We read throughout the history of the Gospels, again and again, of our blessed Lord being engaged in prayer. For this purpose He went out “a great while before day” (Mark 1:35). What an example! From it we can learn that in the midst of all confusion and activity of service, we should never forget prayer. If we neglect it, if in the activity even of ministering the Word of God we fail to be in the sanctuary alone with God, we will lose the power to present the precious truth. Luther once said, “To have prayed well is to have said well,” and on our knees we will gain instruction and knowledge; it is the place from which we will go forth in power to set forth the truth of God.

Christ’s Example

      So in the midst of all His activities, with multitudes pressing and thronging Him, though going here and there in untiring service, our Lord would rob the night of its sleep in order to be alone with His Father. If He, the Son of God, did that, oh, how much more do we, poor feeble creatures, need to be alone with Him who is the source of all our strength!

      We read that “He continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). What did He pray for? When He came down from that holy vigil with His Father, He selected the twelve apostles. May we not believe that in this administration of His service, He considered with His Father the character of each to be selected—the impulsiveness of Peter, the loyalty of John, the boldness of others, and alas, the awful, awful treachery of one who knew Him not nor cared for Him? Then having reviewed it all with His Father in that night of prayer, He came down from the mountain and unflinchingly selected each one according to the will of the Father.

      Thus He has given us not only a glimpse into His own holy life, but also the secret of how to be guided in the order and government that God may have put into our hands.

      In passing, let me refer to the necessity of this in all the discipline and government of the house of God. It is so easy to get into a spirit of strife, so easy to seek our own wills, our own vindication, or even, alas, to vent our own displeasure! Oh, beloved, if we are alone with God in the sanctuary in prayer, He will guide us as to the administration of the government that He has entrusted to us.

      Again, we read of Him in prayer on the Mount of Transfiguration, just as at His baptism (Luke 3:21; 9:28). How the Father must have delighted in the outflow of the heart of His holy Son to Him, so much so that He opened the heavens to declare, as it were, “This is He, this One here on His knees, this One praying in dependence on Me, this One who has no thought but My glory; He is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” (see Matt. 17:5). May we ask what He was praying about on that mount? Was He asking for the glory? Do you think He was asking to be introduced to it? We know what Moses and Elijah spoke of with Him while there on the holy mount. It was the decease that He should accomplish at Jerusalem! I think that prayer of the Lord at the time of His transfiguration, when the glory shone out from Him and shone around about Him, all from God, I think it must have been that He too poured out His soul to His Father as to that decease, for which He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. Only by way of the cross could He enter that glory of which the Transfiguration was the anticipation.

Asking in Christ’s Name

      I have been much impressed with the fact that in John 13-17 the Lord is bringing His people into communion with Himself, and that in various parts of it He emphasizes the spirit of prayer. For example, “Whatsoever you shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (14:13). In this He shows us the secret of what He says to those whom He is leaving here: “He who believes on Me… greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto My Father” (14:12). It is prayer. Notice, too, how in the Lord’s references to prayer in these chapters you find “in My name” mentioned with each one. What does “in My name” mean? Is it something like what you write at the close of a letter, “Yours respectfully,” or “Yours sincerely,” or whatever it may be, as a matter of courtesy? Are not perhaps many of our prayers closed with that courteous expression, if I may so say, “In the name of Thy dear Son?” I am sure we do not mean it as formality, but sometimes it almost seems like just an appendix to the prayer. No, beloved; to ask in His name means rather to be taken by the hand and led to prayer by Him; it means, may I say, His kneeling by our side and His desires flowing through our heart.

      “In My name.” His name is what He is, His nature, and therefore to pray in the name of Christ must mean to pray according to His blessed will. Can I pray for evil in the name of the Son of God? What I pray for should really be an expression of His nature. Can I do that in prayer? Prayer should breathe the power of the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ, the desires of Christ in us and for us. The Lord teach us more and more to pray in His name. We would not think of closing a prayer without the very words, “In the blessed name of our Lord,” but then the whole supplication should be infiltrated and permeated by the blessed name of Jesus—all according to that name.

Seeking the Father’s Glory

      There is another thing: “That the Father may be glorified in the Son” (14:13). Is that why we pray, dear brethren? Not for ourselves, but “that the Father may be glorified in His Son”? What a holy and blessed motive under the power of which to guide our intercession and supplication! How it searches the heart! Let it test us. Is this our first thought of prayer? Am I asking this for the Father’s glory in the Son? This will eliminate a thousand selfish, fleshly, superficial requests! What will it leave? The glory of Christ, the glory of the Father. It will make us join with the Lord in the supplications of His heart.

Asking Anything

      Again we have in 14:14, “If you shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.” Anything? There is no limit here because we have asked in His name. Because the glory of the Father in the Son is in view, God can not deny the glory of His Son; He can not deny His own glory. If we are praying in the name of Christ, according to the mind of Christ our Lord, we are praying His own thoughts and His own desires. “If you shall ask anything in My Name.” Have we tried it, beloved? Are we living in that atmosphere of prayer? I know for myself, beloved brethren, prayer is a conflict, and by that I mean, not that it is difficult, one may say, to have the regular seasons of prayer, but to instinctively, without effort, turn to God in prayer about everything.

