As we contemplate the
great ministry of prayer, I think it would be most
helpful if at the outset we were reminded of the Divine
basis of all acceptable prayer. Before we come to what
may be more technical we must recognize the spiritual
foundation of prayer, and that has to do with the
ingredients and the sacredness of the incense which was
to be burnt upon the golden altar referred to in Exodus
30, verse 34 onwards.
It is not my intention
to take up these ingredients for exposition, but simply
to note that the Lord stipulated certain things for the
sweet spices, and then made a very strong statement in
relation to them: "...ye shall not make to
yourselves according to the composition thereof; it shall
be unto thee holy for the Lord. Whosoever shall make like
unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from
his people." That is the basis of all acceptable
prayer. As we know, the sweet spices, the ingredients of
the incense, typify the moral excellencies of the Lord
Jesus: His graces, virtues, merits and worthiness. The
incense is not the prayers of the saints, but the merit
and worthiness of the Lord Jesus put into the prayers,
mingled with the prayers, and becoming that which brings
the prayers in effectiveness and acceptance to the
presence of God. There is completeness here, inasmuch as
the ingredients are fourfold: the completeness of the
graces and virtues and moral excellencies of Christ. And
then, as you notice, salt (which always speaks of
preserving things in life) is to be mingled with these
other ingredients, and that seems to me to suggest that
even the presentation of the moral excellencies of the
Lord Jesus is always to be free from merely cold
formality, which means death, and must remain a living
and vital thing. It is so possible for a contemplation of
the Lord Jesus to become a mechanical and formal thing,
something which we accept in our minds as necessary and
true, so that we come mechanically upon the merits of the
Lord Jesus, when the Lord wants the thing to be
continuously alive. With every fresh coming to the Lord
there should be a fresh appreciation in life of the Lord
Jesus. The salt is to keep things from death, to keep
them in life, to keep them fresh and to keep them keen,
and we are required to have an abiding keenness and
aliveness of appreciation of these excellencies of the
Lord Jesus. If it is so, then prayer is acceptable and
effectual. The salt is not one of the ingredients, but
something added in, and that something is that which is
incorruptible.
Then we have the very
definite stipulation that nothing like this was to be
made by man himself or for himself. There was to be no
imitation of this, and there was to be no private and
personal appropriation of it by man. It was to be held
always unto the Lord and to be holy to the Lord, and an
infringement of that rule meant death. As we know, on one
occasion the offering of false fire resulted in judgment
and death. So here we are told that if this thing were
made by man, an imitation of it made for himself and for
his own personal ends, he would be cut off from among his
people. The moral excellencies of the Lord Jesus cannot
be imitated. Man cannot have them in himself, and
anything feigned is unacceptable to God. There are no
excellencies, and there are no glories like those of the
Lord Jesus.
Here we have God most
definitely and positively saying in effect that there is
a uniqueness, an exclusiveness about the character of the
Lord Jesus which is unapproachable by man and altogether
apart from the very best that man can make of himself.
God sees in the Lord Jesus that which is not anywhere
else, and for any man to come imitating the merits of the
Lord Jesus means death for that man. There is no ground
of approach to God in our moral glories, and it is an
awful blasphemy to talk about the sacrifice and the
laying down of life on the part of men for their
fellow-creatures being on a par with the laying down of
His life by the Lord Jesus. That is utter blasphemy, and
it must come under the most utter judgment of God. No!
God sees nothing equal to the moral excellencies of His
Son and forbids us to try to bring anything which is an
imitation of those, a man-made thing, which does not
recognize the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus.
So the ground of all
acceptable prayer upon which we approach the Father is
that of the moral excellencies and glories, and graces,
and virtues, and merits, and worthiness of the Lord
Jesus. That is very simple, but it is basic, and we do
have to recognize that before we can get anywhere in the
matter of prayer.
The
Five Aspects of Prayer
Now we are able to go
on with the subject of prayer itself. In the first place
I want to say a little about the nature of prayer, or
that which makes prayer, from its different standpoints.
And while there may be many other aspects, I think we may
say that prayer has five main aspects: communion,
submission, petition, co-operation and conflict. Prayer
is each one of these, and prayer in its fullness requires
or involves all of them.
Prayer
as Communion
Firstly, prayer is
communion, prayer is fellowship, prayer is love opening
the heart to God, and that is the foundation of all true
forms of prayer. We may liken it to the two main
activities of our human bodies. When we speak of the
activities of these physical bodies we speak of what is
organic, and then of what is functional. Organic trouble
is a very serious thing, but a functional trouble may not
be so serious, and prayer as communion takes the place of
the organic in our bodies. One part of our organic
make-up is our breathing, which we call respiration. Now,
you never stop to think about that! You never reason that
out and say: 'Shall I take another breath?' 'Shall I
breathe?' or 'How many more breaths shall I take today?'
