Pray Through by G. B. Starr

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 16, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 48.

"Pray Through"

By G. B. Starr

IF clouds of darkness hang heavy and dense across your pathway, and the form and face of your Leader are obscured, pray through, pray through. It can be done. Though Satan, the prince of darkness, throw his dark shadow across your pathway, over your Christian experience, and cause the future to loom with failure and defeat, pray through.

Though your own weaknesses and past failures seem to spell defeat large, pray through. Pray until the darkness breaks and scatters. Pray until out of weakness you are made strong. Pray until the light of God shines into your heart, and hope and gladness take the place of despair and gloom. Pray through, until the heart is cleansed and the power of sin broken, until you know that its hold upon you is loosened. Pray until you feel it give way. Pray until you are on top, and the mists and sins and rubbish are beneath you. Pray until you can spell triumph and success large through Christ.

"Men ought always to pray," and pray through, "and not to faint." Keep praying until victory comes. "Ye let go of the arm of the Lord too soon." Pray through.

It is when fighting our hardest battles with self and Satan, with darkness and weakness, on our knees alone with God, in the closet or in the woods, that faith is in most lively exercise. Pray and believe. Grasp the largest promises, and hold them until they are yours in experience. "Sin shall not have dominion over you." You are to triumph. "All things are possible to him that believeth." Press your case. Pray through. Listen to no suggestions of defeat and failure. Resist the darkness. Hold fast your confidence, and it will increase. There is victory for every soul who is determined to have it. Stay alone with Christ and angels and the Spirit of God until the joy of heaven and the strength of God are imparted to you, through the righteousness of Christ. Pray through.

You are defeated when you decide not to pray through, when you listen to the suggestion that "it is no use." It is use. It is victory and success. It is peace and power, and triumph and blessed rest in active warfare. It means deliverance from all your enemies, within and without. God lives, and hears and answers prayer. Prove it. Pray through, until your hand is in His; until your weakness is united to His might, your foolishness to His wisdom; until all heaven is on your side, and they that are for you are more than they that are against you. Pray until every particle of doubt of God's goodness and love, every suggestion of infidelity, is banished from your soul, and confidence, assurance, and love take their place, and you are sweetly comforted of God, and assured of His full and free pardon of all past sins and failures, and that He puts them away from before Himself and you, to remember them no more forever. And believe that it gives Him the joy of the most loving of fathers to press you to His heart of love, and whisper in your ear the sweetest of assurances that you are His child, a child of faith, a prince of His household, and that you and He together are more than a match for the combined powers of earth and hell, and that you are to triumph gloriously, to the honor and glory of God, your Deliverer.

Pray through, clear through. Never surrender. The battle is yours, and eternity the reward.

G. B. STARR.