By E. M. Bounds
PUTTING GOD TO WORK
-- Isaiah 64:4 THE assertion voiced in the title given this 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 earth's 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 world's affairs, and prevents Him from
working. And if prayer moves God to work in this world's 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 Christ's power on
earth, postponed the glorious results of His reign, and retired God from His
sovereignty. Prayer puts God's 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 life's 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.
Abraham's 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. God's
decree for the destruction of this evil city's 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 God's 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 Abraham's 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 God's
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 earth's affairs, and induce Him to intervene in our
behalf. "All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,"
says Jesus, and this allcomprehensive 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 God's 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 God's cause; the reverence which hallows God's
name; the ability to do God's will, and the establishment of God's kingdom in
the hearts of the children of men. These, and their coincidents 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 (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 God's 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 Job's friends in answer to Job's
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 God's 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 angel's 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 God's
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. God's 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 God's 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 theGod who sent him to Nineveh prepares a fish to swallow him.
In the fish's 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 father's 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
David's 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 earth's 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 God's 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 earth's 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
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