Our God as a Rewarder

Among all the names and attributes of our heavenly Father, there is a very endearing one that is contained in that glorious epic of faith, the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews. We there read that God is the ‘’rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” That precious promise is linked with every earnest prayer and every act of obedience. God rewards labor. Does not every farmer act in faith when he drives his plow in springtime and drops his grain into the mellow ground? Every minister prepares his Gospel message, every Sabbath school teacher conducts the Bible lesson, and every godly parent tills the soil of the child’s docile heart in the simple faith that God rewards sowing with harvests.

God rewards obedience. He enjoins
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Upon every sinner repentance and the forsaking of his sins and the acceptance of Jesus Christ as his atoning Saviour. Every sinner that breaks off from his sins and lays hold of Jesus Christ does it on the assurance that our truth-keeping God wiD reward obedience. “By faith, Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, prepared an ark to the saving of his house.” An unbelieving generation hooted, no doubt, at the ‘’fanatic” who was wasting his time and money on that unwieldly vessel.

God rewards believing prayer for right things, when it is offered in a submissive spirit. “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find.” Humble, childlike faith creates a condition of things in which it is wise and right for God to grant what might otherwise be denied. We grasp the blessed truth that He hears prayer, and gives the best answer to prayer in His own time and way; upon these two facts we plant our knees when we bow down before Him. O, the long, long trials to which we are often subjected while our loving Father is testing 159 our faith and giving it more vigor and volume!

Godly wives are often left to press their earnest petitions through months and years before the answer comes in the work of the converting Spirit. There was an excellent woman in my congregation who was for a long time anxious for the conversion of her husband. She endeavored to make her own Christian life very attractive to him — a very important point, too often neglected. On a certain Sabbath she shut herself up and spent much of the day in beseeching prayers that God would touch her husband’s heart. She said nothing to her husband, but took the case straight up to the throne of grace. The next day when she opened her Bible to conduct family worship, according to her custom, he came and took the book out of her hands and said, ‘’Wifey, it is about time that I did this,” and he read the chapter himself. Before the week was over he was praying himself, and at the next communion he united with our church. 16o

Verily, God is a rewarder of them that dihgently seek Him. That praying Hannah who said, “The grief of my heart is that of all of my six children not one loves Jesus,” was not satisfied that it should be so. She continued her fervent supplications until five of them were converted during a revival. They all united in a day of fasting and prayer for the sixth daughter, and she was soon rejoicing in Christ. The victory that overcame in that case was a faith that would not be denied.

Sometimes the prayers of parents are answered long after the lips that breathed them are molded into dust. When a certain Captain K — sailed on his last sea voyage he left a prayer for his little boy written out and deposited in an oaken chest. After his death at sea his widow locked up his chest, and when she was on her dying bed she gave the key to their son. He grew up a licentious and dissolute man. When he had reached middle life he determined to open that chest, out of mere curiosity. He found in it a paper, on the outside of which was 16i written, “The prayer of M — K — for his wife and child.” He read the prayer, put it back in the chest, but could not lock it out of his troubled heart. It burned there like a live coal. He became so distressed that the woman with whom he was living as his mistress thought he was becoming deranged. He broke down in penitence, cried to God for mercy, and, making the woman his legal wife, began a new life of prayer and obedience to God’s commandments. And so God proved to be the rewarder of a faith that had been hidden away in a secret place a half a century before! I have no doubt that among the blessed surprises in eternity will be the triumphs of many a believer’s trusting prayers.