Another condition of success in prayer is repentance. The word is used in its full meaning of both sorrow for sin and turning from it. Every one who refuses to renounce his wrath, arrogance, and greed, his intemperance, his sensuality, certainly does well not to pray; for prayer is then a lie, and only serves to harden the heart still more. How can he truthfully say, “Hallowed be thy name,” while he will not let God’s name be hallowed in his heart and life? How can he pray aright for the forgiveness of sins, with his secret purpose to retain his sins, with an implacable mind, with hatred and strife? How can he pray not to be tempted, when he gladly goes after temptation directly it comes? How can he pray to be saved from the power of the evil one, while surrendering himself to the power of the Evil One, and letting it rule over him? The door of prayer opens only to the earnest will that yields to the leading of the Holy Spirit in inclination and life. It may happen that a man who has been accustomed to pray perseveres in the custom after secretly purposing to indulge some evil passion that has dominion over him. But such prayer is an abomination to the Lord. No sin is so great that it should hinder prayer, if a man but sincerely renounces his sin; but no sin is so small as not to turn prayer itself into sin, if there is not the disposition to resist and overcome it It is the bent of our will, our disposition, that renders prayer either pleasing or displeasing to God. Though a man sin seven times, nay, seventy times seven, but as often without secret hypocrisy turns to God and implores power and strength at last to gain the victory, from such prayer God will of a truth not turn away His ear. The hour will come when the penitent suppliant shall be able to thank God for victory.
1. Without obedience there can never be communion. How should there be? In the first place there can be no vision, no deep sense of God, without that fidelity to conscience in which obedience to Heaven consists. The pure in heart see God. And the pure in heart are those who seek, in all sincerity and singleness of mind, to do their duty hour by hour. They are the people to whom God becomes a Reality, a Being who lives and reigns, and who can be spoken to. We need not stay to inquire why this should be so. The theme is a tempting one, but it is enough to say here that human experience has abundantly proved that it is so. Men have found out that things which are hidden from the keen eyes and persistent search of the philosophic mind are revealed to the consecrated spirit.
“Teach me to do thy will” (Psa_143:10). That is a very simple prayer, but it is one of the deepest and most comprehensive of prayers, for it embraces the whole round of obedience from first to last, in small things and great alike, in the inner as well as in the outer life—that universal obedience which Paul calls “standing perfect in all the will of God”.
Matthew Henry sums up the whole matter of obedience in a few words, when he says, “To obey God’s commandments is to obey them universally, without dividing them; sincerely, without evading them; cheerfully, without disputing them; and continually, without declining from them”. And John Newton hit the truth exactly when he said, “If two angels were to receive at the same moment a commission from God, one to go down and rule earth’s grandest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of one of its meanest villages, it would be a matter of entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot, the post of ruler or the post of scavenger; for the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God’s will, and with equal joy they would lift a Lazarus in his rags to Abraham’s bosom, or be a chariot of fire to carry an Elijah home”. [Note: G. H. Knight, Full Allegiance, 123.]
2. And, further, even if it were possible to have any vivid sense of God without the subjection of the human will to His, there could be no joy in prayer without it. Two cannot walk together unless they be agreed. Man may meet with God in solitary moments, but he cannot walk with Him in peace and liberty if he is conscious of any want of harmony between himself and his Companion. He cannot speak freely, he cannot ask for help, or for forgiveness, he cannot even confess his sin, if there is any sin unrepented of—in other words, if he is insisting, and knows it, on choosing his own way, in any particular, and not God’s way. Inevitably there will be a sense of constraint, and a painful shrinking, and a desire to escape, so long as there is this secret rebellion of the heart, this resolve to hold back something which God claims, and is felt to have a right to claim. From this cause the prayers of men are often fatally hindered.
That wilful sin while unrepented of must act as a barrier to prayer is implied in the wider sense of the word “devotion” itself. “Devotion” means a life given or devoted to God. “The devout” are those who offer themselves to God to serve Him, a definition which, if realized in life, would make an antithesis expressed too frequently between “the devout” and “the good” impossible. [Note: A. J. Worlledge, Prayer, 186]
A striking proverb current among the Hausa tribes of Northern Nigeria expresses an instinct which a religion not only so imperfect but, in subjects of grave importance, so false as the Mohammedan, cannot obliterate, because it is in the highest sense natural to man, as created in the image, after the likeness, of God Himself. “If there is no purity,” they say, “there is no prayer; if there is no prayer, there is no drinking of the water of heaven.” [Note: Ibid., 184.]
When thine essence is purified from sin,
Thy prayer then becomes a refreshment and delight;
No barrier remains between;
For the Knower and the Known have become one. [Note: Shabistari, in Field’s Little Book of Eastern Wisdom, 54.]
