"More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let
thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them
friend?
For so the whole round earth is bound in every
way,
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
"There is no such thing in the long history of God’s kingdom as unanswered prayer. Every true desire, even from a child’s heart, finds some true answer in the heart of God." Our prayers may not always be answered in our way, but they are always answered, nevertheless; if not in our way, in God’s own true, better way. "Ask, and it shall be given you." How easy the conditions, and yet how few accept the promise! What does it mean to ask? What is prayer? Montgomery has thus defined it:
"Prayer is the heart’s sincere desire
Uttered or unexpressed,
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast."
Another says:
"Say, what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed?
The mighty utterance of a mighty need.
That man is praying who doth press with
might
Out of his darkness into God’s own light."
"To pray is to desire, but it is to desire what God would have us desire. He who desires not from the bottom of his heart offers a deceitful prayer." Our will must be wholly submitted to His will. We must have confidence in Him as we do in our dearest earthly friend, knowing, however, that He has all power in heaven and in earth, that He knows the end from the beginning, and that He always gives us what we ask for, or something better.
Turn to that God-breathed masterpiece of all literature, the Sacred Scriptures, and find therein the records of those noble men who, thru faith, the golden chain which binds us to the heart of the Infinite, "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens."
"Call upon Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knewest not of."
"If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it."
"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
These are only a few of the many precious promises with which God’s unchangeable word abounds, and which His people of old, as well as His people now, had as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast.
For example, let us take an incident in the life of Moses, the man of God. Israel, notwithstanding the loving-kindness and tender mercies of Jehovah, and the wonderful patience of Moses, had, even while Moses was in the mountain of God receiving instruction for the people, yielded to their carnal natures and gone back into idolatry.
God was displeased. "Get thee down," He said to Moses. "I have seen this people, and behold it is a stiff-necked people. . . . Let Me alone that I may consume them." Then, said the Lord, "I will make of thee a great nation."
O what an offer! Who could resist the temptation? Long and patiently had Moses borne with the murmurings and complainings of the children of Israel, and now even the long-suffering and forbearance of God seems almost to have become exhausted in His dealings with this disobedient people.
The father of a great nation! What an opportunity! What glory and prominence it would bring to Moses! How it would exalt him in the eyes of the world! Will he accept the offer?
His heart is filled with love for his people. How he pleads with God! "Remember, O Lord, Thy promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written."
O what a prayer is this! Can human mind fathom the simplicity, the grandeur, the self-abnegation, combined in this brief petition? A man of God indeed! Human?—Yes, but with his humanity so deeply buried in Christ that self is completely forgotten in his overwhelming love for God and his fellow men.
The same possibilities of perfection are ours to-day.