Prayer and Fruitfulness

      Now in 15:16, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He will give it you.” A fruitful life flows from a life of prayer. A soul growing in grace is one that pours itself out in prayer. I know there are dangers; sometimes intemperate expressions are used, for instance, that we should read our Bible less and pray more. There is no need for such a statement, for the more you read your Bible the more you are going to pray. The more you feed on it, and let your soul be filled with it, controlled by it, your very thoughts conformed by it, the more you will pray.

      A prayerful life is a fruitful life. Even the ordinary normal affairs of life, our meat and drink, are sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. They go together. And so when “Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His Word,” the next chapter, in immediate connection with that lovely incident, shows the Lord praying and His disciples saying, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 10:39; 11:1). Beloved, the more you have His Word abiding in you, the more you will feel your need of prayer and the more you will be compelled to pray. Through the exercise it leads to we learn our nothingness, our helplessness; our own shortcomings and failures pass before us; and because of this we will be forced to turn and cry to Him in prayer. The Lord grant that the fruitfulness that He desires may be realized, but let us remember that for this prayer is essential.

Truth Without Prayer

      As we come under sound teaching and become acquainted with the truth of His Word, we need to be warned of the great danger of holding the truth in a prayerless way. This means holding it without communion with God, and so without corresponding power in our lives. How vain to talk about the coming of the Lord without truly waiting for that coming; to talk about our complete standing in Christ without delighting, with adoring hearts, in that standing; to talk about knowing the Father, about having the Spirit, without having our whole lives bowed with gratitude and adoring worship because of such wondrous blessing. Oh, I pray for myself and for all of us, that we might not lose the mellowness, the holiness, the earnestness, and the prayer that go along with the marvelous endowment of truth! I believe that our failures, our shortcomings and inconsistencies—and alas, they are only too manifest—can be traced individually and collectively to a lack of true prayer among the people of God. I believe it to be so much so that I desire more and more to have my life marked by a spirit of prayer, and for that reason I speak of these things in introducing the wondrous, holy prayer of our blessed Lord.

Prayer to the Father and the Son

      Look now at 16:23: “And in that day you shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you.” The Lord had said, “I will give it you;” now He says, “He will give it you.” “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30). How completely is the Lord in the place of supremacy, and how perfectly He draws out our prayers to Himself and to His Father! I find myself—do you?—praying to the Lord Jesus again and again, and I find, thank God, that I pray to the Father. Some have taught that we ought not to pray to the Lord Jesus, but in the light of this Holy Word you can pray and praise directly to Him. Then, on the other hand, it is our holy, happy privilege to pray to the Father as well, and give thanks to the Father, who “has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12). Perhaps you say, “Why not pray to the Holy Spirit?” For a very blessed reason: we pray in the Holy Spirit. “You, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit …” (Jude 21). It is prayer in His power. “We know not what things we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). The Holy Spirit leads out our hearts in prayer, and He is with us and therefore we do not pray to Him; He prays in us and through us to the Father and to the Son.

      How blessed, thus, to find the whole Trinity, the divine fullness of God, engaged in prayer. We read on, “Hitherto you have asked nothing in My name; ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full” (16:24). Beloved, joy is the power of our lives; joy and love go hand in hand, and they are both the fruit of a life of prayer. Oh, brethren, I speak to the younger believers and to all of us: snatch time for reading the Word early in the day, the first thing in the morning; and add to it that which belongs to it, namely, praying. The privilege of prayer is a wonderful, amazing privilege of pouring out our hearts to God, individually and unitedly. What are our prayer meetings, beloved? Is there any savor of dullness about them, any bit of formality, any holding back? Does some dear brother say, “I am not gifted with prayer?” Oh, there is nobody “gifted with prayer”; it is the power of the Holy Spirit in us. A man may have a gift of evangelizing, or teaching, or pastoral care, but I read not a line of having a gift of prayer. That is the mark of all the people of God, and we want to use our holy, happy privilege.

      Our final verse is 16:26: “At that day you shall ask in My name, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God.” We do not have to use the Lord as an intermediary; we are brought to the Father, we can speak directly to the Father, and because we can do that we never omit the Son. But then “the Father Himself loves you.” We look at ourselves; how unworthy of love we are, and yet our blessed Lord assures us that “the Father Himself”—the Father of glory, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Possessor of heaven and earth—“the Father Himself loves you.” Therefore we can ask what we will according to the blessed nature and name of our Lord Jesus, and the answers will surely be given.             (From “None of Self … Christ Is All, a Memorial of S. Ridout,” in Help and Food, Vol. 48.)

“The earnest expectation of the creature [or creation] waits for the manifestation of the sons of God…. The whole creation groans and travails in pain together unto now…. We ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body…. The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:22,23,26).

      All creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. Then shall its deliverance come. We who have the Spirit know that all creation groans in its estrangement from God, as a woman in labor, yet in hope. When the glory shall set the children free, creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption and partake in the liberty of the glory.