You may do that over a meal, for that is functional, but
you never do it over your respiration, for that is
organic. You may discuss whether you will walk, or talk,
or think, and you may tell yourself that you will stop
thinking, or walking, or talking. That is functional. It
is controlled and deliberate, but you do not do that over
your breathing. That goes on. But if your respiration
should give out, your walking, talking and thinking would
give out, so that respiration is basic to everything
else.
And prayer as communion
is in the spiritual life what respiration is in the
physical. Communion with God is a sustained thing, a
thing like breathing which goes on, or should go on. It
differs altogether from those periodical functional
activities such as feeding. Respiration is quite
involuntary and not just deliberate. We may call it a
habit, and a habit is something which easily eludes the
full consciousness of the one who is addicted to it. We
do things habitually without being aware at the time that
we are doing them. When a habit is fully formed it is
just an unconscious part of our procedure, and communion
with God is that - something that goes on. Prayer as
communion is just that: we are in touch with the Lord and
we spontaneously and involuntarily open our heart to Him.
That is the first foundational thing in all prayer, and
that is something to which we shall have to give
attention. While we never discuss the question as to
whether we will breathe or not, there is such a thing as
developing right breathing, and in this sense we shall
have to give attention to our breathing.
I think that of all the
people I ever met who exemplified this organic life in
fellowship with God, Dr. F. B. Meyer was outstanding. It
did not matter where he was or what the circumstances
were, he would suddenly stop, perhaps in dictating a
letter, or in a conversation, or in a business meeting,
and just say: 'Stop a minute!' and he prayed. And that
was his habit in life. He seemed at any moment to be in
touch with the Lord. It was like breathing to him, and I
believe it represented one of the secrets of the
fruitfulness of his life and the value of his judgment in
the things of the Lord. Only those who had close touch
with him, especially in difficult executive meetings,
knew the value of that spiritual judgment which he
brought to bear upon situations, and it seemed to come to
him just like that, as out from the Lord.
Well, that is prayer in
its foundation. It is communion, it is fellowship and the
spontaneous opening of the heart to the Lord. It is not
the whole range of prayer, but it is life lived at the
back of all deliberate activities, life in touch with the
Lord, and it is a very, very valuable thing. All other
prayer is so much more effective if we have that. It is
so different from life being just a matter of prayer in
emergencies, and emergencies are very often much more
critical than they need be because we have to find our
way back to God instead of being there. I think that very
often the Lord allows emergencies to come to us in order
to restore fellowship with Himself which has been lost,
and in the Lord's mind the abiding fruit of such an
emergency is that we should not lose that fellowship
again. We should keep hold of it.
Prayer
as Submission
Then, secondly, prayer
is submission, and here we must be aware of the
possibility of a contradiction in terms. Prayer is
submission. Passive inaction in what is called trust is
not prayer. We have heard people speak of trust, which
for them means just passivity and inaction, but it is not
prayer. Submission is always active, not passive.
Submission always involves the will; it does not dismiss
the will. Now carefully keep hold of that. Many people
think that just trustfully leaning on the Lord is
submission, and their address to the Lord takes its
character from such a state, but that is not prayer.
Unquestioning acquiescence in things as we find them is
not submission, and it is not prayer. Submission means
getting into line with the Divine mind. That may mean
conflict, it will almost invariably mean action, and it
will bring in the volition. Prayer, from whatever
standpoint you regard it, is always positive. It is never
passive. Trust is another thing and does not come into
the realm of prayer. Faith comes into the realm of
prayer, but faith is always an active thing and never a
passive thing. Faith may require a battle, and it very
often does, to get to a place of rest, but the 'rest of
faith' is not what we have called unquestioning
acquiescence. The 'rest of faith' means that the last
stage of adjustment to the Divine mind has been reached.
Submission is not merely the suppression of desire, but
the bringing of desire into line with the Divine will,
and, if needs be, changing desire. Desire may be a very
strong thing, a mighty propelling force, but a propelling
force ought to be so much under control that it can be
switched into the direction of an arresting force. To
propel a train, a tremendous amount of power and force is
required, but a modern train is so arranged that the
mighty propelling force which carries it forward can in a
moment be switched to its brakes to pull it to a halt. In
prayer, where submission is in view, that is very often
what has to be done. That strength of desire has to be
arrested in one direction and brought into another
direction, perhaps from propelling us forward to bringing
us to a standstill in the will of God. That is
submission. You see, submission is an active thing, a
positive thing.
