My last post was entitled “Early Will I seek Thee”. I hope that you enjoyed reading and meditating upon those inspiring words as I enjoyed writing and sharing with you. As I continue to read E.M. Bounds on Prayer, I will share certain excerpts that I believe will challenge us, make us consider our walk with God and our prayer life. Is it a prayer life that pants and thirsts after righteousness, as David uttered in Psalms 42:1,2 “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”
I will begin with a quote from Charles Spurgeon:
“We must remember that the goal of prayer is the ear of God. Unless that is gained, the prayer has utterly failed. The uttering of it may have kindled devotional feeling in our minds, the hearing of it may have comforted and strengthened the hearts of those with whom we have prayed, but if the prayer has not gained the heart of God, it has failed in its essential purpose.”
Excerpts from E.M. Bounds on Prayer, Chapter 3:
“In prayer, man’s access to God opens everything, and makes his impoverishment his wealth. We have seen how prayer changes the purposes of God, and stays or moves His mighty hand. All things are available to man through prayer. Man is given the privilege to command God, who has all this authority and power, in accordance with the demands of God’s earthly kingdom. Look again at the passage in Psalm 2, beginning with verse eight:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Psalms 2:8,9.
Heaven, with all that is has, is under obligation to carry out the ultimate, final, and glorious purposes of God. Why, then, is the time so long in carrying out these wise benedictions for man? Why, then, does sin reign so long? Why are the oath-bound covenant promises so long in coming to their gracious end? Sin reigns, Satan reigns, sighing marks the lives of many; all tears are fresh and full.
Why is all this so? Because we have not prayed to bring the evil to an end; we have not prayed as we must pray. We have not met the conditions of prayer.
More praying, and better praying, is the key to the whole matter. The more time we spend in prayer, and the more preparations we make to meet God, the more we will commune with God through Christ. But our manner of praying, and the things about which we pray, are not entirely pleasing to God. Baptist philosopher John Foster has said, “More and better praying will bring the surest and readiest triumph to God’s cause; feeble, formal, listless praying brings decay and death.”
What, then, are we to do? We must prepare ourselves to pray, to be like Christ, and to pray like Christ. We must meet the conditions of prayer. We can begin to examine the conditions of prayer by reading these verses from Isaiah:
“Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.” Isaiah 45:11, 12.
Ask of Me. Ask of God. We have not rested on prayer. We have not made prayer the sole condition. There has been a violation of the primary condition of prayer. We have not prayed correctly. We have not prayed at all. God is willing to give, but we are slow to ask. The Son, through His saints, is ever praying (see Hebrews 7:25), and God the Father is ever answering.
Ask of Me. In the invitation is conveyed the assurance of an answer; the shout of victory is there and may be heard by the listening ear. The Father holds the authority and power in His hands. How easy is the condition, and yet how slow we are in fulfilling the condition! Nations are in bondage; the uttermost parts of the earth are still not possessed. The earth groans (see Romans 8:22); the world is still in bondage; and Satan and evil hold sway.
Ask of Me. The Father holds Himself in the attitude of Giver, and a petition to God the Father empowers all agencies, inspires all movements. The Gospel is divinely inspired, and behind all its inspirations is prayer. Standing as the endowment of the enthroned Christ is the oath-bound covenant of the Father: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Psalms 2:8. And men shall prayer to Him continually. See Psalms 72:15.
But not all praying is true praying. The driving power, the conquering force in God’s cause, must be God Himself. “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3), is God’s challenge to pray. Prayer puts God in full force into His own work. “Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me” (Isaiah 45:11), is God’s carte blanche to prayer. Faith is only omnipotent when on its knees; and when its outstretched hands take hold of God, then it draws upon the utmost of God’s capacity, for only a praying faith can get God’s “all things whatsoever.”
“…The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.” James 5:16-18.
But why do we not obtain results by our praying? Why are our prayers not answered? Our lack of results, and the cause of all our feebleness in faith, was explained by the apostle James in these words: “Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” James 4:2, 3.
Oneness with Christ is the glorious climax of spiritual attainment, because we can then “ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us” (John 15:7). Therefore, we must be one with Him. We must pray in His name, for prayer in Jesus’ name puts the crowning crown on God; it glorifies Him through the Son and pledges the Son to give to men “whatsoever” and anything they ask. That is the whole truth, in a nutshell.”
What a wonderful promise that we can ask anything in Jesus’ name as it is in God’s will because He knows what is best.
I will share again, but may God richly bless and strengthen us in our prayer life and to do His will.
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