The Promise Sure by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 31, 1878

The Promise Sure.

By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is much prayer which brings no results. Mere repetition of good words is not prayer. Prayer is bringing God's promise to him, and pleading it with him. It carries the checks to the bank, and comes away with the cash. Many prayers are defective for want of pleading promises. I cannot pray very long prayers. I just go and plead the promise and come away. I present the check and then go about my work. What would you think of men going to a bank, and loafing about the counter for the half hour together? Praying is not spending a great deal of time on your knees, and saying a great many things to God which he knows beforehand. Yet though we may not constantly pray very long at a time, we go again and again. Prayer needs faith in the promises. Do you say you cannot believe? Think what that means. What! cannot trust your God? Heaven and earth shall pass away, but no promise of God shall fail.

Do we not often miss answers to prayer because we present the check, and then go without waiting for the cash? Do you expect and actually look for answers to your petitions? Are you like the child who went to prayer-meeting appointed in time of drought to pray for rain, and brought her umbrella with her, because she expected an answer to the prayers to be offered? Do you say to yourself, "True, I have asked; true, God has promised, but will he give?" Away with the question! God forbid that it should loiter for a moment on your minds! Let us be in earnest. Let us have no playing with God! Put your name down, "I do believe this promise. I asked with a real faith."

—Spurgeon.