      The Holy Spirit, who makes us know that we are children and heirs of glory, teaches us by the same means to understand all the misery of creation; through our bodies we are in connection with it, so that there is sympathy. Thus we also wait for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body. For as to possession of the full result, it is in hope that we are saved. Meanwhile we groan, as well as understand, according to the Spirit and our new nature, that all creation groans.

      It is not creation only that groans, being in bondage to corruption in consequence of the sin of man; but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit—which God has given in anticipation of the accomplishment of His promises in the last days, and which connects us with heaven—we also groan, while waiting for the redemption of our body to take possession of the glory prepared for us. But it is because the Holy Spirit who is in us takes part in our sorrow and helps us in our infirmities. Dwelling in us, He pleads in the midst of this misery by groans that do not express themselves in words. We have a sense of the evil that oppresses us and that is all around us, and the more conscious we are of the blessing and liberty of the glory, the more aware are we of the weight of the misery brought in by sin. We do not know what to ask for as a remedy; but the heart expresses its sorrow as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus—at least in our little measure. Now this is not the selfishness of the flesh which does not like to suffer; it is the affection of the Spirit.

      We have here a striking proof of the way in which the Spirit and the life in us are identified in practice: God searches our hearts and finds there the affection of the Spirit, for He, the Spirit, intercedes. It is my heart—it is a spiritual affection—but it is the Spirit Himself who intercedes. United to the creation by the body and to heaven by the Spirit, the sense that I have of the pain and misery of things around us is not the selfishness of the flesh, but the sympathy of the Spirit, who feels it according to God.

      (From Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, Vol. 4.)

The Epistle of James, in its five chapters, has more direct teaching upon the causes of failure in prayer than any other single book in the New Testament. It has three references to prayer—in the first, fourth, and fifth chapters.

Causes of Failure in Prayer

      In the first chapter we have a hint of two causes of the lack of power in prayer—the lack of faith and the lack of patience. In the fourth chapter we find two additional causes—selfishness in motive, and worldly alliance. In the fifth chapter we have likewise two causes of failure, found in the lack of importunity or persistence, and in not maintaining the level of faith in waiting for answers. This is very comprehensive, but all we can do is to outline the subject as presented in this Epistle. These are no theoretical matters that we meditate upon, but the most intense business that the child of God can engage in, for the secret of prevailing power in prayer lies at the bottom of everything else in the Christian life. There is no subduing of sin and no relief from darkness without it.

Lack of Faith and of Patience

      In James 1 we find two difficulties in the line of profitless prayer to which reference is made: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God…. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering: for he who wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (Jas. 1:5-8). Here are the two difficulties—a lack of faith and a lack of patience.

      Lack of faith is virtually making God a liar. Let us look at the fact exactly as it is. If God promises to the praying soul, in unequivocal terms and in a multitude of forms, absolutely sure answers, then to doubt God’s promises is to make Him a liar; no blessing can come to any man that impugns the veracity of God. But the faith must be a patient faith that knows how to wait. Here is one of the most remarkable similes in Scripture: “He who wavers is like a wave [or literally surge] of the sea,” the foam on the top of the wave, “driven with the wind, and tossed.” At the seashore when the wind is blowing, we see two motions: one to-and-fro that is called “fluctuation,” and one up-and-down that is called “undulation.” The apostle James refers to both motions. “Driven with the wind” is fluctuation; “tossed” is undulation. The peculiarity of a wave is that it cannot stay anywhere; wherever it goes it falls back. If it gets ahead it recedes and we call it a receding wave; if it gets up it goes down and we call it a falling wave.  A double-minded man is exactly like it—mere foam, for foam is most easily moved up-and-down, and to-and-fro, of anything about the water.

      The difficulty is that if a man who has no proper faith is propelled ahead, back he goes to his other and former standards. Or if he is lifted up in ecstasy and exaltation, he cannot stay there and down he goes. He is in the trough of the sea five minutes afterwards, just like the surge of the sea, fluctuating and undulating, with no power to hold on. There can be no prevailing prayer without this power to hold on. Hundreds go and commit a thing to God one minute and take it back the next. They are afraid that God cannot take care of it for any length of time; they must give God their aid.

Abraham

      When God revealed to Abraham that in his old age, when Sarah was past bearing, they should have a son of promise born to them, we are told that “he believed in the LORD, and He counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). This was a great triumph of faith! But look in the beginning of chapter 16 and see how long the triumph lasted. Abraham made an iniquitous connection with Hagar, an Egyptian maid, and the child born to him was one of the greatest curses that ever came on the earth. Why could not he have left it sublimely where faith committed it, to the miracle-working God? Even the father of the faithful failed at the time of crisis.

David

      In the crisis of David’s kingdom, when Ahithophel was counselor, and he and other conspirators went over to the side of Absalom in the rebellion, David had no man to cope with Ahithophel, and he prayed: “O Lord, I pray Thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (2 Sam. 15:31). Why did he not leave it there? Read on. As David was going up he met Hushai, the Archite, and said, in essence, “You pretend to be a traitor, and go over to Absalom’s side, and make believe you are faithful to him, and watch and see what Ahithophel says, that you may defeat the counsel of Ahithophel” (see 15:34). That is the trouble with us: we commit a thing to God in a sublime act of faith one moment, and the next moment we take it out of God’s hand, and put it in man’s hand, or try ourselves to take care of it—just like the surge of the sea, up-and-down, to-and-fro, never staying anywhere.

