THE WEEK OF PRAYER by David Paulson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 26, 1901

THE WEEK OF PRAYER.

By David Paulson

The real good to be accomplished by this occasion depends not so much upon how greatly our feelings will be stirred as upon how thoroughly we shall be filled with a determination to arise and recognize our God-given opportunities. We can all look back to some day in our experience when upon some special occasion we settled something,—we laid something deeply into the Rock. If we are ever to stand with the redeemed, we must have that experience repeated with reference to other things almost every day of our lives.

If this Week of Prayer shall enable us to become anchored to truth as we never have been before, if it shall water our hearts and souls with the dew of heaven to such a degree that our neighbors shall know that something has happened to us, then it will not have been in vain. Until our sympathies for others are thoroughly aroused, doing missionary work is merely a business proposition; we simply do it because we feel that we have to. Falling on the Rock during the Week of Prayer can take that feeling out of our hearts, and replace it by a tender, pitying love that will not lead us to criticise and condemn others, nor even waste precious time in arguing with them; but the persuasive power of love manifested in us will win those to Christ who can be won.

I recently heard Mr. Blackstone relate an incident that contains a great lesson. He told us of a business man who was trying to secure sleep in his berth in a Pullman sleeper, but was being prevented by the piercing cries of an infant in a berth almost opposite to his. By and by he became so exasperated that he shouted out in a rough, commanding tone, “Why don’t the mother of that child hush it up?” A trembling, half-broken voice answered back, “The mother of this child is in a coffin in the baggage car ahead. I am its father, and have tried for two nights to quiet it. I will do the best I can.” Immediately this gentleman jumped out of his berth, stretched out his hands, and begged the father to give him the child. Then he walked up and down the aisle, soothing it to sleep in his arms, meanwhile pressing it close to his breast; soon the motherless child dropped into a peaceful slumber, and was returned to its father. What had wrought this change? Simply this, the gentleman’s sympathies had been enlisted.

If this Week of Prayer shall serve to put into our hearts this kind of feeling for the sick, the suffering, the disappointed, and the distressed all about us, we shall have multitudes of opportunities to help others where we now do not in the least imagine that they exist. The Lord is not going to make such a mistake as to put missionary opportunities in our pathway simply for us to spoil by our coldness and by our feeble, waning piety.

I have heard Brother Daniells say, over and over again this year at some of our large camp-meetings, “It is no use playing with this question any longer.” Those significant words have left a deep impression upon my mind. Our responsibility to humanity is not going to be met by occasionally handing out a tract or a paper. Such a miracle of grace must be wrought in our lives that others will unconsciously be drawn to the same source to secure the same work. But this transformation will never be wrought for us until there is a hungering and thirsting for it; until it comes to mean more to us than our daily business. It was said of Christ that while He was praying, His countenance was changed. Those words were not written in vain. It means that something happens to us when we pray in sincerity, recognizing our deep need. “The self-sufficient worker may seem to be moving the world, but the humble wrestler moves heaven.”

This will be the first Week of Prayer after the most wonderful General Conference that this people has ever seen. Shall that same spirit be carried into every church upon this occasion, or shall we, like the children of Israel when they were about to pass into the promised land, have to turn our faces back toward the wilderness again? In this closing work is it too much to expect that God is going to raise up men like Joseph, Daniel, Stephen, and Paul? These men were often found upon their knees before God, and it was there that they received that inspiration which enabled them to move so marvelously the hearts of men.

With such wonderful possibilities before us, shall we drift along simply living cheap, ordinary, and next to useless lives? We are in the time when God has promised that “a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time.” None of us need imagine that the Lord is going to select us as object lessons in the fulfillment of this prophecy if we have so little interest in it that we are unwilling to prostrate ourselves before God, and have the rubbish and dross removed from our lives, and our scheme and plans brought to naught, so that it may be safe for the Lord to make of us an object lesson of what He can accomplish through human flesh when it is fully and unreservedly dedicated to Him. DAVID PAULSON.