The Noon-Hour Prayer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 7, 1912

The Noon-Hour Prayer

“Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.” “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends.”

The purpose of prayer is neither to convince nor to persuade God that he should bless us. He is more anxious to bestow his blessing upon us than we are to receive it. He does not, however, view things always from our standpoint. He sees the end from the beginning. He ministers his grace with the view to the accomplishment of our eternal good. In our human weakness and blindness we oftentimes subordinate eternal interests to temporal. God’s great love for his children does not permit him to do this. The true object of prayer is to bring the soul into such relationship to God, through the renunciation of sin and through consecration to God’s service, that we shall become the willing agents in whose lives God can work his own perfect will, and through whose service

he can minister his grace to the world.

In this experience the soul can reach out by faith and grasp that which God is anxious to bestow. The experience of delayed blessings, as rightly viewed, will serve only to cause faith to shine more brightly.

Answered Prayer

We are glad to be able to present two experiences of answered prayer. A sister writes from Mississippi: “I had partial deafness in one ear for about six years. This year both ears became affected, and I seemed to be losing my hearing entirely. While at camp-meeting I felt impressed to ask for prayer. My case was brought before the Lord at the early morning service on the last day of the meeting. About six weeks afterward I awoke one morning and found my deafness almost gone. I praise the Lord for his goodness and mercy to me.” From an elderly sister in Oregon we have a letter telling of her wonderful healing from appendicitis. She was ill eight days, and the doctors gave no hope of her recovery, as she could not endure an operation. The elders of the church were called in to offer prayer, and the Lord restored her instantly.

Requests for Prayer

Others this week come with requests for help. Some are discouraged, some afflicted, some longing and laboring for the conversion of others. Let us present to the God of all mercies these requests, praying him out of his fulness and his great wisdom to answer each in that time and way which he sees will be for the best.

130. A burdened mother writes from Oregon asking our united prayers for the healing of her daughter.

131. From the same State (Oregon) a daughter sends the request for prayer in behalf of her mother, who has suffered for years with severe headaches, for which there seems to be no human help. This sister also has very unpleasant home influences with which to contend. Let us pray for her healing, and that the influences surrounding her may not prove a source of discouragement.

132. This request comes from Oklahoma: “I ask prayer for the conversion of my husband and son and of my daughter and her husband.”

133. A brother in Texas, who is suffering from an affliction which confines him to the house, asks prayer that he may be restored to health. He is anxious to be actively engaged in the Master’s work.

134. From Vermont an anxious mother sends the request that we offer prayer for the conversion of her four children.

135. A brother who has been suffering from fever since last August requests prayer that if it be God’s will he may be healed.

136. “I earnestly request the prayers of God’s people in behalf of my husband, who has known the truth for twelve years, but has not had the courage to accept it. The world is drawing him farther and farther away from God,” writes a sister in Ohio.

137. A widow who has recently accepted the truth writes from South Dakota asking prayer for her relatives who are much opposed to her observing the Sabbath; for her married daughter who has left her husband, that they may be again united, and learn to love this truth; and for herself and her thirteen-year-old son, that they may be faithful to God in the midst of opposition.

138. A Tennessee sister desires prayer for healing. She has been a sufferer for years.

139. A young woman in Kansas asks prayer that she may regain her health and be enabled to complete the nurses’ course, of which she has already had nearly two years. She writes: “I long to fill some humble place in this great cause.”

140. From the same State (Kansas) a brother sends the request that we pray for the restoration of his daughter, who was injured so seriously by a fall some weeks ago that physicians have almost despaired of her life.

141. A burdened mother asks prayer for the conversion of her four sons who are without hope in God.

142. In sending her subscription for the REVIEW a Missouri sister makes the following request: “I desire to be remembered in the prayers of God’s people that I may overcome a violent temper, and all the temptations with which I am beset. Pray also for my husband’s conversion.”