Selfishness

      In the fourth chapter of James we see two other obstacles put before us. “You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts” (verse 3). Lusts there do not necessarily mean vicious, sensual, abominable desires, but simply the carnal desires of self-indulgence, as when a man asks for money because he wants the gratification money brings; or for pleasures of the appetite, because he wants his stomach to be satisfied; or for rewards of ambition, because he wants to have power and influence over men. How many things we forfeit because we ask for them in a wrong spirit, because self is at the bottom instead of God being the object in all. You can even ask for spiritual gifts and blessings, for the anointing of the Spirit, in order that people may say, “See how holy that man or woman is,” or “What remarkable power goes with this or that person!” You never get the anointing when it is sought in that way.

      Let us observe that if God gave us some things that we asked for, they would be a great curse to us and not a blessing. Remember Kibroth-hattaavah in Numbers 11. The people, complaining and murmuring about having to eat the disgusting manna every day, asked for God to give them flesh to eat (verse 13). God said: “[I] will give you flesh, and you shall eat … until it comes out at your nostrils” (verses 18-20). Then “before [the flesh] was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague” (verse 33). “He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul” (Psa. 106:15).

      Do you want God to send leanness into your soul in sending fatness to your body, feeding your carnal and starving your spiritual nature? If that is not what you want, be careful that you do not ask from selfish, lustful motives. Agrippina, the mother of Nero, asked of her gods that they would set her son upon the throne, and the first thing he did when set upon the throne was to plan the death of his own mother. Hezekiah, when told that he should die and not live, turned his face to the wall, and began reciting his good deeds before the LORD, and pleaded for life, and the LORD spared him fifteen years (Isa. 38:1-5). But they were years of disgrace. He foolishly showed the Babylonian officials all of the treasures of his house, incurring a prophecy of judgment against his house (2 Ki. 20:13-18), and he lived long enough to beget Manasseh, who was the greatest curse that Judah ever had. He was the Ahab of Judah, and the afflictions and captivity of Judah were mainly due to the sins of Manasseh. How much better if Hezekiah had died when the LORD gave him notice—better for him, for Judah, and for the whole world! Look out for selfishness of motive in your praying. That is one reason why God keeps you waiting until He refines away your carnality, and gets you up on the high spiritual level in which you can pray in the Holy Spirit.

Worldliness

      “You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will he a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4). Think of a woman, married to an honorable, upright, and holy man, walking through the streets in broad daylight, arm in arm with one who is attempting to supplant him, and then going to her husband for a special favor! When God sees you walking arm in arm with the world that crucified Jesus, and identified with the world before men, how can He hear your prayer? Your prayers are an insult. All alliance with the world implies the predominance of the carnal, and the carnal can never pray acceptably. All power in prayer depends on a vision of the Eternal, on communion with the Eternal, on the atmosphere of the Eternal, and, if you are engrossed and absorbed in the temporal, how can you breathe the atmosphere or have a vision of the Eternal? how can you lay hold upon the powers of the age to come? There is no difficulty in accounting for failure in ten thousand cases, because the prayers are those of essentially worldly people who know almost nothing of coming into real touch with the Eternal Spirit of God.

Lack of Persistence

      In James 5, additional lessons are taught with regard to the secrets of prevailing power in prayer and of the lack of it. “Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are” (verse 17). Thank God for that! He got under a juniper tree, as you and I have often done; he complained and murmured, as we have often done; was unbelieving, as we have often been. But that was not the case when he really got into touch with God. Though “a man of like passions as we are,” “he prayed earnestly.” He kept on praying. “He prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. “And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit” (verse 18).

      What is the lesson here? You must keep praying. Come up on the top of Mount Carmel and see that remarkable parable of faith and sight. It was not the descent of the fire that now was necessary, but the descent of rain; the man who can command the fire can command the rain by the same means and methods. We are told that he bowed himself to the ground with his face between his knees—that is, shutting out all sights and sounds (1 Ki. 18:42). He was putting himself in a position where, beneath his mantle, he could neither see nor hear what was going forward. He said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” He went, and came back, and said one word—“Nothing!” What do we do under such circumstances? We say, “It is just as I expected!” and we give up praying. Did Elijah? No he said, “Go again.” Again, “Nothing!” Seven times this was repeated. By and by the servant came back and said, “Behold, there arises a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.” A man’s hand had been raised in supplication, and had left its shadow on the heavens, and presently down came the rain. Ahab had not time to get back to the gate of Samaria with all his fast steeds.

      That is a parable of faith and sight—faith shutting itself up with God; sight taking observations, and seeing nothing; faith going right on, and praying earnestly, with utterly hopeless reports from sight. Do you know how to pray that way, how to pray prevailingly? Let sight give as discouraging reports as it may, but pay no attention to these. The living God is still in the heavens, and He has done whatsoever He has pleased. Even to delay is a part of His goodness.

