By E. M. Bounds
PRAYING MEN AT A PREMIUM
-- Alexander Whyte NO insistence in the Bible is more pressing than
the injunction it lays upon men to pray. No exhortation contained therein is
more hearty, more solemn, and more stirring. No principle is more strongly
inculcated than that "men ought always to pray and not to faint." In view of
this enjoinder it is pertinent to inquire as to whether Christian people are
praying men and women in anything like body and bulk? Is prayer a fixed course
in the schools of the Church? In the Sunday school, the home, the colleges, have
we any graduates in the school of prayer? Is the Church producing those who have
diplomas from the great university of prayer? This is what God requires, what He
commands, and it is those who possess such qualifications that He must have to
accomplish His purposes and to carry out the work of His Kingdom on
earth. And it is earnest praying that had need to be done. Languid
praying, without heart or strength, with neither fire nor tenacity, defeats its
own avowed purpose. The prophet of olden times laments that in a day which
needed strenuous praying there was no one who "stirred up himself to take hold
of God." Christ charges us "not to faint" in our praying. Laxity and
indifference are great hindrances to prayer, both to the practice of praying and
the process of receiving; it requires a brave, strong, fearless and insistent
spirit to engage in successful prayer. Diffuseness, too, interferes with
effectiveness. Too many petitions break tension and unity, and breed neglect.
Prayers should be specific and urgent. Too many words, like too much width,
breeds shallows and sand-bars. A single objective which absorbs the whole being
and' inflames the entire man, is the properly constraining force in prayer. It
is easy to see how prayer was a decreed factor in the dispensations preceding
the coming of Jesus, and how that their leaders had to be men of prayer; how
that God's mightiest revelation of Himself was a revelation made through prayer.
And, finally, how that Jesus Christ, in His personal ministry, and in His
relation to God, was great and constant in prayer. His labours and dispensation
overflowed with fullness in proportion to His prayers. The possibilities of His
praying were unlimited and the possibilities of His ministry were in keeping.
The necessity of His praying was equalled only by the constancy with which He
practiced it during His earthly life. The dispensation of the Holy Spirit
is a dispensation of prayer, in a preeminent sense. Here prayer has an essential
and vital relation. Without depreciating the possibilities and necessities of
prayer in all the preceding dispensations of God in the world it must be
declared that it is in this latter dispensation that the engagements and demands
of prayer are given their greatest authority, their possibilities rendered
unlimited and their necessity insuperable. These days of ours have sore need of
a generation of praying men, a band of men and women through whom God can bring
His great and His greatest movements more fully into the world. The Lord our God
is not straitened within Himself, but He is straitened in us, by reason of our
little faith and weak praying. A breed of Christian is greatly needed who will
seek tirelessly after God, - who will give Him no rest, day and night, until He
hearken to their cry. The times demand praying men who are all athirst for God's
glory, who are broad and unselfish in their desires, quenchless for God, who
seek Him late and early, and who will give themselves no rest until the whole
earth be filled with His glory. Men and women are needed whose prayers
will give to the world the utmost power of God; who will make His promises to
blossom with rich and full results. God is waiting to hear us and challenges us
to bring Him to do this thing by our praying. He is asking us, to-day, as He did
His ancient Israel, to prove Him now herewith." Behind God's Word is God
Himself, and we read: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, his Maker:
Ask of me of things to come and concerning my sons, and concerning the work of
my hands, command ye me." As though God places Himself in the hands and at the
disposal of His people who pray - as indeed He does. The dominant element of all
praying is faith, that is conspicuous, cardinal and emphatic. Without such faith
it is impossible to please God, and equally impossible to pray. There is
a current conception of spiritual duties which tends to separate the pulpit and
the pew, as though the pulpit bore the entire burden of spiritual concerns, and
while the pew was concerned only with duties that relate to the lower sphere of
the secular and worldly. Such a view needs drastic correction. God's cause, its
obligations, efforts and successes, lie with equal pressure on pulpit and pew.
But the man in the pew is not taxed with the burden of prayer as he ought to be,
and as he must be, ere any new visitation of power come to the Church. The
Church never will be wholly for God until the pews are filled with praying men.
The Church cannot be what God wants it to be until those of its members who are
leaders in business, politics, law, and society, are leaders in prayer. God
began His early movements in the world with men of prayer. He chose such a man
to be the father of that race who became His chosen people in the world for
hundreds of years, to whom He committed His oracles, and from whom sprang the
Promised Messiah. Abraham, a leader of God's cause, was preeminently a praying
man. When we consider his conduct and character, we readily see how prayer ruled
and swayed this great leader of God's people in the wilderness. "Abraham planted
a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting
God," and it is an outstanding fact that wherever he pitched his tent and camped
for a season, with his household, there he erected the altar of sacrifice and of
prayer. His was a personal and a family religion, in which prayer was a
prominent and abiding factor. Prayer is the medium of divine revelation.
