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PRAYING FOR MORE FAITH

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 40.

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PRAYING FOR MORE FAITH.

By Phillips Brooks

I HEAR men praying everywhere for more faith, but when I listen to them carefully and get at the real heart of their prayer, very often it is not more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change from faith to sight.
“What shall I do with this sorrow that God has sent me?”
“Take it up and bear it, and get strength and a blessing out of it.”
“Ah, if I only knew what blessing there is in it, if I saw how it would help me, then I could bear it!”
“What shall I do with this hard, hateful duty which Christ has laid right in my way?”
“Do it and grow by doing it.”
“Ah, yes, if I could only see that it would make me grow!”
In both these cases do you not see that what you are begging for is not for more faith, although you think it is, but sight?
You want to see for yourself the blessing in the sorrow, the strength in the hard and hateful task.
Faith says not, “I see that it is good for me, and so God must have sent it,” but, “God sent it, and so it must be good for me.” Faith walking in the dark with God only prays him to clasp its hand more closely, does not even ask him for the lighting of the darkness, so that the man may find the way himself.—
Phillips Brooks.