I anticipate that there
will be many questions in this connection, but it is very
important to recognize that prayer in its second aspect
is submission, which is a positive thing. It is not just
collapsing before God and saying: 'Well, I trust that
everything will turn out all right. I just acquiesce in
things as they are and leave it with the Lord.'
Submission is coming positively into line with God's
will, God's desire and God's mind. That very often means
the deepest conflict, and sometimes heartbreak, but it is
necessary. We will touch that again later.
Prayer
as Petition
Thirdly, prayer is
petition, request, or asking. That is all the same,
whichever word you prefer. Here we touch what is perhaps
the major aspect in the activity of prayer. Undoubtedly
it has the largest place in Scripture, and it really
defines the meaning of the word 'prayer.'
From a scriptural
standpoint prayer is rightly taken to mean petition, and
if you go through the Word of God you will find that
prayer represents petition in an overwhelming measure.
Perhaps we do not need very much argument along that line
to prove or persuade that it is so, but I am quite sure
that before we are through we shall see that a note of
emphasis is necessary, for, after all, our main problems
arise in the direction of asking, in the realm of
petition. We shall go on praying, of course, and we shall
go on asking, in spite of them all. I trust that we
shall, but it is as well for us to have the ground well
laid for petition, for request, for asking, and for us to
recognize clearly, and be fully assured, that there is an
objective efficacy in prayer. I do not doubt but that all
of us at some time or other have a little catch in our
prayers of request and asking because of a little mental
something that comes in and undermines certainty. What I
am talking about is the objective efficacy of prayer,
that is, prayer which has power to change things
objectively and not merely have an influence upon us
inwardly, prayer which brings answers outside of
ourselves. Petition, request, asking, as set over against
all false arguments, such as: Divine omniscience makes
prayer unnecessary; God knows everything;
He knows what He will do, how He will do it, and He knows
the end of all things from the beginning, so why pray? Or
again: Divine goodness makes prayer superfluous. God is
good, compassionate, merciful and longsuffering. He will
only do the best, for He is love, so prayer is superfluous.
Why petition the Lord to do good, to be gracious, to
show kindness and to do the best for us? Why not trust
the goodness of God? Prayer is superfluous. Or once more:
Divine foreordination makes prayer useless. If God
has settled things eternally, predestination holds good,
so it is useless to pray. Or, running alongside of
that, Divine sovereignty - the fact that God rules and
overrules, He is in the throne of government and has all
things in His hands and in His power - makes prayer lack
of faith. Why ask, why pray, why petition, why
request, when all things are in God's hands and He is
ruling and over-ruling, governing and directing in His
sovereignty? Once more: the Divine vastness of law and
purpose makes prayer presumptuous. It is
presumption to ask God to change things when He has fixed
everything according to His eternal laws and things are
moving in correspondence with a set order. It is
presumption to expect the Lord to go out of His order, or
to ask Him to do so. (See chapter 4.)
Now, you may not have
put things like that, and those questions may never have
arisen in your minds in that way, but I venture to
suggest that, whether those words have been in your mind
or not, whether you have put things like that or not,
what is contained in them has from time to time crept
subtly into your prayer-life, has affected it and taken
some of the grip out of it. When you have been praying an
indefinable something has crept in: 'Well, the Lord knows
what He will do so why should I beseech Him? The Lord is
good and gracious, so why should I ask Him? The Lord
knows the end from the beginning, so why should I not
just trust Him? The Lord's purposes are fixed, so why
should I begin to wrestle with Him to change things? He
will work out His purpose and He is of set mind, so who
can change Him?' Prayer is affected, if not by the actual
framing of the language mentally, by that sense of
contradiction which comes in. All these things creep into
the mind or heart and have a tendency to deter or weaken
in the matter of prayer, and we have to deal with these
more fully as we go on. We must recognize that the
modernism of our time does set aside the objective
efficacy of prayer and only gives to it the place of a
subjective value, that is, its salutary influence upon
the one who prays in making a change of, perhaps,
demeanour, or mind, or reason, by certain qualities of
reverence and such like.
Before we take up some
of these things more fully, let me say that there are two
things to bear in mind always in petitional prayer. The
first is the basic need of the other two aspects,
communion and submission. For petitional prayer, in
which, after all that I have said, we believe, and with
which, after all, we shall go on, nevertheless the basic
need is communion with the Lord so that prayer does not
resolve itself into merely asking God for things, but
comes out of a heart-fellowship with Him. And it needs
submission, so that our petitions are not for our own
ends or personal desires, but, having been brought by
submission into line with the Divine will, are based upon
oneness with the mind and will of God. You will find that
I am only putting in another way what is made perfectly
clear in the Word of God, namely: "If you shall ask
anything according to His will." That is submission.