Not Maintaining a High

Level of Faith

      Look still further. Elijah kept on the height of the mountain till he got the answer to his prayer. Do you know what it is to maintain the high plane and level of faith till the answer comes? What great mistakes are made! When the Lord lifts us up to a high level of faith and expectancy, we offer prayer on that level; but we hasten to get down to the carnal level, as if we supposed that answers could be given to the prayer of faith on any other than the plane of faith! I have had no idea impressed on my mind from the Word of God in connection with prevailing prayer more inspiring and rebuking than this: Answers to the prayer of faith can only be received and recognized on the plane of faith. Get up into the heavenly levels to talk with God; He is not coming down to the carnal level to talk with you; He wants you to stay there till He has given you His answer. Hence the typical significance of Elijah staying up on the mountain, sight taking observations over and over again until the answer of God had come. It is a great thing to keep praying, and to continue in a frame of holy expectation until the blessing comes.

      Monica, the mother of Augustine, besought God for many years that Augustine might not go to Rome, because Rome was then, as now, the center of all the iniquity of the Continent. Augustine was a profligate, and she felt that his going to Rome would ensure his rapid ruin, and she besought God not to let him go. He did go to Rome. Did she give up? Not at all. She said, “If the Lord does not grant me what I ask, He will grant me something better.” His going to Rome was the means of his coming into contact with Ambrose of Milan, and that was the means of his becoming converted, and afterwards a great leader and defender of the faith, one of the fathers of the early Church. So God, in refusing the literal request of Monica, fulfilled her heart’s great desire.

      What a great blessing my late friend, Dr. William Moon of Brighton (England) has been—the developer of the well-known Moon system of embossed letters to help the blind to read the Word of God, the best of its kind ever devised. When 23 years of age, he was struck with total blindness. He besought God when the symptoms were coming on, that He would deliver him from this calamity. He was an educated, cultivated man, at the beginning of his true service for God and man. But the blindness continued. What did he do? He looked up to God, and said, “My heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the talent of blindness. May I so invest that talent that at the coming of the Lord Jesus He may receive His own with usury.” Is not that sublimely heavenly? The Lord soon taught him that He had permitted the blindness that he might minister to the millions of blind people in the world; and Dr. Moon used his inventive faculties and devised this system, containing only a very few characters in combination. According to recent accounts that system has been utilized in nearly 500 languages and dialects. So that, when this man went to heaven a few years ago (this account was written in 1907), he must have found thousands who had gone to heaven through reading the raised characters by which he made it possible to commune with the Word of God. By taking blindness as a talent from God, and using it for God, he accomplished far more for God and man than he ever could have done if he had followed the devices and desires of his own heart.

      The love of God quite as often withholds as grants. Hence the necessity of trusting God to do His own way. He always gives what we ask, or something better. He consults our needs, not our wishes, like a wise and loving Father. His delays are not denials. Delay may discipline faith, teach us patience, and fit us for blessing. Moreover, there are blessed indirect answers to prayer. Prayer is answered most emphatically when God keeps you praying, when God keeps you in a tender state, when He leads you to trust Him absolutely in the absence of all outward signs of answer. The most sublime triumph of prayer is to trust God absolutely when you do not get any sensible answer whatever. There is no other triumph of prayer so great as that. We should all like to live by faith and sight together; but somehow they are incompatible.

Twelve Levels of Prayer

and Answer

      May I sum up what I conceive to be the teachings of the Word of God, by what I call the twelve levels of prayer and answer. The first four levels are the levels of vain praying; the next four, the levels of prevailing prayer, and the next four the levels of divine answer.

Vain Praying

      Level 1. Down at the very bottom is the level of known sin. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psa. 66:18). When sin is enthroned and enshrined in the heart, prayers are worse than vain.

      Level 2. The second level is selfishness, when you are asking for reasons of self-indulgence, self-gratification, something terminating upon yourself, and not the glory of God.

      Level 3. This is the level of form. “This people draw nigh to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Matt. 15:8). God does not care one bit for prayers that have no heart in them. The mere externals of worship, He says, “I cannot away with; it is iniquity … they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them” (Isa. 1:13,14).

      Level 4. This is the level of unbelief, where there is no expectation of receiving, no faith in God as the Giver.

Prevailing Prayer

      Level 5. Above those levels we rise to those of prevailing prayer, and the lowest is that of spiritual desire. You want something, and it is right that you should, and you ask simply from the impulse of a strong yearning. Perfectly right! “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you” (Matt. 7:7).

      Level 6. A higher level is that where you appreciate the Fatherhood of God and your relation as His child, and set up a child’s claim to a Father’s blessing. The desire is emphasized by your conscious relation to God as His child.

      Level 7. The third level of prevailing prayer is that in which you appreciate your position as a disciple in Christ, and claim in the name of Jesus Christ what you dare not claim in your own name. You have felt desire and you have added to it a consciousness of filial relation. In addition, you have the consciousness of the disciple’s relationship to Christ, unknown except as we touch John 14—the first time that Christ ever spoke about praying in His name, and repeated seven times between chapters 14 and 16. “Hitherto have you asked nothing in My name” (John 16:24). Up to that time no Old Testament saint or New Testament saint had ever prayed in His name.

