p. 91 | Never be at a Loss by Exchange

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 5, 1861

Never be at a Loss.

By Exchange

If you are beset by perils from which there are no visible means or hopes of deliverance, all your distress and fear may be embodied in the cry of sinking Peter—"Lord, save me!"

If you are utterly embarrassed and perplexed, that one petition of Saul will invoke light on your path from the source of all light—"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"

If you are overwhelmed with a sense of sin so as scarcely to dare to lift up your eyes toward heaven, or venture on a direct address to a holy God, there is the prayer of the publican at hand for you—"God be merciful to me a sinner!"

If you desire inward renovation, profound, complete spiritual transformation rather, the prayer of David expresses that wish in its full and perfect form—"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!"

If you desire illumination in the deep things of God, derive a prayer from the intercession of Paul, Eph. iii, 14, to the end. How the soul unfolds its wings in the vastness of that supplication, culminating and resting in a rapturous act of adoration!

If your heart is burdened with anxiety for some beloved one still destitute of grace, there is the fervid, intercession of Abraham—"O that Ishmael might live before thee!" Substitute the name which your affection prompts, and the intercession of the Father of the faithful becomes your own.

If material wants press you, the modest petition of Agur (which was also a "prophecy"—Prov. xxx.—as every believing prayer is) will express the easily contended desires of a holy mind—"Feed me with food convenient for me."

"I adore," said Tertullian, "the fullness of Scripture" (adoro plenitudinem Scripturæ). And in no respect is this Divine fullness more admirably displayed than in the variety of its petitions. They express every emotion of a sinful and suffering soul struggling backward and upward to God from the sin and misery of this fallen world.

Let this "word of Christ dwell in you richly," and you will never lack material for prayer.

And then, what particularly commends these petitions to our use, is that they were inspired prayers. They were accepted prayers. They were uttered by "holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And of nearly three hundred of them recorded in Scripture, all but some five or six were answered by actual granting of the petition—and all, without exception, procured blessings such as God alone can give.—Exchange.