The Power of Prayer

CHAPTER ONE: WHY WE MUST PRAY

T herefore will the LORD wait, that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgement; blessed are all they that wait for Him (Isaiah 30:18).

Of course we know that we must pray. But do we pray as we should? Do we really strive in prayer? Do we wait in expectation upon God? Have we given ourselves in the past to this vital spiritual exercise as we ought to have done? To these questions, most of us will answer, No!" We will also confess that we have not known the mighty power of the Spirit of God as we might have known it, nor have we been as fruitful as we might have been. If we knew with certainty, that the Lord Jesus would return within a few months or years, our prayers would be vastly different; no doubt we realize that. It is true to say that our service for the Lord depends to a great extent upon our private prayers and for that reason it is vital to us to pray.

Isaiah 30:18, has been a help to me in regard to prayer, and I wish to pass on a few thoughts on it to others. Firstly, we notice that the LORD is waiting to be gracious to us. We must not imagine that by our prayers we make God willing to help us, or that we can tell Him anything of our need that He does now know. The truth is that He is more willing to give than we are to ask. The hindrance has always been with us. The LORD is waiting to be gracious. The Lord Jesus plainly stated this in Matthew 7:7: Ask, and it shall be given you. But we have a feeling in our hearts that much of what we ask never seems to be given, or it is so long delayed that we cease to ask and to expect. The truth about this is, that we do not wait sufficiently upon God, so that we may ask aright. We ask what is according to our own thoughts, without waiting upon God to know what His thoughts are. We need to learn the secret of Psalm 62:5 (RV margin): My soul be thou silent unto God; for my expectation is from Him. Prayer is more than speaking, it is an attitude of heart. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God (Ecclesiastes 5:2).

Let us realize that God is waiting for us. Oh the marvel of it, that He should be earnestly waiting for us to draw near to Him! And oh the shame of it that we draw near so seldom, and so unexpectingly! When we do come before Him, it is so often our own plans and purposes that we lay before Him, for His approval and blessing. We put the cart before the horse. We ought to come with our hearts bowed before Him to learn His will, so that we may ask according to His all-wise and perfect purpose. No wonder that we so often toil all night and catch nothing.

We need to start over again, and wait for Him. Begin everything by quiet waiting upon God. Let humiliation and confession be the first part of all our work for Him. Then prayer will be different. Then we shall know what to ask in prayer, and we shall see again the mighty acts of the Lord. God is waiting to be gracious to us, for He is the God of all grace, and if we come yielding our hearts to Him, then we shall prove again the abundance of His grace. If we fail to humble ourselves and to exalt God, then He will exalt His own Name; this may be in chastening us, or in using others instead of us. He will not suffer His great Name to be dishonoured, or His purposes to be frustrated because of our failure. He will be exalted, so may He have mercy upon us. He is a God of judgement; He will try our hearts. Even though we may have failed in the past, He waits to have mercy upon us. Happy indeed are we, if we wait for Him.

So then, let us seek God in earnest supplication, waiting for Him, that He may visit us. Our poverty may be the result of our prayerlessness or our defective prayer, for the Lord is waiting to be gracious to us. If we do set our hearts to seek Him, and if we study His ways so that we can ask according to His will, then prayer will become a time of sweet communion. But it will become more than that. It will become a time of spiritual conflict when we enter the arena against the powers of darkness. It