p. 12 | The Importance of Family Prayer

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 26, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 46.

The Importance of Family Prayer

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

IT has well been said that prayer is the mighty lever with which it is possible for the puny arm of man "to move the world"—because connected with infinite power. When I pause a moment to consider this subject, I am overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. My pen seems weak and inefficient. I find no words with which to convey a correct appreciation of the importance, fitness, and necessity for prayer.

There are few holier memories which ever come to us after the hair is white and the brow furrowed, than those which cluster about the sacred hour of family prayer.

But some one says: "I can not pray in public. I never did. I am not learned or eloquent; and no one, not even my children, has ever heard me pray. I do not believe they would be benefited or encouraged by anything which I could say in prayer."

You need not be eloquent. The Lord God is no respecter of persons. But I tell you, there is nothing which produces so wonderful and so lasting an effect for good, as the bringing of all the loved ones by name before the Lord, at the family altar. No matter if the voice be weak and faltering and the words homely and simple. Remember, God looks at the heart—at the motive. "The Lord seeth not as man seeth."

O, I am so glad of this! If it were not for this blessed truth, the most of us would sink in discouragement. Our prayers at best are so weak and stammering! But the loving, tender heart of the Father knows and feels for us. There is never a heart-throb that He does not count, never a tear that He does not number, never a sigh that He fails to hear.

Some of us have the mistaken idea that the Father is hard and unloving and unpitying. O, why do we such injustice to Him who loved us so tenderly that He gave up His dearly beloved Son for us?

"Yes," you say; "Christ pleads for us, and the Father will hear Him," and that is indeed a blessed truth. But this is not all there is for our comfort. Listen:

As if the blessed Master knew that we poor mortals failed to appreciate the loving, tender, compassionate heart of the Most High, He has explicitly assured us of the Father's love: "And I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you."

Blessed assurance! He loves us—you and me—and with a love which can not be measured. No wonder that even the pen of inspiration is powerless to express it in words which we poor, weak creatures can comprehend! And so the Spirit-filled penman simply exclaims, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us!"

"Why, then," you ask, "is prayer necessary, since God knows all about us anyway?"

Well, how would we feel if our children refused to come to us with all their little joys and sorrows and troubles,—if John never mentioned a word about his disappointment in failing to pass examination; suppose we found out in some roundabout way the fact that our little Mary or Jane or Bertha had taken the prize for the best composition at school? Would we not feel greatly aggrieved, and justly so?

But it is for our own sake that the Father asks us, His children, to confide in Him. He knows that prayer is the life of the soul, and that is why we are instructed to "pray without ceasing."

But O, the blessedness of gathering the little family together in the morning and at evening, for a song of praise and sweet communion with Heaven!

Even as I write, the days of my childhood come trooping back to me. The red sun is sinking behind the old barn. The crickets are chirping in the dewy fields. The somber twilight is spreading a dusky robe over the world. The wide-topped trees in the orchard cast long, deep shadows. An occasional tap of the cow-bell in the barn-yard, and the cheery call of the whippoorwill in the wood near, emphasize the fact that it is time for evening prayers.

"Well, children, what shall we sing tonight?" asks father.

"What shall we sing, mother?" question the children.

Before any can reply, a sweet, vibrant voice like a silvery bell rings out—it seemed to my childish ear that there was never another such a voice this side of heaven as my mother's:

"O'er the hill the sun is setting, And the eve is drawing on;"

and then we all joined in the sweet old song of praise.

O, these are memories that I would not have effaced from my heart for any consideration! I would not exchange them for the memory of all the shows and vaudevilles and theaters and pleasure parties in the world.

Sometime those who have worshiped blindly at the shrine of vanity and pleasure, will pray earnestly to the God of heaven—for "every knee" shall bow to Him.

But then it will be forever and ever too late.

Is it not the part of wisdom to become acquainted with Him now?