The Cost of Praying

“Say, what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed? The mighty utterance of a mighty need. The man is praying who doth press with might Out of his darkness into God’s own light.”

IT seems easy to pray. It is only speaking a few simple words into our Father’s ear. We are not accustomed to think of praying as some thing hard. Yet sometimes it is only at sore cost that we can pray. Many of the things we ask for can come to us only through struggle and tears.

The basis of all praying is the submission of the whole life to the will of God. We cannot pray at all unless we make this full surrender. There is a story of a young naval officer who was taken prisoner. Brought into the presence of the commandant of the victorious squadron, he reached out his hand to him, his sword yet hanging by his side. “Your sword first,” said his captor. No greeting or salutation could be accepted until surrender was complete. Nor can we approach God in acceptable prayer until we have altogether submitted our will to his. All our prayers must be based upon “Thy will, not mine, be done.” It costs much to make this surrender. It means a giving up of our own will and our own way. When it is sincere and real, every kneeling at Christ’s feet is a laying of one’s self upon the altar anew in entire devotion. We can keep nothing back and pray truly. A sin cherished makes words of prayer of no avail. A plan, a wish, a desire, wilfully urged, not submitted to God’s perfect will, pressed rebelliously, shuts the ear of God to our praying. To pray means always the sacrifice of the will.

Is it, then, never hard to pray? Does it cost nothing? Are there no struggles with self, no giving up of desires dear as life, no dropping of cherished things out of the hand, no crushing of tender human affections, in the quiet “Thy will be done” of our prayers?

It was something you wanted, but you were not sure God wanted you to have it. You prayed earnestly for it, but you said, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The gift did not come, but your desire became less and less intense as you prayed and waited. At last, when it became evident that it was not God’s will to grant your wish, there was no bitterness, no lingering struggle, only peace and a song. But did the submission cost you nothing?

Or it was a sorrow against which you pleaded. A loved one was stricken. With all your heart you prayed that your friend might recover. Yet, as you prayed, you were led by a gentle constraint to lay the burden of your desire in submission at God’s feet. Slowly, as the days and nights of watching went by, and the illness grew worse instead of better, and when it became more and more certain that your dear one would be taken from you, there came into your heart a new, strange sense of God’s love, and you were calm and quiet. Then, when the sorrow came, there was no rebellion, no bitterness, but only sweet

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trust. All this wondrous change your praying had wrought in you. It had not changed God’s wa>, bringing it down to yours, but it had lifted you up into accord with God’s will. Did it cost you nothing?

This is the inner history of every praying life. We ask for things we desire, things which we think would make us happier. Yet these things which we think would be bread to our hearts would really prove a stone if we had them. Our Father will never give his child a stone for bread, and hence the story of much of our praying is a story of unanswered prayers — unanswered in a sense. The ’ things we want must be given up. Self must die. Desire must yield. Faith must grow. Our wills must blend with God’s. Our restlessness must nestle in his rest. Our struggle must become quiet in his peace. We must be lifted up nearer to God. Such struggle costs — costs anguish and tears, but it brings us rich good. No doubt many of our best blessings come through God’s withholdings. Ofttimes it is more blessed to learn to do without things than it would be to get them. The prayer is not really unanswered in such cases. The things we asked for would not have been a blessing; but the very longing, though it was not satisfied, did us good, made us stronger, lifted us up into better life, while the lesson of submission learned through struggle and pain was rich in its discipline. It is in such experiences that we grow upward toward God. Writes Sarah K. Bolton: —

Life is full of broken measures,

Objects unattained:
Sorrows intertwined with pleasures,
Losses of our costliest treasures,

Ere the heights be gained.

Every soul has aspiration

Still unsatisfied:
Memories that wake vibration
Of the heart in quick pulsation,

At the gifts denied.

We are better for the longing,

Stronger for the pain: Souls at ease are nature wronging; — Through the harrowed soul come thronging

Seeds, in sun and rain!

Broken measures, fine completeness

In the perfect whole:
Life is but a day in fleetness;
Richer in all strength and sweetness

Grows the striving soul.”

But such lessons are not easily learned. Such discipline is not easily gotten. It always costs to pray the soul into calmness and peace. The struggle grows less and less as the praying goes on; the pleadings are less intense; at last they sob themselves into silence, and the lips speak with love and trust the word of submission. But it has been at sore cost that this result has been gained. It was the dying of self that was going on. Such praying costs.

