By E. M. Bounds
PRAYER -- ITS WIDE RANGE
THE possibilities of prayer are gauged by faith in
God's ability to do. Faith is the one prime condition by which God works. Faith
is the one prime condition by which man prays. Faith draws on God to its full
extent. Faith gives character to prayer. A feeble faith has always brought forth
feeble praying. Vigorous faith creates vigorous praying. At the close of a
parable, "And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men always ought to
pray, and not to faint," in which He stressed the necessity of vigorous praying,
Christ asks this pointed question, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find
faith on the earth?" In the case of the lunatic child which the father
brought first to the disciples, who could not cure him, and then to the Lord
Jesus Christ, the father cried out with all the pathos of a declining faith and
of a great sorrow, "If thou canst do anything for us, have compassion on us and
help us." And Jesus said unto him, "If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth." The healing turned on the faith in the ability
of Christ to heal the boy. The ability to do was in Christ essentially and
eternally, but the doing of the thing turned on the ability of the faith. Great
faith enables Christ to do great things. We need a quickening faith in
God's power. We have hedged God in till we have little faith in His power. We
have conditioned the exercise of His power till we have a little God, and a
little faith in a little God. The only condition which restrains God's
power, and which disables Him to act, is unfaith. He is not limited in action
nor restrained by the conditions which limit men. The conditions of time,
place, nearness, ability and all others which could possibly be named, upon
which the actions of men hinge, have no bearing on God. If men will look to God
and cry to Him with true prayer, He will hear and can deliver, no matter how
dire soever may be the state, how remediless their conditions may
be. Strange how God has to school His people in His ability to do! He
made a promise to Abraham and Sarah that Isaac would be born. Abraham was then
nearly one hundred years old, and Sarah was barren by natural defect, and had
passed into a barren, wombless age. She laughed at the thought of having a child
as preposterous. God asked, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the
Lord?" And God fulfilled His promise to these old people to the
letter. Moses hesitated to undertake God's purpose to liberate Israel
from Egyptian bondage, because of his inability to talk well. God checks him at
once by an inquiry:
When God said He would feed the children of Israel
a whole month with meat, Moses questioned His ability to do it. The Lord said
unto Moses, "Is the Lord's hand waxed short? Thou shalt see now whether my word
shall come to pass unto thee or not." Nothing is too hard for the Lord to
do. As Paul declared, "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
can ask or think." Prayer has to do with God, with His ability to do. The
possibility of prayer is the measure of God's ability to do. The "all
things," the "all things whatsoever," and the "anything," are all covered by the
ability of God. The urgent entreaty reads, "Ask whatsoever ye will," because God
is able to do anything and all things that my desires may crave, and that He has
promised. In God's ability to do, He goes far beyond man's ability to ask. Human
thoughts, human words, human imaginations, human desires and human needs, cannot
in any way measure God's ability to do. Prayer in its legitimate
possibilities goes out on God Himself. Prayer goes out with faith not only in
the promise of God, but faith in God Himself, and in God's ability to do. Prayer
goes out not on the promise merely, but "obtains promises," and creates
promises. Elijah had the promise that God would send the rain, but no
promise that He would send the fire. But by faith and prayer he obtained the
fire, as well as the rain, but the fire came first. Daniel had no
specific promise that God would make known to him the dream of the king, but he
and his associates joined in united prayer, and God revealed to Daniel the
king's dream and the interpretation, and their lives were spared
thereby. Hezekiah had no promise that God would cure him of his desperate
sickness which threatened his life. On the contrary the word of the Lord came to
him by the mouth of the prophet, that he should die. However, he prayed against
this decree of Almighty God, with faith, and he succeeded in obtaining a
reversal of God's word and lived. God makes it marvellous when He says by
the mouth of His prophet: "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." And in this strong promise in which He commits Himself
into the hands of His praying people, He appeals in it to His great creative
power: "I have created the earth and made man upon it. I, even my hands, have
stretched out the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded." The
majesty and power of God in making man and man's world, and constantly upholding
all things, are ever kept before us as the basis of our faith in God, and as an
assurance and urgency to prayer. Then God calls us away from what He Himself has
done, and turns our minds to Himself personally. The infinite glory and power of
His Person are set before our contemplation: "Remember ye not the former things
neither consider the things of old?" He declares that He will do a "new thing,"
that He does not have to repeat Himself, that all He has done neither limits His
doing nor the manner of His doing, and that if we have prayer and faith, He will
so answer our prayers and so work for us, that His former work shall not be
remembered nor come into mind. If men would pray as they ought to pray, the
marvels of the past would be more than reproduced. The Gospel would advance with
a facility and power it has never known. Doors would be thrown open to the
Gospel, and the Word of God would have a conquering force rarely if ever known
before. If Christians prayed as Christians ought, with strong commanding
faith, with earnestness and sincerity, men, God-called men, God-empowered men
everywhere, would be all burning to go and spread the Gospel world-wide. The
Word of the Lord would run and be glorified as never known heretofore. The
God-influenced men, the God-inspired men, the God-commissioned men, would go and
kindle the flame of sacred fire for Christ, salvation and heaven, everywhere in
all nations, and soon all men would hear the glad tidings of salvation and have
an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. Let us read
another one of those large illimitable statements in God's Word, which are a
direct challenge to prayer and faith:
What a basis have we here for prayer and faith,
illimitable, measureless in breadth, in depth and in height! The promise to give
us all things is backed up by the calling to our remembrance of the fact that
God freely gave His only Begotten Son for our redemption. His giving His Son is
the assurance and guarantee that He will freely give all things to him who
believes and prays. What confidence have we in this Divine statement for
inspired asking! What holy boldness we have here for the largest asking! No
commonplace tameness should restrain our largest asking. Large, larger, and
largest asking magnifies grace and adds to God's glory. Feeble asking
impoverishes the asker, and restrains God's purposes for the greatest good and
obscures His glory. How enthroned, magnificent and royal the intercession
of our Lord Jesus Christ at His Father's right hand in heaven! The benefits of
His intercession flow to us through our intercessions. Our intercession ought to
catch by contagion, and by necessity the inspiration and largeness of Christ's
great work at His Father's right hand. His business and His life are to pray.
Our business and our lives ought to be to pray, and to pray without ceasing.
Failure in our intercession affects the fruits His intercession. Lazy,
heartless, feeble, and indifferent praying by us mars and hinders the effects of
Christ's praying. |
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