"What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." — Mark 11:21.

You will perceive at once that this applies equally to the penitent seeking pardon, and the believer seeking a clean heart; and may also be used by people seeking health or the salvation of friends. The word "things" is in the plural, and may therefore include all the urgent needs of a human soul. What things ye desire, believe, and ye shall have.

Brethren, of all hindrances in the way of our getting saved, the most common is the persistency with which we reverse the divine order. We are the blindest of all beings in the universe. We are ignorant and helpless. The human mind has been reversed. When God saves your soul, he has to turn your mind around and turn your thoughts around and turn your heart around and reverse your whole being. God's order is repent, and then believe. It is first justification and then regeneration, and then the knowledge of it. It takes some of us a long time, for we weep and pray and strive to reverse the order. The very first thing some people want, before they have shed a tear, is the witness of God's Spirit, and that is the last thing they get. When they get the Spirit they think they will then believe; and when they believe they will repent. If you could be among the angels and see the absolute awkwardness with which a human soul tumbles around in the dark, what a revelation it would be to some of you. It is strange that a believer seeking a clean heart is just as awkward about it as any sinner seeking pardon. But he is. Notice how they begin. You find people as cold as the Arctic regions getting down to pray for a baptism of the Holy Ghost. Why, they are a thousand miles away from such an experience as that. There are a great many things to be done in their hearts before they can receive the Holy Ghost. In seeking this baptism the first thing is to apprehend God's will to bestow it, the next step is faith; the next is a clean heart, and the next is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. But people want the baptism of the Holy Ghost before they have a clean heart, and they want a clean heart before they die out to self. Mr. Wesley says, "the same truth which applies to a person seeking justification, applies to a person seeking sanctification, on a higher plane." The blunders we make in seeking sanctification, are the very same blunders we made as sinners when seeking justification. My text tells how to get your prayers answered: "What things ye desire, believe ye receive them, and ye shall have them." This is God's order for every seeker. Don't expect to be converted till you repent and believe. Don't insist on getting the witness till you have clone the others. Don't pray for the baptism but begin at the other end.

Now there are three words I want to explain: things, pray, and believe. The word thing and the word think are the same in the Anglo-Saxon. A thing is whatever you can think. Whatever your mind can grasp is a thing; it is a think. Whatever your thoughts apprehend, is something that you think. It is a perception. You are driving at a definite point. John Fletcher says of the mistake of his time, " The reason why believers in England do not receive the blessing of perfect love is that they do not aim at it." In order to hit anything you must have a mark. That 's the way our fathers put the truth. My friend, in order to get your prayers answered, the first great essential is that you get a definite thought in your mind. Unless you can think of what you want; unless there is a definite point to aim at, your prayer will be rambling, and you can't tell whether you have made any advance or not. Jesus said to the blind man, "What shall I do for you?" This forced him to hit the nail on the head, and to tell his exact need with his own tongue: " Lord that I may receive my sight." That was not a rambling prayer, running all around creation, with a home in heaven at last. People wonder why their experience is like an Indian summer day, smoky, so mixed. Well, your prayers are hazy. If you have a distinct aim, and a distinct thought, you will have a definite experience. Jesus never answered a rambling prayer. The woman said, "My daughter is possessed of a devil." Mary and Martha said, "Lord if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." The leper prayed, " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." You can't find any samples of these rambling prayers which so many people offer up when they want salvation. When you get in such downright earnest that you pray, "O Lord, if I don't have salvation I shall go right down to hell," then you hit the nail on the head every time, and you can believe when you pray. But when you ask for a "deeper work of grace," and for "more and more," you don't know what you are driving at, and the Lord don't know what you are driving at, and you don't get that prayer answered very much. A lady has been seeking the Lord for three weeks, but this afternoon she said, "Lord, I must have a clean heart." I said, "thank God, you will soon get it," and in a few minutes God answered her prayer, and she arose and testified to having received a clean heart.

If you had a carpenter who hammered away and only hit the nail once in twenty times, you would discharge him. You will never get a clean heart till you change your prayers. You must form a definite conception of your need. "What things soever ye desire." Jesus says you must have something in your mind; something you can think. I prayed for years and j^ears for a deeper work of grace, and got hungry, but I did not then seek a clean heart. Be definite, definite. Some of you have had the desire to get rid of the inward sin of the natural heart. You have prayed: O Lord, give me more patience. Now that word " more " cannot be bounded. There is no limit to it. It is not in the positive or superlative degree. It is in that middle ground where it can swing back and forth. The mind does not grasp a definite experience when you pray for "more" or "deeper." The word "deeper" never touches the bottom. You never will get your prayers answered till you strike bottom and get deepest.

If you pray for a " higher life," who knows how high you want to go? How high? There's a vagueness in such a prayer. But when you ask God to give you a complete salvation, that is plain. If you get the highest life, that touches heaven, that is definite and clear. Don't you see how you and I have hindered some one? I never did get out till I brought my prayer down to a point, and concentrated all my artillery at one place, and let loose the contents of my panting, hungry soul, and all my focused brain and heart and mind and soul on a single mathematical point. And then, I tell you, the fire came.