There is another phase of the cost of praying. We ask for more holiness. We know that this is God’s will for us, and yet it may require a long time of struggle to bring our lives into true accord with our own desire. We pray to be made more humble, but it is probable that our longing can be answered only through many buffetings and defeats. We ask for patience, but the very word tells of suffering to be endured, and the quality of patience is one that can be gotten only through trial. We ask for more of Christ in our heart, and God is very willing to grant us this request. But perhaps our heart is so preoccu* pied that room for more of Christ can be made only by the casting out of many other things. Here is where the cost is experienced. The old nature in us will not yield to the new with out a protest, nor until vanquished and put under foot.

It is never easy to grow better. You pray for a gentle temper. Does it come quietly and softly in answer to your prayer, as the dove came down out of the heavens to abide on Christ at his baptism? This certainly is not the usual history of the evolution of a sweet temper. It is a story rather of sore and long discipline, in which a turbulent and uncontrolled spirit is, by a slow process, tamed and trained into self-control, ofttimes only through long and sore struggle and many failures. When a man with an ungoverned temper begins to pray sincerely and earnestly that he may learn to rule his own spirit and to grow into lovingness of disposition, he does not know what it will cost him to have his prayer answered. It is the same with all sincere requests for Christlikeness. We have the impression that a few petitions breathed up to God, asking him to make us pure, loving, and gentle, will bring the answer in some mysterious way, working the change in us without any effort or struggle of our own. But it is not thus that such prayers are answered.

John Newton, in one of his hymns, tells the story of such a prayer. He asked the Lord that he might grow in faith, and love, and every grace. He hoped that in some favored hour the request would be at once answered, and his sins subdued by love’s restraining power. Instead of this, however, he was made to feel the hidden evils of his heart, and his soul was assaulted by the angry powers of darkness.

‘”Lord, why is this?’ I trembling cried;

‘Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?” ‘Tis in this way,’ the Lord replied, •I answer prayer for grace and faith;

These inward trials I employ From self and pride to set thee free;

And break thy schemes of earthly joy, That thou mayest seek thine all in me.’1’

They know not what they ask who begin to pray sincerely and deeply, “Nearer, my God, to thee.” It may indeed require a cross to lift us higher and nearer. But no price is too great to pay to become conquerors over self, and to grow into holiness and beauty of life.

Another example of the cost of praying is found in prayers for others. Sometimes it is easy enough to pray for our friends, and seems to involve nothing on our part. But we do not pray long for others with true earnestness and with the importunity of love, before we find that we have something to do to make our praying avail. A parent’s pleading for a child draws the parent’s whole soul with it. We pray for the heathen; and, unless we are heartlessly insincere, we must take a corresponding interest in movements to save the heathen. We pray for the sick, the poor, the needy; and if we mean it at all, our love will not stop at

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praying. A city missionary implored God to send his angel to care for two orphan children whom he had found in a cold, tireless hovel, starving and naked beside the dead body of their mother. Instantly a voice spoke to him in his conscience, “Thou art mine angel; for this very purpose did I send thee here.” His praying for these children proved a costly act. You would better not begin pleading for one of God’s little ones in need or trouble, telling God of your interest in the suffering one, if you want your praying to cost you nothing. Almost surely God will ask you to care for the suffering one for him.

We are to pray for our enemies, for those who despitefully use us. That is not easy. It costs no struggle when we go home in the evening and kneel down before God in our closet, to recall all who have been gentle and kind to us, and to pray for them. Anybody can do that. But we are to recall also and especially those who have been unkind to us, who have spoken evil of us, or have injured us in some way, and are to pray for these. And praying for them involves forgiveness in every case. We cannot keep the resentment, the angry feeling, the grudge, after truly praying for those who have done us hurt. At the altar of intercessory prayer all anger, passion, and bitterness die. Praying for others sweeps out of our heart everything but love. Thus it proves very costly, but the blessing it brings is very rich.

These are illustrations of the cost of praying. Every true spiritual longing is a reaching up out of self into a better, truer, nobler life. Praying is always a climbing upward toward God. We can thus climb only at the cost of struggle and self-denial, the crucifixion of the old nature. David said he would not offer to God that which had cost him nothing. In prayer the same test can be applied. Pleadings that cost nothing have no answer. Prayers that cost the most bring down the richest blessings.