      Level 8. The final level in this section is where the Holy Spirit working in you unhindered, groans after God. This is the highest level of prayer, indicated in Romans 8, where we are told that the Spirit Himself groans within us unutterably (verse 26). No words will express it, but God hears and cares far more for that than for any words, however well framed.

Divine Answer

      Level 9. We come now to the levels of answer. The lowest is where you get what you ask in the way that you ask, like Eliezer, who made the specific request that the maiden who should give the camels drink might be the one appointed for Isaac, while he was praying, Rebekah came and did what he asked, and he did not seem to have been surprised, which is a delightful feature (Gen. 24:14-21). He did not say: “It is a wonderful answer!” Rather let us wonder that God should not do what we ask or as we ask.

      Level 10. The next level of prayer is where the answer does not come at the time, or in the way, perhaps, that we expect, or is both delayed and disguised. In the case of Elijah on Mount Carmel it was delayed. The most marked instance in the New Testament is the Syrophenician woman. She was under the ban of the curse; she did not belong even to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”; she had not a promise to take hold of. “He answered her not a word.” Then, when He did speak, He refused, and reproached her with the only apparently reproachful term He ever used. But look at the logic and wit of her importunity! She said, essentially, “You call me a little dog, and make that a reason why I should not have the children’s bread. I make that a reason why I should have it, for the little dogs under the table do get the crumbs” (Matt. 15:27). Of course, in response to such a wise and humble response, He had to give her the blessing. She made His argument against it a reason for it, and it is a most remarkable case. He seems to have gone all the way from the Sea of Galilee to the shores of the Mediterranean, and back, just for the sake of that woman, for there is no record of any other act performed on the way to and fro. He went to meet this woman whom He treated with silence, then with refusal, and then apparent reproach; but He gave her what she asked, and it is not irreverent to say He could not help it.

      Level 11. Notice, again, that sometimes the answer is denied, and here is yet a higher level. But compensation comes with the denial, just as in the instances of Monica and Dr. Moon. The apostle Paul prayed about what is described as a “thorn,” but Paul would not have made such a fuss over a thorn: it was a “stake in the flesh,” and he prayed to God that it might be taken out of the way (2 Cor. 12:7,8). Probably he thought it was affecting his usefulness to men. The Lord distinctly denied the request, but more than made up for the denial with overwhelming grace, saying, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (verse 9). It was not merely, “Your weakness shall be made an opportunity for the display of My strength,” but, more than all, the only way to make God’s strength perfect is for us to get into a condition of absolute destitution of soul.

      Level 12. The last and highest of all the levels of answer is where the answer is not only delayed, not only disguised, not only apparently denied for a time, but after your praying, God seems to preserve an absolute and obstinate silence. No answer comes, you live and, perhaps, die, and never get an answer; but you have not a doubt of the prayer-hearing God. I asked Mr. George Muller a short time before he died if he had asked anything of God that had not been granted, and he told me he had prayed over 62 years for two men to be converted, neither of whom was converted, and there were no signs of it. I said: “Do you expect God to convert them?” ”Certainly. Do you suppose that God would put upon His child for 62 years the burden of two souls if He had no purpose of their salvation? I shall meet them in heaven certainly.” Shortly afterwards he died, and I was preaching in Bristol and referred to this occurrence. As I was going out a lady said: “One of those men was my uncle, and he was converted, and died a few weeks ago.”

      I have read of a most godly man who spent 40 years in one church, and agonized in prayer for worldly people in his congregation, who resisted all his efforts to bring them to Christ. He not only prayed for them, and preached the Gospel to them, but lived before them in a remarkable way. He was a saintly man, moving up and down in the community with the fragrance of God upon him. But he died without his prayers being answered; there was not a man of them all brought to Christ during his ministry. But when he died, and his body lay in the coffin, and the funeral service was being held, those men were brought to Christ in the presence of that dead body—a remarkable instance of God answering prayer in a wonderful way, after it was impossible for the suppliant soul to see on earth the triumphs of prayer.

      Our spiritual sight is good for nothing. Sometimes we are too far-sighted, sometimes too near-sighted, and never accurate. Let God judge for you. Bring your cause and commit it to Him, leave it in His hand, go away from the throne of grace with absolute repose in the fidelity of a prayer-hearing God. Do not let unbelieving disciples, and that father of liars, the devil, rob you of your confidence that God is true. Believe Him, trust Him, reckon upon Him, rest in Him; and if you do not see the answer, believe that He will show you the answer, though it may be after many days.

      (From A Spiritual Clinique, Gospel Publishing House, New York, New York, 1907.)

“How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God!” (Psa. 139:17).

Unbounded Patience

      “How shall I give you up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver you, Israel? how shall I make you as Admah? how shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of My anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of you, and I will not enter into the city” (Hos. 11:8,9).

      What a tender unfolding of the heart of God is here! It is the yearning thought of the fondest of Fathers over a nation of wayward prodigals. How grievous had been their ingratitude. He speaks in the beginning of the chapter of His loving thoughts to Israel when “a child” (verse 1), His especially gentle upbringing of Ephraim, even “as a nurse cherishes her children” (1 Thess. 2:7). “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms…. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love”(Hos. 11:3,4). Yet what is the return for all this lavish, endearing tenderness? “My people are bent to backsliding from Me” (verse 7).

