3931 — Not Praying for Others
By Editor
How can Jer. 7:16 be applied to-day in the ranks of those who are looking for the Lord's coming? S. We would not apply it. If the Lord told Jeremiah that he should not pray for this people, "neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to Me; for I will not hear thee," we would suppose of course that Jeremiah would carry out that instruction; but we would have no right to use that, by our judgment, as applied to any one else. It is God's Spirit that gives souls a burden to pray for others. When that burden is taken away, when the Spirit of God does not lay that burden upon devoted hearts, that would certainly show that it was not God's time to work. When God does lay a burden of soul upon the heart of any one of His children, He will work with that one who is burdened in the effort to save the soul. He does not work by halves. When we in our human judgment say that this one is beyond hope, or that one is beyond hope, we are putting ourselves in a perilous place, are assuming divine judgment, are taking a fearful responsibility upon ourselves. All those things may be left with God. If our heart is burdened to pray for a soul, truly burdened, God by His Spirit will help us. When He Himself lays that burden upon our hearts, let us pray. But if He takes the burden from our heart, so that we have no desire to pray for a soul, that of itself does not indicate that the soul is without hope. We may not be the one that God can use in that way, and upon some one else He may have laid the burden. The apostle John intimates in his first epistle, the 5th chapter and the 16th verse, that there may be sins unto death, but even these he does not say that we should not pray for. There are certain sins that we should pray for, without question, but he does not prohibit our praying for any one. No text of Scripture should be used in that way. Leave these things to God, and if we ourselves do not have a burden, let us not feel that God has left that soul for whom we do not feel burden. He may have laid it upon some one else.