It is through prayer that God reveals Himself to the spiritual soul to-day, just
as in the Old Testament days He made His revelations to the men who prayed. God
shows Himself to the man who prays. "God is with thee in all that though doest."
This was the clear conviction of those who would fain make a covenant with
Abraham, and the reason for this tribute was the belief commonly held concerning
the patriarch that, not only was he a man of prayer, but a man whose prayers God
would answer. This is the summary and secret of divine rule in the Church. In
all ages God has ruled the Church by prayerful men. When prayer fails, the
divine rulership fails. As we have seen Abraham, the father of the
faithful, was a prince and a priest in prayer. He had remarkable influence with
God. God stays His vengeance while Abraham prays. His mercy is suspended and
conditioned on Abraham's praying. His visitations of wrath are removed by the
praying of this ruler in Israel. The movements of God are influenced by the
prayers of Abraham, the friend of God. Abraham's righteous prayerfulness permits
him to share the secrets of God's counsels, while the knowledge of these secrets
draws out and intensifies his praying. With Abraham, the altar of sacrifice is
hard by the altar of prayer. With him the altar of prayer sanctifies the altar
of sacrifice. To Abimelech God said, " Abraham is a prophet, and he shall pray
for thee, and thou shalt live." Christian people must pray for men. On
one occasion, Samuel said unto the people, " Moreover as for me, God forbid that
I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." Fortunate for these
sinful people who had rejected God, and desired a human king, that they had in
Israel a man of prayer. The royal way to enlarge personal grace is to pray for
others. Intercessory prayer is a means of grace to those who exercise it. We
enter the richest fields of spiritual growth and gather its priceless riches in
the avenues of intercessory prayer. To pray for men is of divine nomination, and
represents the highest form of Christian service. Men must pray, and men must be
prayed for. The Christian must pray for all things, of course, but prayers for
men are infinitely more important, just as men are infinitely more important
than things. So also prayers for men are far more important than prayers for
things because men more deeply concern God's will and the work of Jesus Christ
than things. Men are to be cared for, sympathized with and prayed for, because
sympathy, pity, compassion and care accompany and precede prayer for men, when
they are not called out for things. All this makes praying a real business, not
child's play, not a secondary affair, nor a trivial matter but a serious
business. The men who have made a success of praying have made a business of
praying. It is a process demanding the time, thought, energy and hearts of
mankind. Prayer is business for time, business for eternity. It is a man's
business to pray, transcending all other business and taking precedence over all
other vocations, professions or occupations. Our praying concerns ourselves, all
men, their greatest interests, even the salvation of their immortal souls.
Praying is a business which takes hold of eternity and the things beyond the
grave. It is a business which involves earth and heaven. All worlds are touched
and worlds are influenced by prayer. It has to do with God and men, angels and
devils. Jesus was preeminently a leader in prayer, and His praying is an
incentive to prayer. How prominently prayer stands out in His life. The leading
events of His earthly career are distinctly marked by prayer. The wonderful
experience and glory of the Transfiguration was preceded by prayer, and was the
result of the praying of our Lord. What words He used as He prayed we know not,
nor do we know for what He prayed. But doubtless it was night, and long into its
hours the Master prayed. It was while He prayed the darkness fled, and His form
was lit with unearthly splendour. Moses and Elijah came to yield to Him not only
the palm of law and prophecy, but the palm of praying. None other prayed as did
Jesus nor had any such a glorious manifestation of the divine presence or heard
so clearly the revealing voice of the Father, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye
him." Happy disciples to be with Christ in the school of prayer. How many of us
have failed to come to this glorious Mount of Transfiguration because we were
unacquainted with the transfiguring power of prayer. It is the going apart to
pray, the long, intense seasons of prayer, in which we engage which makes the
face to shine, transfigures the character, makes even dull, earthly garments to
glisten with heavenly splendour. But more than this: it is real praying which
makes eternal things real, close and tangible, and which brings the glorified
visitors and the heavenly visions. Transfigured lives would not be so rare if
there were more of this transfigured praying. These heavenly visits would not be
so few if there was more of this transfigured praying. How difficult it
appears to be for the Church to understand that the whole scheme of redemption
depends upon men of prayers The work of our Lord, while here on the earth, as
well of the Apostle Paul was, by teaching and example, to develop men of prayer,
to whom the future of the Church should be committed. How strange that instead
of learning this simple and all important lesson, the modern Church has largely
overlooked it. We have need to turn afresh to that wondrous Leader of spiritual
Israel, our Lord Jesus Christ, who by example and precept enjoins us to prayer
and to the great Apostle to the Gentiles, who by virtue of his praying habits
and prayer lessons is a model and an example to God's people in every age and
clime. |
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