True Prayers Never Lost
IT is hard to believe that the fervent prayer of the righteous man is ever lost. The answer may be long delayed. It may come in a manner wholly unlooked for. The return of the prayer may be such that it may not be recognized by the devout soul who uttered it. But it is not lost.
I. For example, there are some prayers which we cannot expect to see answered immediately. I was at a monthly prayer-meeting last evening, where God’s people were pleading with Him for the conversion of the world. None of that praying company had any expectation of living to see the day when the last heathen nation should surrender to the victorious Jesus. Yet their petitions will never be forgotten. Those pleading disciples will yet behold the glorious fulfilment of their desires from the battlements of heaven. In our own experience we have seen many a prayer manifestly answered long after the saint who breathed it into the ear of the Saviour has gone to lay his weary head on that Saviour’s breast.
A dying mother commits her beloved boy to a covenant-keeping God. She has often borne that child in the arms of faith to the mercy-seat. He has been the child of many prayers; and in the feeble utterances oi her passing spvnl axvoXXxet ^xA ‘a.X^b petition is breathed forth that Christ would have mercy on his soul. Years roll away. The sod has grown green, and the rank grass has long waved over that mother’s tomb. In some distant land — mayhap hundreds of miles from that spot — a full-grown man, who has long been ripening in sin, is seen bowed in prayer. He is crying out of an agonized heart, God be merciful to me a sinner / Behold, he prayeth, and his prayer is the answer of the fervent petitions which his dying mother uttered many long years before. Her requests were recorded in God’s book of remembrance; and but for them we know not that the prayer of that penitent son would have ever ascended there. Let praying fathers and mothers never grow faint of heart Let desponding churches, long unvisited by revival blessings, only close up their ranks more compactly about the mercy-seat, and besiege heaven with new importunity. For above the dark cloud of their discouragement is written, as in the clear upper sky,” He that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.^’
2. Other prayers are answered at the time of their utterance, but in a way so imlooked for that he who offered them is inclined to think that the very opposite of what he asked for has befallen him. One individual prays, for instance, that he may be enabled to glorify God. Ere he is aware, some tremendous calamity comes crashing down upon him, prostrating h’lm to the dust. His foitune & sex ^^^.^ qt his
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schemes of promotion are blasted. A feivourite child is missed from the cradle or the fireside. His hopes are withered like grass. God has answered his prayer, but He answered it, as the psalmist says, “by terrible things.” From under the overwhelming pressure of affliction he flees to Jesus, his Divine Comforter, and oh, how his love is kindled by the contact! How his latent faith is called forth! How he glorifies God in the fimiace of trial which is purging away the dross of selfishness and worldliness, and making his pure gold shine with tenfold brightness!
We once saw an earnest inquirer who was praying most importunately for faith in Christ, and for peace to his troubled souL But while he prayed a cloud of darkness gathered across his horizon. And against that cloud, which hung like a fimeral pall before his vision, played the sharp lightnings of the Almighty’s wrath. The thunders of God’s law roared against him. Instead of peace came only the sword. Instead of th calm he sought came the fearful tempest; and under the stress of its terrors, the poor baffled soul betakes himself to the “covert” which Christ has raised on Calvary. There he finds the peace he so earnestly prayed for. There the long-sought confidence in Jesus pours its fulness through the soul. His prayer was answered — first by terrible things, but at last by the very blessings which he desired. And without that storm the true calm would have never come. Had the sinner not been led to that frightful view of his own gviit axidi c.OTA^lfi5Na<^^> he might never have gone to Christ, and thus could not have known true abiding peace. As he looks back over the dark valley of sorrow through which the Divine hand has wondrously led him, and sees that no other way would so surely bring him to the cross, he feels a renewed assurance that no true prayer is ever lost 3 he now knows that he that asketh aright will always receive, and he that seeketh will surely find. His experience is worth all that it cost him.
3. Once more, let us remark that the petitions of believers are often answered according to their intention and not according to the strict letter of the request. The utterer of the prayer sought only the glory of God; but, in his ignorance, asked for wrong things. God hears and answers him; but the blessing granted is something very different from what the believer expected. The case of Paul is a beautiful illustration of this. He is sorely afflicted by a “thorn in the flesh.’’ What the precise nature of the affliction was, we know not. Perhaps it was a severe malady; perhaps a besetting sin; perhaps a mortifying deformity of body or of character. He beseeches God in three earnest petitions that this “thorn” might depart from him. His prayers are heard. They are answered. But, instead of the removal of the thorn comes the cheering assurance, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” The Lord does not take away the trial, but gives him all that is needed to make it endurable; thus the Divine glory and Paul’s spiritual well-being were more certainly advanced than if the prayer had been answered strictly according to its letter.
The prayer was not lost. That God hears every sincere prayer, who can doubt? The sceptic must seal his vision, lest, coming to the light, he shall be persuaded against himself. He must mutilate or destroy the shining record of God’s providential dealings with the children of faith. He must erase from the Bible the animating narrative of Jacob’s midnight struggle, the thrilling scenes of Elijah’s wrestlings at Carmel and at Zarephath, the “evening oblations” of Daniel, and the angelic deliverance of Peter from the prison cell. He must destroy many a leaf from the Christian’s diary, on which devout gratitude has written, “This day I learned anew that my heavenly Father hears and answers prayer.” He must give the lie to omniscient Love, which has uttered in the ear of all the needy, sorrowing, guilty household of humanity, “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.”” And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.*’