Chapter IV: Introduction (4)

_Here is the secret of prevailing prayer, to pray under a direct
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, whose petitions for us and through
us are always according to the Divine purpose, and hence certain of
answer. “Praying in the Holy Ghost” is but co-operating with the
will of God, and such prayer is always victorious. How many
Christians there are who cannot pray, and who seek by effort,
resolve, joining prayer circles, etc., to cultivate in themselves
the “holy art of intercession,” and all to no purpose. Here for
them and for all is the only secret of a real prayer life—“Be
filled with the Spirit,” who is “the Spirit of grace and
supplication.”_
—REV. J. STUART HOLDEN, M.A.

XI

THE preceding chapter closed with the statement that prayer can do anything that God can do. It is a tremendous statement to make, but it is a statement borne out by history and experience. If we are abiding in Christ—and if we abide in Him we are living in obedience to His holy will—and approach God in His name, then there lie open before us the infinite resources of the Divine treasure-house.

The man who truly prays gets from God many things denied to the prayerless man. The aim of all real praying is to get the thing prayed for, as the child’s cry for bread has for its end the getting of bread. This view removes prayer clean out of the sphere of religious performances. Prayer is not acting a part or going through religious motions. Prayer is neither official nor formal nor ceremonial, but direct, hearty, intense. Prayer is not religious work which must be gone through, and avails because well done. Prayer is the helpless and needy child crying to the compassion of the Father’s heart and the bounty and power of a Father’s hand. The answer is as sure to come as the Father’s heart can be touched and the Father’s hand moved.

The object of asking is to receive. The aim of seeking is to find. The purpose of knocking is to arouse attention and get in, and this is Christ’s iterated and re-iterated asseveration that the prayer without doubt will be answered, its end without doubt secured. Not by some round-about way, but by getting the very thing asked for.

The value of prayer does not lie in the number of prayers, or the length of prayers, but its value is found in the great truth that we are privileged by our relations to God to unburden our desires and make our requests known to God, and He will relieve by granting our petitions. The child asks because the parent is in the habit of granting the child’s requests. As the children of God we need something and we need it badly, and we go to God for it. Neither the Bible nor the child of God knows anything of that half-infidel declaration, that we are to answer our own prayers. God answers prayer. The true Christian does not pray to stir himself up, but his prayer is the stirring up of himself to take hold of God. The heart of faith knows nothing of that specious scepticism which stays the steps of prayer and chills its ardour by whispering that prayer does not affect God.