whom he had sinned, and God intervenes and
causes the fish to vomit Jonah out on dry land. Even the fishes of the great
deep are subject to the law of prayer.
Likewise the birds of the air are
brought into subjection to this same law. Elijah had foretold to Ahab the
coming of that prolonged drought , and food and even water became scarce.
God sent him to the brook Cherith, and said unto him, It shall be that thou
shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.
And the ravens brought bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the
evening. Can any one doubt that this man of God, who later on shut up and opened
the rain clouds by prayer was not praying about this time, when so much was at
stake? God interposed among the birds of the air this time and strangely
moved them to take care of His servant so that he would not want food and water.
David
in an evil hour, instead of listening to the advice of Joab, his prime minister,
yielded to the suggestion of Satan, and counted the people, which displeased God.
So God told him to choose one of three evils as a retribution for his folly and
sin. Pestilence came among the people in violent form, and David betakes
himself to prayer.
And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded
the people to be numbered? Even I it is that hath sinned and done evil indeed.
But as for these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee,
O Lord my God, be on me, and on my fathers house; but not on thy people; that
they should be plagued (I Chron. 21:17).
And though God had been greatly
grieved at David for numbering Israel, yet He could not resist this appeal of
a penitent and prayerful spirit, and God was moved by prayer to put His hand on
the springs of disease and stop the fearful plague. God was put to work
by Davids prayer.
Numbers of other cases could be named. These are
sufficient. God seems to have taken great pains in His divine revelation
to men to show how He interferes in earths affairs in answer to the praying of
His saints.
The question might arise just here in some over-critical minds
as to the so-called laws of nature, who are not strong believers in prayer,
as there was a conflict between what they call the laws of nature and the law
of prayer. These people make nature a sort of imaginary god entirely separate
of Almighty God. What is nature anyway? It is but the creation of
God, the Maker of all things. And what are the laws of nature but the
laws of God, through which He governs the material world. As the law of
prayer is also the law of God, there cannot possibly be any conflict between the
two sets of laws, but all must work in perfect harmony. Prayer does not
violate any natural law. God may set aside one law for the higher working
of another law, and this He may do when He answers prayer. Or Almighty God
may answer prayer working through the course of natural law. But whether
or not we understand it, God is over and above all nature, and can and will answer
prayer in a wise, intelligent and just manner, even though man may not comprehend
it. So that in no sense is there any discord or conflict between Gods several
laws when God is induced to interfere with human affairs in answer to prayer.
In
this connection another word might be said. We used the form of words to
which there can be no objection, that prayer does certain things, but this of
course implies not that prayer as a human means accomplishes anything, but that
prayer only accomplishes things instrumentally. Prayer is the instrument,
God is the efficient and active agent. So that prayer in itself does not
interfere in earths affairs, but prayer in the hands of men moves God to intervene
and do things, which He would not otherwise do if prayer was not used as the instrument.
It
is as we say, faith hath saved thee, by which is simply meant that God through
the faith of the sinner saves him, faith being only the instrument used by the
sinner which brings salvation to him.
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