Behold, He Prayeth by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 18, 1915

“Behold, He Prayeth”

By G. B. Thompson

“BEHOLD, he prayeth” is evidence of a new life in us as truly as in Saul of Tarsus. Prayer is the Christian’s life. It was the spiritual life of Enoch through the wicked centuries in which he “walked with God.” It was manifested in the life of Abraham, “the friend of God.” Read his great intercessory prayer for Sodom found in Genesis 18. Jacob wrestled with God in prayer, and received from him the blessed assurance, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Gen. 32: 28. Moses, the mighty leader of Israel, was a man of power. Hear him interceding for Israel when they had grievously sinned: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” Ex. 32: 32. Elijah prayed, and the “fire of the Lord fell” and consumed the altar and the sacrifice. Anna the prophetess prayed, also devout Simeon. Before Pentecost the disciples “continued with one accord in prayer,” and after Pentecost the believers “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” Acts 2: 42.

The apostle Paul exhorts, “I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.” 1 Tim. 2: 8. Prayer can be traced through the entire history of the church. Its triumph has been accomplished in all ages through prayer. In the darkest hour of the church militant there were men who were praying,

Luther and his associates were ‘men of untutored prayer;’ they wrestled and prevailed.

“John Knox was famous for his earnest prayers. He was heard at the great crisis to plead, ‘Give me Scotland or I die;’ and Queen Mary said that she feared his prayers more than she did all the armies of Europe.”

Uncover the lives of mighty men of power in the church in more modern times, and we find they were men of prayer. Of David Brainerd it is said that “he delighted greatly in secret retirement, and loved to get quite away from all the world, to converse alone with God in secret duties.” Moody was a man of prayer; it was in secret communion with God that he received power to bring men to Christ.

“At the burning of Farewell Hall in Chicago, back in the sixties, Mr. Moody, having lost his parish with most of his earthly possession, set out for New York with a feeling that his life was broken in sunder. On the cars he kept praying that God would endue him with more power for a greater work. His plea was, ‘Make me willing, O Lord, in the day of thy power; willing to receive all that thou wouldst bestow upon me.’ In a room at the Old Metropolitan Hotel he kept up that prayer, hour after hour, kneeling, walking the floor, pleading, ‘O Lord, make me willing to be as strong for service as thou wouldst have me.’ Toward evening a friend knocked, and, receiving no answer, entered. Mr. Moody was standing, with tearful eyes uplifted, and saying softly in a broken voice, ‘O Lord, stay now thy hand! No more! No more!’ His prayer had been answered. God had fed his hungry soul, and filled him even to the lips. And then began that marvelous work of evangelism in America and Europe, when souls came to Christ like doves flocking to their windows, which must ever be a mystery to those who doubt the importance of the energizing influence of the Spirit of God.”—“The Sermon,” page 207.

Man was made to pray. Though sin has almost blotted from his nature this holy attribute, yet a few flowers bloom in the desert of human experience as a reminder of a time when man talked face to face with God. There still remains in the heart of man a desire to reverence and worship a Being of a higher order than himself. Even savages have some conception of a supreme Being. Barbarians and uncivilized races ignorantly worship they know not what. The heathen have their prayer flags and prayer wheels. Idolaters bow down to gods of wood and stone. The ancient Greeks and Romans supplicated the gods of mythology, and reared altars to the “unknown God.” The Indian, with his untutored mind, implores the Great Spirit.

Men may say they do not believe in prayer, but in some awful calamity they are inclined to pray. When the earth quakes under them, there is a disposition to reach up and get hold of something. When on some stricken “Titanic,” as the wife of your bosom imploringly clings to you, and your innocent children gather about you weeping and asking for help before the doomed leviathan takes the final plunge and the angry swirl of the ocean sweeps over you, from your heart will come a prayer. Amid the terrors of the last days, when creation is shivering to atoms, when the earth is sinking beneath the terrible disorder of sin, when mountain ranges are sinking, and islands with their living freight are disappearing, “the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman,” will hide themselves “in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains,” and will say “to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” Rev. 6: 15-17.

It is better to pray now, and then be able, in the awful hours when destruction wastes at noonday and hopeless terror seizes upon the ungodly, to rejoice with joy unspeakable.

Reader, do you pray? Is the family altar erected? Do you pray with and for your children? or do you send them forth to mingle with the sin and wickedness about them without committing them to the care of a kind Father? Do you ever forget to pray? Do you allow the hurry and bustle of life to rob you of communion with God? Are you conscience-smitten over the neglect of prayer in your life? If so, you stand in a slippery place, and there should be in your life a real revival of prayer and secret communion with God.

“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh, as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all—the distant and the near— Stands forth in sunny outlines, brave and clear. “We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others, that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled; when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”

G. B. Thompson.