You take the sunshine, this warm Indian summer day, and concentrate it with a glass, and you can burn your house down with it. These scattered prayers never burn up your old sinful nature. Lord, teach us hew to pray! When you concentrate all on one point, God Almighty will send lightning through your soul and set you on fire. Now pick out your need, and pray for it. Do you want pardon? Then pick it out and pray for it. Here is a sinner who steals seven times a week. Shall he pray to be made better?

Why, conversion don't make men merely better; it makes them over again. You take any sinner, whether outrageous or decent, and he will be about ready for that prayer, — make me better. But when a sinner gets converted, it means to tear down old things and to give him a brand-new heart, and make him a new creature in Christ Jesus. And when you pray definitely for conversion or for a pure heart, you will be answered.

" Desire.'' When you pray, the fervor of the prayer depends upon the intensity of the desire. That is the keystone of the arch.

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,

Uttered or unexpressed."

The prayer is the utterance of the desire. I would like to explain the nature of prayer. When you first pray you begin faintly. But you have a desire which the Holy Ghost begets in your heart for a certain thing. Now when that desire is kindled in your heart, if you will keep your mouth and your mind shut tight, and never move or stir, that desire will smolder, and in twenty-four hours or less, it will die out altogether, and you cannot find it. But now here is the philosophy of prayer: If you begin to utter that desire, and open your mouth in prayer, and then use your feet, and go to the altar; if you begin to let loose, and allow the desire to get clear expression; if you will begin to ventilate that desire, it will grow on you and grow on you till it becomes a consuming desire and cries, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."

When you bring two bodies together in space, each attracts the other, and as they approach the attraction marvelously increases by action and reaction, and they move faster and faster. You can take a cent, and by doubling it only twenty-seven times you will be a millionaire. That 's the way God works through the Holy Ghost in our hearts. You have a desire; you utter it, and it doubles; you utter that, and it doubles again, and before long you get where you will not let go; and then you get converted or sanctified. A sinner prays, and prays, and says, "I can't sleep." That is the place of blessing. Do you know you can pray a prayer a thousand times bigger than you are? When you pray a prayer that is inspired by the Holy Ghost, that is larger than you are; and when you pray such a prayer it is always answered.

Go back with this illustration and see how it was with Elijah praying for rain. Abraham said, "I've got the answer." He did not care anything about four hundred years. He laid down to rest in the cave of Machpelah with God's answer in his heart.

When you get where you seek anything with all your heart, then God says, "That will do." A Swedish girl came to this country and tramped around seeking employment for a long time, while her old mother was praying for her at home. And the very day and hour that she obtained a situation her mother in Sweden received the answer in her heart, and knew that she was provided for. When you pray a perfect prayer you will get the answer. Elijah got it. Paul got it. You have had it, and I have had it. We begin with one-tenth of the heart, and after a time we put in eight-tenths, and nine-tenths, and then ten-tenths, and the answer comes. Not long ago a sister began to pray, and she prayed for the church, for a revival; and I know she needed a blessing herself. Then she prayed for me, and for the town, and I said, "She is scattering shot badly." But after a time the Lord touched her heart and she broke down, and cried, and said, "Lord, bless me and give me a clean heart." I thought, now she has come home. . And the next day the answer came, and light from heaven flashed upon her.

When you light a stove, and there is a little blaze, if you shut the draft off, it will soon die. You must open the draft. When people are only able to pray feeble prayers, if they will turn on the draft, and keep their minds open, and their mouths open, after a time their hearts will be hot with the desire, and then the answer will come. That is what Christ meant when He said "desire." A wish that, like Aaron's rod, swallows up all other desires.

"Receive." The New Version says, "Believe ye have received." The American revisers did not agree with that change, as you can see from their notes. I will explain how it found favor in England. In England there is a large element in the churches everywhere that believes in imputed holiness; people who hold that you were all converted and sanctified in Christ eighteen hundred years ago. You are simply to believe this, and Christ will cover you all over with His personal robe. And that nonsense spreads all around. Now, don't you see that " believe you have received " contains a distinct trace of that doctrine? But, thank God, it is an incorrect translation, for the Greek word "receive" is present aorist tense and always means instantaneousness. Believe that ye do this instant receive: that is the exact meaning. Not that yon had it yesterday without knowing it, not that yon are going to get it in the future, but right while you are panting and yearning and praying; not that He did forgive, for that would be untrue; not that He will forgive, for that would not be practicable. The Bible teaches a present, instantaneous salvation everywhere.

Now while you pray, just fling up your hands like a man shot in a battle, and say, "Lord, I believe you do forgive me now. I believe that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth me from all sin." Singular number. Your sins were all taken away in conversion, but sin is singular. He "cleanseth," — not did cleanse, nor shall cleanse. "But I don't think I am saved." I would rather trust an ounce of faith than a ton of thinking. It is not think or feel, but believe. You cannot depend on feeling. I had a lady in my church who got wonderfully happy and said, "I feel I have a blessing." But when the emotion was gone she was all in the dark. I said, " The next time you will get the blessing on naked faith, and then you will keep it." And in two weeks she was up and said, "Witness or no witness, I am the Lord's "; and she stood like a rock as long as I knew her.

Brother, make up your mind, I'll pick out what I want and I will seek it and seek it with my whole heart, and claim it, and stick there. I live day by day, hour by hour. He cleanseth, He cleanseth. If you want to live free from all anxiety and all worry and all fret, act on these simple words of Christ, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."