Rev Theodore Cuyler Of New York


All of God's mighty men and women have been mighty in prayer. When

Martin Luther was in the mid-valley of his conflict with the man of sin

he used to say that he could not get on without three hours a day in

prayer. Charles G. Finney's grip on God gave him a tremendous grip on

sinners' hearts. The greatest preacher of our times--Spurgeon--had

pre-eminently the "gift of the knees;" the last prayer I ever heard him

utter
(at his own family worship) was one of the most wonderful that I

ever listened to; it revealed the hiding of his power. Abraham Lincoln

once said: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the

overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go; my own wisdom and

that of all around me seemed insufficient for the day."



But what is prayer? Has every prayer power with God? Let us endeavour to

get some clear ideas on that point. Some people seem to regard prayer as

the rehearsal of a set form of solemn words, learned largely from the

Bible or a liturgy; and when uttered they are only from the throat

outward. Genuine prayer is a believing soul's direct converse with

God. Phillips Brooks has condensed it into four words--a "true wish sent

Godward." By it, adoration, thanksgiving, confession of sin, and

petition for mercies and gifts ascend to the throne, and by means of it

infinite blessings are brought down from heaven. The pull of our prayer

may not move the everlasting throne, but--like the pull on a line from

the bow of a boat--it may draw us into closer fellowship with God, and

fuller harmony with His wise and holy will.



1. This is the first characteristic of the prayer that has power:

"Delight thyself in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thy

heart." A great many prayers are born of selfishness and are too much

like dictation or command. None of God's promises are unconditional; and

we have no such assets to our credit that we have a right to draw our

cheques and demand that God shall pay them. The indispensable quality of

all right asking is a right spirit toward our heavenly Father. When a

soul feels such an entire submissiveness towards God that it delights in

seeing Him reign, and His glory advanced, it may fearlessly pour out its

desires; for then the desires of God and the desires of that sincere

submissive soul will agree. God loves to give to them who love to let

Him have His way; they find their happiness in the chime of their own

desires with the will of God.



James and John once came to Jesus and made to Him the amazing request

that He would place one of them on His right hand and the other on His

left hand when He set up His imperial government at Jerusalem! As long

as these self-seeking disciples sought only their own glory, Christ

could not give them the askings of their ambitious hearts. By-and-by,

when their hearts had been renewed by the Holy Spirit, and they had

become so consecrated to Christ that they were in complete chime with

Him, they were not afraid to pour out their deepest desires. James

declares that, if we do not "ask amiss," God will "give liberally."

John declares that "whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we

keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His

sight." Just as soon as those two Christians found their supreme

happiness in Christ and His cause they received the desires of their

hearts.



2. The second trait of prevailing prayer is that it aims at a mark, and

knows what it is after. When we enter a store or shop we ask the

salesman to hand us the particular article we want. There is an

enormous amount of pointless, prayerless praying done in our devotional

meetings; it begins with nothing and ends nowhere. The model prayers

mentioned in the Bible were short and right to the mark. "God be

merciful to me a sinner!" "Lord, save me!" cries sinking Peter. "Come

down, ere my child die!" exclaims the heart-stricken nobleman. Old

Rowland Hill used to say, "I like short, ejaculatory prayer; it reaches

heaven before the devil can get a shot at it."



3. In the next place, the prayer that has power with God must be a

prepaid prayer. If we expect a letter to reach its destination we put

a stamp on it; otherwise it goes to the Dead-letter Office. There is

what may be called a Dead-prayer Office, and thousands of well-worded

petitions get buried up there. All of God's promises have their

conditions; we must comply with those conditions, or we cannot expect

the blessings coupled with the promises. No farmer is such an idiot as

to look for a crop of wheat unless he has ploughed and sowed his fields.

In prayer, we must first be sure that we are doing our part if we

expect God to do His part. There is a legitimate sense in which every

Christian should do his utmost for the answering of his own prayers.

When a certain venerable minister was called on to pray in a missionary

convention he first fumbled in his pocket, and when he had tossed the

coin into the plate he said, "I cannot pray until I have given

something." He prepaid his prayer. For the Churches in these days to

pray, "Thy kingdom come," and then spend more money on jewellery and

cigars than in the enterprise of Foreign Missions, looks almost like a

solemn farce. God has no blessings for stingy pockets. When I hear

requests for prayer for the conversion of a son or daughter, I say to

myself, How much is that parent doing to win that child for Christ? The

godly wife who makes her daily life attractive to her husband has a

right to ask God for the conversion of that husband; she is co-operating

with the Holy Spirit, and prepaying her heart's request. God never

defaults; but He requires that we prove our faith by our works, and that

we never ask for a blessing that we are not ready to labour for, and to

make any sacrifice to secure the blessing which our souls desire.



4. Another essential of the prayer that has power with God is that it be

the prayer of faith, and be offered in the name of Jesus Christ.

"Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may

be glorified in the Son." The chief "wrestling" that we are to do is not

with any reluctance on God's part; it is with the obstacles which sin

and unbelief put in our pathway. What God orders we must submit to

uncomplainingly; but we must never submit to what God can better. Never

submit to be blocked in any pious purpose or holy undertaking if, with

God's help, you can roll the blocks out of your pathway. The faith that

works while it prays commonly conquers; for such faith creates such a

condition of things that our heavenly Father can wisely hear and help

us. Oh, what a magnificent epic the triumphs of striving, toiling,

victorious faith make! The firmament of Bible story blazes with answers

to prayer, from the days when Elijah unlocked the heavens on to the days

when the petitions in the house of John Mark unlocked the dungeon, and

brought liberated Peter into their presence. The whole field of

providential history is covered with answered prayers as thickly as

bright-eyed daisies cover our Western prairies. Find thy happiness in

pleasing God, and sooner or later He will surely grant thee the desires

of thy heart.



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