The Way of Prayer by Charles L. Taylor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 1, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 30.

The Way of Prayer

By Charles L. Taylor

Soul Winning as Jesus Knew It

JESUS was the Man of prayer. God's blessed Son, the lover of sinners, was a constant practitioner in the art of prayer. He believed in prayer, taught prayer, lived prayer.

Prayer was the delight of His soul. It was rest and refreshment, quietness and repose, inspiration and revelation.

His hours of prayer were the oases that gladdened and recuperated Him as He pressed on through the desert of His earthly sojourn. They were the storehouses of righteousness, the stations for spiritual repair, the recesses of blessed uplift.

A Mighty Soul Struggle

WHATEVER other thought relative to the Lord Jesus we may entertain, we are constrained to hold this,—that He was one who wrestled with God. Prayer in His experience was a mighty soul struggle. He "offered up prayers . . . with strong crying and tears." And Heaven bowed in obedience to His faith. He was never denied. He could say to His Father, "I knew that Thou hearest Me always."

Inspiration has been brief in its record; but sufficient is told to enable us to know that early and late, and sometimes all night, He shut Himself away from men, in communion with God. The privilege of petitioning was more to Him than life itself; and hours were but as moments to His soul as He strove to reach up through the clouds which sought to obscure the skies of His humanity, that He might find miraculous recognition. All other needs were forgotten while the need of power pressed His soul.

We sometimes wonder why God's only Son should have been so terribly in earnest in this matter of prayer. Why need He, the pure, the holy, the divine Man of men, pray in agony, pray until His very blood oozed from His flesh? Was it not impossible for Him to sin? Was not His divine nature a sufficient guarantee that He should forever triumph?

Took the Place of the Lowest

AH, dear brother, sister, friend, please walk softly here, and walk slowly. Has it ever come to you, fully and clearly, that Jesus assumed human nature with all its liabilities to sin? Have you comprehended that He took upon Him fallen human nature, and became sin in our behalf? Have you entered into the secret place of His gospel experience, and ascertained that He made every interest of ours identical—absolutely identical—with His own? Has God whispered into your soul that Jesus voluntarily took the place of the lowest of His lost ones, and shouldered the responsibility of seeing that the human race should have salvation?

Stop, please, and reflect upon this: Not only did He take upon his heart the load of human helplessness and hopelessness, but He promised God to lift that load as a man only. He covenanted to exercise no power except such as any other one of God's human family might know. He would make His sole trust the Father's promise, His only refuge that of faith.

In the light of this remarkable condescension, this sublime humiliation, we may find the secret of His soul anguish. Having lowered Himself into the pit of world wickedness and horror, having become man for man's sake, His humanity made prayer necessary to His very existence. Yes, and away beyond this, it made prayer necessary to our

existence; for having taken the sum total of human weaknesses into and upon Himself, His failure would have meant ruin to the whole race. No wonder that He poured out His soul! No wonder that He stormed the very battlements of heaven in His superhuman effort to bring man from a state of rebellion into reconciliation with God!

Jesus prayed. Prayer was the largest part of His life. His wonderful mission for men was accomplished chiefly on His knees, in secret. The healing of disease, the casting out of evil spirits, the lifting up of the fallen, the encouraging of despair-driven men—these and all other miracles of mercy were but the fruitage of those seasons when His soul, in prayer, mounted to the very summit of the mountain of God, and there listened to the counsels of the Eternal. He bore the great world with Him into the presence of the Lord of hosts.

Listened to Counsels of the Eternal

OH, how I should like to have been with Him as He presented before God the longings of His life! What pleading I should have heard, what sympathy expressed, what anxious inquiry, what intense asking!

You will remember the night in the upper room, and Peter's self-confidence. You will recall that Jesus looked upon His weak and erring disciple, and, foreseeing all the shameful denial which lay just before, tenderly said to him, "Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not."

When had He made supplication for him? Where? The exact time and place have not been revealed; but sometime, somewhere, He had held Peter up before God, and held him until He knew deliverance would be given.

He had prayed and wept, He had struggled and toiled, He had interceded and invoked, until it pleased God to send Him assurance that Peter would not be given over to Satan.

The Boldness of the Lover's Love

HE is in the secret place of the desert. No human ear is permitted to listen while the Lover's love breathes forth its pathos and tenderness, yet in holy boldness and power, for the man who shortly will deny His name, even with cursing. Ah, how His heart bleeds as He reminds the Ancient of days that He has taken Peter's place, and must meet Peter's needs! Listen while He pleads the tremendous issues at stake, and what it will mean to the very throne of God itself if failure overtakes Him. "Oh, My Father, My Father, give to Me this one, and give him to Me now! Thou canst not say No. I give My life for him, because I love him. And Thou dost love him. O My God, let the angels come now, just now, and shield him from overtemptation. Bring him repentance, and give him a heart to understand Thy love, that he may flee to refuge and be saved."

No wonder He could say, "I made supplication"! Why, He had gone to the cross for him. He had prayed His very life away, that that same poor man might be rescued from himself. And Peter was saved—marvelously saved. The prayer was answered.

Such was the prayer life of Jesus. It was thus He prayed for poor Mary of Magdala. Not once, nor twice, nor thrice; but again and again and again and again He prayed, until He saw her safely footed in the way of life. And one day, we shall see of His soul travail, for we shall meet Peter and Mary in the better world.

Deliverance Through "Travail"

MARK that word "travail." It is a Bible word, and is used to express the experience of Him who died for mankind. And nowhere did Jesus know travail for His earthly kindred more than while He prayed. His prayers were birth throes. In Gethsemane, He knew the anguish of ten thousand deaths, while the bitter cup was pressed to His lips. Yes, in truth, a new world and a new race were born that night in the secret and awful heart suffering of the Son of man. That night, He decided that He would allow God to banish Him, if that was necessary to man's salvation.

Yes, Jesus prayed the unselfish prayer of the one who gives himself for others, of the one who takes the place of the lost. Thus Paul prayed. Rom. 9: 1-3. Thus Moses prayed. Ex. 32: 32. And thus should all soul winners pray.

Prayer commands angels. "Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech My Father, and He shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?" And angels are the forces that work for the deliverance of men. Heb. 1: 14. They encamp round about the children of God, and deliver. Ps. 34: 7. The true soul winner is he who finds in prayer the sweetness and blessedness of angel ministration, and who is able, by their powerful persuasive force, to attract men to the good.

Prayer and the Soul Winner

THE praying man is one who draws men. The lost will come to him, even as to Jesus, drawn by a something which they themselves do not understand.

Wonderful plan—the prayer plan! But wonderful to those only who in utter self-abandonment throw themselves into the breach, and actually take the responsibility of lifting men up to God! Wonderful to those only who have so fully devoted themselves that their souls cry out in them, and tears flow, and hearts bleed, and life ebbs away, because men are lost!

O Jesus Christ, if Thou didst pray and have untold anguish, and if, through prayer, Thou didst break the hold of sin upon the tempted and tried, why may we not follow Thee? Come, Master, and lead us in the prayer way of soul winning. "Teach us to pray."