The function of public prayer is to a great extent misunderstood by the vast majority of Christians. We come together primarily to wait upon the Lord, and should it please Him to touch our lips with the live coal from the altar, then well and good, otherwise we should keep silence.
He who prays aloud in a public prayer-meeting professes to express the thoughts impressed by the Spirit of God on the hearts of the company; consequently, there are at least two valid reasons for a man keeping silence in a prayer-meeting. We are speaking of course of one endowed with natural or acquired capacity to give intelligible public utterance.
(1) From one cause or another a man may have incurred the distrust of one or more persons in the company. If he takes part in the meeting it will be an act of self-will. The expression of the unity of the Spirit has been infringed, and he cannot possibly express the thoughts of the company. There is no longer the "one-mindedness in the Lord," apart from which collective prayer has no meaning.
The apostle exhorts us not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, for otherwise we shall be giving place to the devil (Eph. 4:26,27). That, however, does not relieve the man who has failed to maintain or express the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace from the responsibility of keeping silence in the prayer-meeting, until God in His goodness causes the distrust to disappear.
(2) The other reason for enforced silence is defective instruction in the Word. For example, a man prays very fluently that the Lord may be one of the company. If one has not a distinct impression that the Lord is not merely one of the company but is in the very midst, then he is not aware that there is authority for coming together to pray, and without that knowledge distinctly in the soul the time is wasted. The trouble is that such brethren do not usually know that they are ill-instructed in the Scripture of Truth, and they are liable to become thorns in the sides of their brethren.
A man who prays for things which are obviously wrong cannot carry with him the approval of the "scripturally instructed in the company, and therefore cannot secure united assent to his petition. Of course, it may be said that allowance must be made for those who are young and only able to give utterance to "five words" with their understanding (1 Cor. 14:19). The answer to this is that such a man is never wrong if he keeps to the "five words." He goes wrong when he ventures beyond his depth of spiritual apprehension.
Fluency of speech may become a very great snare and a barrier to spiritual progress. The gift of tongues was said to be one of the most wonderful, but the gift of appropriate silence is no less golden. Hence the Apostle says that the spirits of the prophets should be "subject to the prophets, 1:e., to their understanding, or common-sense (1 Cor. 14:32). The apostle averred that he prayed and sang not only with the spirit but with his understanding also (1 Cor. 14:15). The exercise of common-sense would obviate much of the unprofitable expression which too often mars prayer-meetings. T. Oliver (Galashiels)