Prayerless Prayers
Prayer is one of the simplest things in the world, and yet one of the deepest of mysteries. In its motive and in its method it is perfectly simple; the talk of a child to its father could not be more so. In its prevailing power with Jehovah, and its unity with the great doctrine of his fixed decrees, it is to us a profound mystery. Such let it remain. It is not given to us to know all mysteries; but it is permitted us, and it is commanded us. to “pray without ceasing.”
What is prayer? Is it the rehearsal, on the bended knee, of a set form of solemn words, learned by rote from the Bible, from a liturgy, or from the traditions of the elders? Many seem so to regard it. To them it is no higher, no deeper, no holier thing than that. Millions of so-called prayers have risen no loftier in characio8 Prayerless Prayers.
ter or meaning; and however devout or elegant in language, they cannot but be regarded as prayerless prayers; for true prayer is an earnest soul’s direct converse with its God. Many other definitions might be given. This one answers our purpose now — the direct and earnest converse of a soul with God. By it, a poor, guilty soul confesses its sins; by it, a needy soul makes known its wants; through it, a devout, God-loving soul pours forth its adoration; and by means of it, infinite blessings are brought down from heaven. The characteristics of the best prayer would be reverence, directness, sincerity, faith, and expectation of an answer through Jesus Christ. The lack of any one of these vitiates our petitions, and goes far toward making them prayerless.
Let us offer a word or two on the characteristics of faith and directness of meaning.
I. Faith is vital to every true prayer. It is the very child of a believing spirit. We must draw nigh to God, fully persuaded that we are asking for the right thing, that we are asking at the right place, that we are asking with the right spirit; and there must we plead the promises again and again and again, till the windows of heaven open above our heads. Not only must we believe in God, but believe also in prayer; not only that it is a good thing, but the only thing for our emergency. And when we have sought a longed-for object from our heavenly Father — using all the while our own best exertions too — then a truce to all worrying anxieties as to the result. Faith never worries. Selfishness does; so does Unbelief. But he that trusts God, and uses all human agencies to secure the result he aims at, has no right to borrow trouble as to God’s disposal of his petitions. When I have done the utmost that skill and patient love can do for my sick child, and when I have laid the darling in the arms of Christ with beseeching prayer, I have the assurance that he will answer me; if not by restoring the dear sufferer to health, then by restoring my soul to a better spiritual health by taking her away from me. At any rate, my faith must be strong enough to believe that God will so answer me as to please himself and to profit my own soul, or else I have but offered a poor apology for prayer. True faith takes God at his word. True faith reckons 10 no Prayerless Prayers.
on answers to prayer as a fixed object of expectation, just as surely as the seed-scattering husbandman reckons on the May rains and the July sunshine. Have you done your own utmost, my brother? Have you prayed your utmost? Then bid adieu to anxiety. Sit down, and eat your bread in peace. Lay your head at night on your pillow, and go to sleep as a tired child Mis asleep on the breast that heaves in the undulations of love. You have ho business to put one wrinkle in your brow, or one thorn under your pillow. Wait on God. Keep waiting. Don’t be uneasy. You will find your answer coming all in good time; and God’s time is always the best time. “Faith,” as the great Dr. Mason used to say, in his broad Scotch style, “is joost the delightful recoombency of the soul on the bosom of the Redeemer.”
II. Is this the way you pray? Or is your uttered liturgy at the throne of grace a faithless mummery of words, not merely with no expectation of an answer, but really without anything to be answered? This is possible. I fear that more than half the smoothly-worded “addresses at the mercy seat” (that is the very word for them —
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addresses) have no definite object, no aim, no purpose. They embody no felt want; they express no genuine desire. However elegant, however scriptural in phraseology, however orthodox, they are really prayerless prayers.
To test ourselves as to this point of directness of meaning, let us habitually ask our hearts, when we arise from our knees, “What have we been asking for? anything? Was there any clearly understood desire in our mind which we took to the throne of grace, and laid there?” For what is a petition but the asking for some appreciated, desired, and needed thing? In all our intercourse with our fellow-men we never practice the preposterous farce that we so often play off upon God. When we enter a neighbor’s house to borrow a certain article, we have no difficulty in making our neighbor comprehend just what we are after. The merchant does not enter the bank until he has a definite idea of the amount he wishes to raise upon his note, and he makes the officers understand the precise sum he requires. If our child is dying, we know just where to go for a physician — just what to tell him; and we do not leave him until we ascertain whether he is coming. Here is precision, and also pertinacity of purpose. Faith in the physician and his remedies sends us to his house; and our directness of purpose leaves him in no doubt as to our errand. Now. in every rightly-conceived and rightly-presented petition to the heavenly King there will be the same confidence to lead us to his presence, and the same definite utterance of the heart’s desire when we have come there.
If prayer only had a clearly defined, deeply felt object to plead for. it never would be a dull drudgery or a painful penance. We would say to ourselves. “How shall we best bring our burden of desire before our heavenly Father?” Oh that we knew what argument to plead with him! Oh that we might come near enough to touch the hem of Christ’s garment! then would we entreat him to make intercession for us at the court of heaven; then would we pray as sick Hezekiah prayed for health, as blind Bar ti mens cried out for recovery of sight, as the heart- wrung Jairus besought Christ’s interposition for his dying daughter, as the conscience-smitten publican begged for mercy to him. a sinner. And there are two or three things we would not do. We would not so often be guilty of solemn falsehoods told in pious language to the truth-loving God. We should not so often starve our souls, or insult our heavenly Father. We should not so often be guilty of uttering — what we have all uttered quite too often already — the hollow mockery of prayerless prayers.