Answering Our Own Prayers
Te use this expression, not too literally, but simply for want of a better one. The idea we aim at is, that every Christian is bound to do his utmost for the fulfilment of his own prayers. He is never to ask God to give what he is not trying his utmost to obtain; he is never to ask God to make him what he is not faithfully trying to become.
This is our idea. It is partially illustrated by the familiar fable of Hercules and the wagoner. When the overloaded wagon sunk into the mire, instead of laboring to pry out the imbedded vehicle, the wagoner fell to praying Hercules to interpose his brawny arm for his relief. The god of muscle thus appealed to, reminded the luckless teamster that, while he prayed for help, he had better put his own shoulder to the wheel, and help himself.
In one sense this heathen fable illustrates the true relation between the sovereign God and the child of prayer. On our side is complete dependence. On the side of Omnipotence is infinite mercy. From Him cometh down every good and every perfect gift. And because we are so dependent upon our heavenly Father, and owe him so much of submission, obedience, and trust, therefore are we to “pray without ceasing.” But wThile we pray we are to work: first, as a proof of the sincerity of our desires; and next, in order to obey God, who commands us to become the very men that we ask him to make us by his grace.
Does every child of God do his utmost to secure the answers to his own uttered requests? Most empatically we reply, No! “With even the best men there is a sad disparity between prayer and practice — between the askings of the lips and the actings of the heart — between their life and their liturgy.
I. Take, for example, the oft-repeated prayer for growth in grace. This is a vital request, and the most formal Christian professor will utter it nearly every day of his life. If he would resist the continual gravitation of inward sin and surrounding worldliness, he must cry as continually for heart-grace. But just imagine the owner of a vast field of weeds kneeling down among the “johnswort” and Canada thistles, and praying God to give him from that field a plentiful corn harvest! Not a furrow has been turned. Not a kernel planted. But the insane husbandman implores from heaven a crop, toward the growing of which his sluggish fingers have not been lifted. My Christian brother, you never are guilty of such folly in the management of your secular interests. You never expect cargoes without sending ships seaward; you never count on crops without ploughing, manuring and seeding your acres. No school-girl would expect to see her pet flower grow in the conservatory without water and fresh earth. She sprinkles the azalea leaves until they drip, and feeds the delicate tuberose with new earth as often as its wasting leaves telegraph its hunger. God takes care of her plants: but she takes care of them too, and does not expect him to work miracles for the benefit of lazy people. Her prayer for her flowers is in the brimming pitcher and the virgin earth which her careful hands bring to the green-house.
Carry this same principle into your religion. Do you pray with the lips for growth in holiness, growth in heavenly-mindedness, growth in spiritual stamina? Then to the work of cleansing the heart-field! Then to the cutting up of the tares of covetousness — the Johns wort of pride — the nettles of selfishness — the briers of deceit — the overgrown burdocks of sloth — and the seed-scattering thistles of unbelief! Pull them by the roots. Give your inward lusts no quarter. Keep no terms with them. Make no compromise with some darling sin to sprout and grow unobserved in some back corner of your soulgarden. Clear out every weed, in order that the seed-corn of godliness may have the full strength of the affections and the energies to make it grow. Watch over that precious seed. Water it with prayers and penitential tears. Strengthen it with Bible truth. And as you pray for the growth of heart-piety, let no indulged lust, no pet sin, harbored in secret places, prove your uttered prayer to be an abomination in the sight of the all-searching God. “If I regard iniquity in my heart” (that is, if I cling to it and cherish it) “God will not hear me.” Nor will the Lord of holiness answer with a Yea what we are practically answering with a Nay.
II. Let us illustrate and apply this principle, in the next place, to parents who are praying for the conversion of their children. No petition is more fitting than this; none could be more acceptable to God. But what hope have you, my friend, for the renewal of your children’s hearts, if you pray in one direction with the lips, and quite in the opposite direction with the life? We see constantly the two antagonistic types of parental influence. Both are nominally Christian: only one is really such. The one man pleads at the altar for the sanctification of his household — that his sons may become sons of God, and his daughters may be as polished stones in the temple of Christ. He makes religion prominent in his family; it is visible, legible, and above board. The books that are brought home for the children to read, the newspapers that are taken, the amusements that are chosen, the society that is sought, the aims in life that are set before those children, all bear in one direction and in the right direction. God is not asked by that father to convert his offspring to godliness while he is doing his best to pervert them to sin and worldliness. Nor is God implored to convert them while the parent uses no agencies to affect the longed-for result. No more than the Lord would be asked to restore the sick boy from a typhus fever, and yet no physician called in and no medicine administered. How much worse if the father, having prayed that his child be restored, should fall to giving the poor boy strychnine or prussic acid in large doses!
Yet professed Christians do this very thing often in morals and religion. They pray for their children’s recovery to holiness, and then poison them! They pray for a son’s purity, and then flash the wine-cup before his eyes. They pray for a daughter’s conversion, with a theatreticket in their pockets — a “family ticket” for the whole household! They go to church, look devout, and then come home to trifle, to gossip — to entertain Sunday visitors at a sumptuous feast, to talk politics, to do anything, in short, but follow up the teachings of God’s minister with affectionate, faithful home instructions. The practical effect of their whole conduct and conversation, both on the Lord’s day and all the days of the week, is to undo whatever good may have been done by the earnest labors of the pulpit. What must such children think of those fluent prayers that they hear every night at the family altar? What of the consistency of those parents who utter such solemn mockeries? Oh! it is better never to pray at all for the conversion of your offspring than to ask God, in solemn tones, to save them, while you are using your whole influence to harden and destroy them. “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou unfaithful servant.”
In eternity it will be a terrible thing for many a man to meet his own prayers. Their very language will condemn him; for he knew his duty but he did it not. Those fervent prayers, which the good man labored to make effectual, will be “shining ones” in white raiment to conduct their author in to the banque ting-house of the Great King. But the falsehoods uttered at the throne of grace will live again as tormenting scorpions in the day of the Lord’s appearing. “Be not rash with thy mouth, nor let thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God,” is an injunction that forbids more than irreverence in prayer. It forbids us, by implication, to ask for that which we do not sincerely desire. Above all, it forbids the asking from God those blessings which we are hindering by our neglect, or thwarting by our selfishness and unbelief.