PRAYER by John Nevins Andrews

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 2, 1881

PRAYER.

By John Nevins Andrews

THE efficacy of prayer is not because of its power to change the mind of the Most High, but because of its effect upon the petitioner, in preparing him to receive. When we pray for things suitable to our real wants, it requires no statement of our urgent necessities to cause the Lord to incline toward our supplication. He desires to bestow such blessings upon us. The object of prayer is not, by any means, to create such a purpose in the mind of the Lord. The truth is, the hindrance is not on the Lord's part at all. The difficulty lies in ourselves. Prayer, humiliation, self-abasement, wrestling, agonizing, are all in place, all a part of the divine plan. Let no one suppose that these are undervalued, or that we may, by any means, dispense with them. No, by no means. But where lies the hindrance? It is wholly in ourselves. The object of the deep self-abasement is to prepare ourselves to receive the blessing of God.

Nothing is more certain than that when signal deliverance is needed, that deliverance has to be delayed because the people of God cannot bear it. Were it to be granted, they would be lifted up to their own ruin. So the Lord suffers them to be brought into a great strait, that they may, by the deepest humiliation and self-abasement, become prepared to bear the signal deliverance which he earnestly desired to grant. The earnest prayer and deep prostration of the soul before God, are not for the purpose of extorting favor from one who is really averse to granting it, and has to be worn out by importunity, and induced to do that which he was at heart unwilling to do. By no means. The delay is only that we may be brought into the place which God can approve, and where he can, in safety to ourselves, grant us his favor in the blessings which we ask. The hindrance is always with ourselves. The first question to be determined in prayer is, whether the petition is a proper one to present before the Lord. Then we must seek to ascertain and put away from ourselves everything that stands in the way of that petition being granted. When this work is really accomplished, the answer to prayer will be immediate.

J. N. A.