Then the other thing to
bear in mind in petitional prayer is that, in view of all
the mental difficulties which I have mentioned, it
becomes pre-eminently an act of faith. It is these mental
difficulties which very largely make petitional prayer an
act of faith. Yes, argue if you will along all these
lines, about the sovereignty of God, and predestination,
and so on; nevertheless, we believe that God will change
things. In spite of all the arguments which would
undercut and weaken prayer, we are going on asking. That
makes petitional prayer pre-eminently an act of faith.
You may say that is a very cheap way of getting out of
it. Well, we have not finished yet, but that is the
conclusion at which we have to arrive. We do not want to
get out of this cheaply.
Prayer
as Co-operation
There are yet two other
aspects of prayer, one of which we will deal with in this
chapter, and the other we will leave for later.
The fourth aspect is
co-operation, and this is the governing object of prayer.
It gets behind everything else and will set us right as
to praying and to prayer in all its aspects. Communion,
submission, petition and conflict are all adjusted and
set right when we recognize that prayer is co-operation,
for all these other aspects and phases of prayer are for
co-operation. Co-operation is the motive, the truth, the
life, the liberty, the power and the glory of prayer. The
motive of prayer is co-operation with God. What prayer is
in truth is cooperation with God. To have life in prayer
we have to recognize that it is co-operation with God,
and we get life when prayer is entered into as
co-operation with God. If we are not in co-operation with
God we may be sure that we shall have no life in prayer.
If we are really cooperating with God we shall know we
have life in prayer.
Liberty in prayer comes
along the line of co-operation with God, and it is not
until we get that adjustment, that coming into line with
God's purpose, that we 'get through,' as we say.
Immediately we get into line with the purpose of God and
actively co-operate, then we get movement and there is
liberty.
In the same way the
power of prayer is related to co-operation with God.
Co-operation with God is power in prayer. Think of
Elijah, and others, coming into co-operation with God and
the resulting effectiveness of their prayer. What is
accomplished!
And then the glory of
prayer. Prayer becomes a glorious thing when it is really
intelligently and spiritually a matter of co-operation
with God. Co-operation eliminates selfishness and
everything that is merely personal. That is one of its
chief values, for it means that prayer should bring us
into the Divine plan, the Divine method, the Divine time
and the Divine spirit, or disposition. All these things
are important - not only to know the plan, but God's
method of fulfilling His plan; not only to know the plan
and the method, but to come into God's time; and then,
not only to be on that executive side, but to be in a
right spirit for the thing when the time has come, to do
it in the Spirit, in the demeanor of the Lord. All that
is co-operation. We may be in a right thing, in a right
way, at a right time, and yet not be helping the Lord
because we are in a wrong spirit that is not the spirit
of the Lord. Prayer in co-operation with God is to make
adjustment in all these matters.
There are three factors
which are essential to prayer. Firstly, desire; secondly,
faith; and thirdly, volition, or will. I just make that
statement and leave it as it is.
Then when we put
together communion, submission and petition we have
co-operation. When they go together and are adjusted to
each other, in line with each other and with the Divine
will, then you have co-operation.
Perhaps, in closing
that phase of things, we might remind ourselves that very
often the Lord calls for an initial exercise on our part
before He comes in on His side. He very often requires an
initiative from us in the matter of desire, of faith and
of volition. It is like the drop of water that has to be
put into the old-fashioned pump to produce the stream,
and you do not get the flow until you have given the pump
something. And the Lord just calls for that on our part
which may be, in comparison, a very little, but which
makes it possible for Him to come out in His fullness.
Very often prayer at its commencement represents exercise
of will, faith and desire on our part, and then the Lord
responds to that. It may be that the Lord does not
respond until He sees the desire put into faith's
deliberate action of the will to get through to Him.
There is very often a good deal of discouragement met
with at the commencement of prayer, and the danger is
that we should give up too soon because we do not seem to
be getting anywhere. The Lord is just asking for that
drop of water to start the flow!
So far we have only
mentioned four aspects of prayer, and have referred to
some of the difficulties which arise in connection with
them, but we have not cleared up those difficulties. We
shall give two whole chapters to the fifth aspect of
prayer, and then proceed to deal at greater length with
the difficulties by way of seeking to answer them. These
difficulties, however, are really only in the realm of
the mind, and while they may sometimes get in the way of
faith, faith will triumph over them, and leave behind a
history of mighty things in spite of them.