      Surely the next entry in the divine record must be the sentence of righteous retribution: “Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone.” No! it is rather a burst of fond parental love, such as, at times, is dimly pictured on earth when we see a mother with breaking heart and eyes dim with weeping, locking in her embrace the prodigal boy who has wounded her, embittered her existence, and scorned her tears.

      Listen to the tender words, “How shall I give you up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver you [that is, give you over to the vengeance of the enemy], Israel?” He remembers “the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah” of a former age, and “their sin [which was] very grievous” (Gen. 18:20). The iniquity of Israel and Ephraim can be compared in turpitude only to that of these inhabitants of the plain, on whom “the LORD rained … brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven” (Gen. 19:24). Admah and Zeboim were two adjoining cities in the Valley of Sodom which were involved in this terrible overthrow (Deut. 29:23). “How,” says He, “shall I make you as Admah? how shall I set you as Zeboim?” Then, when He sums up with the declaration, “I will not return to destroy Ephraim,” He gives as the reason, “for I am God, and not man”!

      Yes, truly, Thy thoughts, O God, are not as man’s thoughts, and Thy ways are not as man’s ways; had they been so, long before now how many of us would have been “given up” and have had judgment executed against us because of our obstinacy and rebellion against God. But in spite of all this, His anger is turned away from us; His hand of mercy is outstretched still! Well may we say, with the stricken monarch of Israel, “Let us fall now into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are great, and let me not fall into the hand of man” (2 Sam. 24:14).

      Backslider, return! Though you may have tried the patience of your God by years of provocation, yet He still “keeps silence” (Lam. 3:28); He waits to be gracious; He is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Pet. 3:9). Let His goodness and patience, His tenderness and longsuffering, lead you to repentance (Rom. 2:4).

      Trembling penitent, bowed down under a sense of your base ingratitude, your prolonged alienation, fearful lest a guilty past may have cut you off from the hope of pardoning mercy—return! You are saying, perchance, in the bitter reproach of self-abandonment and despair, “I am given up”—delivered over to the tyranny of my spiritual enemies—and the Lord has cast me off forever and can be favorable no more (Psa. 77:7)!

      No! hear His wondrous, precious thoughts—the musings of the infinite Heart that you have wounded, “How shall I give you up? Man would crush his enemy, but I am God, and not man. I will not destroy, I will save.” Elsewhere He says, “Behold, you have spoken and done evil things as you could [that is, they could not have been worse],” yet goes on to appeal, “Turn unto Me” (Jer. 3:5-7)! “Return, you backsliding children,” says the LORD, “and I will heal your backslidings” (Jer. 3:22).

A Gracious Alternative

      “Or let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me” (Isa. 27:5).

      God had just spoken of the certain destruction that would overtake obstinate and incorrigible sinners. These He describes under the similitude of briars and thorns set against him in battle. “I would go through them,” says He, “I would burn them together” (verse 4). He guards us, by a preliminary statement, against entertaining the supposition that He has any delight in the exercise of such stern retribution: “Fury is not in me” (verse 4). There is with Him, whose nature and whose name is Love, no vindictive passion, no capricious wrath, no wayward impulses of anger analogous to those in man. His thoughts, in this respect too, are not our thoughts. His hatred of sin is a principle. It is the deliberate recoil of His own infinitely holy nature from iniquity—that iniquity which His justice and righteousness require Him to punish. Let us beware of a harsh and repulsive theology that would assimilate God to the avenging deities of the heathen. He is “slow to anger, and of great mercy” (Psa. 145:8). Judgment is “His strange work” (Isa. 28:21). While He visits iniquity “unto the third and fourth generation of those who hate [Him], He shows “mercy unto thousands [of generations] of those who love [Him]” (Exod. 20:5,6).

      At the same time, neither must we forget that He is “glorious in holiness” (Exod. 15:11). To that very revelation which He made to Moses of His name and memorial as “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” He appends the solemn statement, “and that will by no means clear the guilty” (Exod. 34:6,7).

      Oh, most solemn, most terrible thought to those who are still as “briars and thorns against [Him] in battle,” who are still enemies by nature and wicked works. They cannot escape His wrath. They cannot elude His righteous retribution. If they continue in sin, they can know only in their bitter experience what “a fearful thing” it is “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). He “would burn them together.” He is to all such “a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).

      But our motto-verse contains a wondrous alternative of mercy. At the very moment when sinners are rushing with blind madness against their sovereign God, He whom they have made their enemy has a thought in His heart of loving reconciliation. Listen to the gracious proposal: “Or let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me.”

      Who is “the Strength of God”? Let Scripture answer: “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man whom Thou made strong for Thyself” (Psa. 80:17). Christ is “the Power of God” (1 Cor. 1:24)—“the Daysman [or Mediator] between us, who might lay His hand upon us both” (Job 9:33). He, also, is “our peace” (Eph. 2:14). “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:1). Peace, “not as the world gives” (John 14:27), was His parting, special legacy. It is a sure and well-grounded peace, purchased by His atoning blood, and secured and perpetuated by His continual intercession. Hence the gracious Proposer of reconciliation adds the assurance, “And he shall make peace with Me” (Isa. 27:5). It is a glorious certainty. Take hold of that arm, and salvation is sure. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31). It is a present peace, a sure peace, a permanent peace, peace now, and peace forever. The Lord Jesus says concerning His sheep, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:28).

