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.