CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Prayer as Vast as God

God-gripped prophets of old had a sensitive awareness of the enormity and unpopularity of their task. By pleading their own inefficiency and inadequacy, these care-bowed men sought to escape the delivering of their burdened souls. Moses, for instance, sought to evade a nationwide commitment by pleading a stammering tongue. Yet note how God evaded his evasion by supplying a spokesman in Aaron. Jeremiah, too, reasoned that he was but a child. Yet in Jeremiah’s case (as in Moses’), the human objection was not sustained. For men of divine selection were not sent to the council chambers of human wisdom—to get their personalities polished or their knowledge edged. But God somehow trapped His man and closeted him with Himself. If according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, a man’s mind, stretched with a new idea, can never go back to its original dimensions, then what shall we say of a soul that has heard the whisper of the Eternal Voice? ‘‘The words that I [the Lord] speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life’’ (John 6:63). Our preaching is much diseased today by borrowed thoughts from the brains of dead men rather than from the Lord. Books are good when they are our guides, but bad when they are our chains.

Just as in atomic energy, modern scientists have touched a new dimension of power, so the Church has to rediscover the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit. To smite the iniquity of this sin-soaked age and shatter the complacency of slumbering saints, something is really needed. Vital preaching and victorious living must ‘‘come out of’’ sustained watches in the prayer chamber. Some one says, ‘‘We must pray if we want to live a holy life!’’ Yes, but conversely, we must live a holy life if we want to pray. According to David, ‘‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart’’ (Ps. 24:3-4).

The secret of praying is praying in secret. Books on prayer are good, but not enough. As books on cooking are good but hopeless unless there is food to work on, so with prayer. One can read a library of prayer books and not be one whit more powerful in prayer. We must learn to pray, and we must pray to learn to pray. While sitting in a chair reading the finest book in the world on physical health, one may waste away. So one may read about prayer, marvel at the endurance of Moses, or stagger at the weeping, groaning Jeremiah, and yet not be able to stammer the ABC’s of intercessory prayer. As the bullet unspent bags no game, so the prayer-heart unburdened gathers no spoil.

‘‘In God’s name, I beseech you, let prayer nourish your soul as meals nourish your body!’’ said the faithful Fenelon. Henry Martyn spake thus: ‘‘My present deadness I attribute to want of sufficient time and tranquility for private devotion. Oh that I might be a man of prayer!’’ A writer of old said, ‘‘Much of our praying is like the boy who rings the door bell, but then runs away before the door is opened.’’ Of this we are sure: The greatest undiscovered area in the resources of God is the place of prayer.

Who can tell the measure of God’s powers? One might estimate the weight of the world, tell the size of the Celestial City, count the stars of heaven, measure the speed of lightning, and tell the time of the rising and setting of the sun— but you cannot estimate prayer power. Prayer is as vast as God because He is behind it. Prayer is as mighty as God, because He has committed Himself to answer it. God pity us that in this noblest of all employments for the tongue and for the spirit, we stammer so. If God does not illuminate us in the closet, we walk in darkness. At the judgment seat the most embarrassing thing the believer will face will be the smallness of his praying.

Here is a majestic passage from the venerated Chrysos-tom: ‘‘The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all-sufficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother, of a thousand blessings.’’ Are Chrysostom’s words mere rhetoric, to make a commonplace thing look superlative? The Bible knows nothing of such cunning.

Elijah was a man skilled in the art of prayer, who altered the course of nature, strangled the economy of a nation, prayed and fire fell, prayed and people fell, prayed and rain fell. We need rain, rain, rain! The churches are so parched that seed cannot germinate. Our altars are dry, with no hot tears of penitents. Oh for an Elijah! When Israel cried for water, a man smote a rock, and that flinty fortress became a womb out of which a life-giving stream was born. ‘‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’’ God send us a man that can smite the rock!

Of this let us be sure, the prayer closet is not a place merely to hand to the Lord a list of urgent requests. Does ‘‘prayer change things’’? Yes, but prayer changes men. Prayer not only took away the reproach of Hannah, but it changed her—changed her from a barren woman to a fruitful one, from mourning to rejoicing (I Sam. 1:10; and 2:1), yes, changed her ‘‘mourning into dancing’’ (Ps. 30:11). Perhaps we are praying that we might dance when we have never yet mourned. We choose the garment of praise while God says, (Isa. 61:3), ‘‘unto them that mourn [I give] the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.’’ If we would reap, the same order is true, for ‘‘he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him’’ (Ps. 126:6).

It took a heartbroken, mourning Moses to cry, ‘‘Oh, this people have sinned a great sin . . . Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written’’ (Ex. 32:31-32)! It took a burdened, pain-gripped Paul to say, ‘‘I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh’’ (Rom. 9:2-3).

If John Knox had prayed, ‘‘Give me success!’’ we would never have heard of him; but he prayed a self-purged prayer—‘‘Give me Scotland, or I die!’’—and his prayer scored the pages of history. If David Livingstone had prayed that he might split Africa wide open, as proof of his indomitable spirit and skill with the sextant, his prayer would have died with the wind of the forest; but he prayed, ‘‘Lord, when will the wound of this world’s sin be healed?’’ Livingstone lived in prayer, and literally died upon his knees in prayer.

For this sin-hungry age we need a prayer-hungry Church. We need to explore again the ‘‘exceeding great and precious promises of God.’’ In ‘‘that great day,’’ the fire of judgment is going to test the sort, not the size of the work we have done. That which is born in prayer will survive the test. Prayer does business with God. Prayer creates hunger for souls; hunger for souls creates prayer. The understanding soul prays; the praying soul gets understanding. To the soul who prays in self-owned weakness, the Lord gives His strength. Oh that we were men of like prayer as Elijah—a man subject to like passions as we are! Lord, let us pray!