      “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD” (Isa. 51:9). “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou who leads Joseph like a flock …. stir up Thy strength, and come and save us!” “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end [or a future and a hope] (Jer. 29:11).

Tender Dealing

      Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her [back] her vineyards” (Hos. 2:14,15).

      “Therefore” has a strangely beautiful connection in this verse. God’s people had been grievously backsliding. He had been loading them with mercies and they had been guiltily disowning His hand. They had taken the gifts and spurned the Giver. “She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold” (Hos. 2:8). No, more, she had shamelessly gone after her lovers—she had deliberately preferred the ways of sin to the ways of God. What will His thoughts be towards this treacherous one? Can they be anything else but those of merited retribution—casting her out and casting her off forever?

      We expect when we hear the concluding word, “therefore,” that it is the awful summing up of His controversy—the turning of the Judge to pronounce righteous sentence. We listen, but lo! utterances of love are heard instead. “I will allure her … and speak comfortably [or tenderly] to her.”

      This is the way He deals with His people still. They often forget Him in the glare and glitter of prosperity. He hushes the din of the world—takes them out into the solitudes of trial—and there, while they are abased, humbled, and chastened, He unburdens in their ear His thoughts of love, forgiveness, and comfort. Oh, what infinite tenderness characterizes the dealings of this heavenly Chastener! How slow He is to abandon those who have abandoned Him! Every means and instrumentality is employed rather than leave them to the bitter fruits of their own guilty estrangement.

      The kindest human thoughts toward an offender are harshness and severity compared with His. What were the thoughts and deeds of the watchmen in the Song of Solomon towards the bride as she wandered disconsolate in search of her heavenly Bridegroom, and that in consequence of her own unwatchfulness and sloth? They tore off her veil. They smote her, reviled her, loaded her with reproach. But when she finds her lost Lord, though she has kept Him standing amid the cold dews of night, He does not smite her, He does not upbraid her, no angry syllable escapes His lips. He brings her into the wilderness and speaks comfortably unto her, and the next picture in the inspired allegory is the restored one coming up from that wilderness leaning on her Beloved.

      Reader! is God dealing with you by affliction? Has He blighted your earthly hopes, caused “all [your] “mirth to cease,” destroyed [your] vines and [your] fig trees” (Hos. 2:11,12), and made all around you a desert? Think what it would have been, had He allowed you to go on in your course of guilty estrangement—your truant heart plunging deeper and deeper in its career of sin! Is it not mercy in Him that He has dimmed that false and deceptive glitter of earth? You would not listen to His voice in prosperity. You took the ten thousand precious gifts of His bestowing, but there was no breathing of gratitude to the infinite Bestower. You sat, it may be, sullen, peevish, proud, ungrateful, at the very moment when His horn of plenty was being emptied in your lap.

      He has brought you into “the wilderness.” As Jesus did with His disciples of old when He would nerve them for coming trial, He has taken you to “a high mountain apart” (Matt. 17:1), “a solitary place” (Mark 1:35), apart from the world. He has there humbled you and proved you. He may have touched you in your tenderest point, severed close friendships, leveled in the dust clay idols, but it was all His doing. He leads us into the wilderness, He leads us up, and He leads us through.

      As He gives us our comforts—our oil, wine, wool, and fig trees—so when He sees fit He takes them away. Whatever be the voices He may be now addressing to me, may it be mine to recognize in them the thoughts and utterances of unalterable love, and to say, “I will hear what God the LORD will speak, for He will speak peace unto His people and to His saints” (Psa. 85:8).

The Spirit Himself enters into this groaning condition by joining His help to our infirmity (Rom. 8:26). In conditions of trial, sorrow, and uncertainty, our weakness is made fully evident, but that only opens to us more the heart of God and produces in us a healthy dependence upon Him every step of the way. In connection with the Spirit helping our infirmities, prayer is that upon which the apostle dwells. Prayer is the expression of dependence and of the creature-place that we have with God. It is the expression, also, of our confidence in God. Prayer is thus a large part of the Christian life. We often do not know what to pray for as we ought. How blessed to know that here we have a divine Intercessor; as we have Christ before God for us, so we have the Spirit of God in us, and He makes intercession for us according to God. The prayer that He makes is, of course, absolutely according to God; yet as wrought in our hearts it may be on that very account simply a groaning that cannot be uttered intelligibly. It is a wonderful thing to realize that these groanings which are the evidence of our own infirmity may, nevertheless, be the fruit of the Spirit within us, speaking intelligently in the ear of God and in absolute accordance with His mind concerning us, and in complete accordance with His thought and character. While the Spirit’s intercession for us may go beyond our intelligence, how gracious of Him, our Comforter, to come and join His help to our infirmities, and to carry us along the lighted road that leads to God.