Helping Another in Prayer

Prayer in private, for one’s self or for others, is a purely personal and individual concern. It is wholly between one’s self and God. No one else is to be considered in its thought or phrasing. In this it differs from public prayer with or for others. When others are to be led in prayer, they are carefully to be borne in mind in what is spoken and in the spirit of one’s speech. Public prayer is necessarily quite different from private prayer.

Still another kind of prayer, differing from prayer by one’s self and prayer with an assemblage, is prayer with and for another individual, prayer by a sick-bed, prayer with one in bereavement or sorrow, prayer with an anxious or a doubting soul, prayer with one who needs help and guidance and comfort. Such prayer is often a

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duty, and it behooves one to be ready for it when necessary, and to conduct it considerately, sympathetically, and wisely.

If you would help another in prayer, you must first put yourself alongside of him as he is, in order to bring him to the plane where you would like him to be. If he is cast down by sorrow or penitence, or perplexed by doubt or anxiety, it will not do for you to start out with a clear, sharp note of triumphant faith, or of confident rejoicing. He is not ready for that. It is likely to discourac< him. If he thinks that you cannot understand his case, or be touched by the feeling of his infirmities as he is, you are not the helper that he needs. His heart cannot open out toward yours.

Unless you perceive his present state of mind, and see just how he is feeling, and why he feels so, you are unprepared to pray with him in such tenderness and sympathy as convinces him that you are his friend and helper, and makes him ready to be led along by you in the path you oP AM! jbo ee Se ee

Welping Anotber in Prayer

would have him walk. If your opening words of prayer seem to condemn his present state of mind, or to reproach him for feeling as he feels, you will fail of winning his confidence or of being his personal helper. Beware of such a beginning of your prayer as puts a barrier between him and you at the start. You can never help a despondent soul upward by soaring above him, and summoning him to rise and accompany you in your flight, before you have stooped down to him, and gained a hold on him in his despondency. He must be taken as he is, even though you do not intend to leave him so.

It touches a heart deeply to find itself understood and sympathized with, especially if it has felt itself stricken beyond comparison or appreciation. “The heart knoweth its own bitterness.” There is no doubt on that point. And when, in its grief, the heart’s hopeless cry is, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, where-Prayer

with the Lord hath afflicted me,” it is a startling surprise, that may even bring comfort to the soul, to find that another understands this bitterness and sorrow, even if it has not experienced its very like. Help like this comes in sympathetic prayer from one who kneels by the stricken one, and pours out to God his own soul in supplications that the aching heart can make its own, even while it could not have framed them intelligibly.

Kneeling by the bedside of a bereaved mother, who was mourning hopelessly the death of her dearest child, and who did not even wish to be comforted by any words of cheer, a clergyman who had experienced the loss of a greatly loved child under peculiarly trying circumstances, began his gently spoken prayer substantially thus: “Dear Saviour, thou knowest the depths of this great sorrow; and we are sure that thou wouldst gladly give help, even by bringing back to the longing heart of this mourning mother the dear child whom Ta

Wielping Anotber in Prayer

thou hast taken from her. Thou canst do it, dear Lord; and we know that somehow, hard as it is for us to understand it, only love keeps thee back from doing so. Thou understandest this mother’s love and this mother’s grief. Thou dost thyself love her, and love her child, very dearly. Her dear child understands thee now better than she can; and that dear child would say to her as thou dost say, Mother, take comfort. If you knew all, you could not wish it different ’» —

At this point, the mother burst out with the cry, “Do you think that’s so?” Her heart was now open to a comforting thought; and the way was ready for a common prayer by the two believers to their common Saviour, in their common sorrow. She was led into a frame of mind for that prayer by being sympathized with. while she yet lacked that frame of mind. Similar words of comfort and help are often spoken in prayer by one who seeks to minister to a needy soul in the spirit of Prayer

Christ. They ought to be spoken yet more frequently.

An army deserter in war time was under sentence of death. Handcuffed and fettered, he was crouching by starlight on the banks of the James River. A chaplain sat by him, who had vainly proffered him help and counsel. The deserter wanted no prayers in his behalf, no advice or sympathy. He said he had “lived game,” and he would “die game.” The chaplain had, however, learned enough of his story to know that he had a mother in his distant home, for whom he still had feelings of affection. The chaplain knelt and began a prayer tenderly in behalf of the condemned soldier. Praying to the God of all comfort, he asked that, even though he might lack comfort, it might be given to the crushed and sad-hearted mother, when she learned, in her lonely home, of the death of the son of her love.

At this mention, in the prayer, of the breaking mother-heart, the stubborn son Helping Another in Prayer

uttered a wild cry, as if his own heart had burst, and he threw himself forward on the sward, and sobbed great sobs of grief. The chaplain stretched himself alongside of him, and for a while he simply showed his sympathy by holding his arm lovingly about the soldier’s neck and letting him cry out his cry. Then he spoke tenderly, and asked if he might not pray for that mother’s boy as well as for her. All stubbornness was gone. The two prayed together now, and the chaplain could help the soldier in prayer as he could not before. Many a soul which cannot, as things are, help itself in prayer, can be helped by another in prayer. It waits for some man to put its needy form into the healing waters of the spiritual Bethesda, that it may receive a blessing, and it ought not to wait in vain. If a »eedy soul cannot go alone to Jesus, it should be carried. As the palsied man was borne by loving hands, and let down through the roof, to be laid at the feet of the Great Physician, £19

“spiritually palsied soul, ken lay them at the feet of Jesus. He can heal ‘and+ we can help them thus to their y

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Praying with another, vee is not in a iy state to pray for himself, is one way Of 2a Ne using prayer to a good purpose, and is one sway of helping another who sorely needs help. Prayer is always to the same Hearer Ax: of prayer, and our prayers are always from. the same petitioner, but different ones who are prayed with require different words and methods of prayer.

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