Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 041. Definiteness

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 041. Definiteness



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 041. Definiteness

Other Subjects in this Topic:

III.

Definiteness.

“Let your requests be made known unto God”—St. Paul has definite items of prayer in mind, and so had Epaphras, and so must we have. The command “Pray without ceasing” might lead to our being content with a mere mental attitude, a general consent to prayer which is possible to the most careless minds. But intention to pray can never supply the place of attention to our prayers. A passive desire to live in the atmosphere of prayer is dangerous unless it finds its proper activity in definite exercises of prayer.

“Making mention of thee in my prayers” — does this not bring us near to the secret of prevailing prayer? We are afraid to be individual and particular; we lose ourselves in large generalities, until our prayers die of very vagueness. There is surely a more excellent way. “My God,” Paul wrote to the Philippians, “shall fulfil”—not merely “all your need,” as the Authorized Version has it, but—“every need of yours.” There is a fine discrimination in the Divine love which sifts and sorts men’s needs, and applies itself to them one by one, just as the need may be. And when in prayer we speak to God, let it be not only of “all our need,” flung in one great, careless heap before Him, but of “every need of ours,” each one named by its name, and all spread out in order before Him.

Direct appeal to God can only be justified when it is passionate. To come maundering into His presence when we have nothing particular to say is an insult upon which we should never presume if we had a petition to offer to any earthly personage. [Note: Mark Rutherford.]

Suppose that a number of petitioners should go to the legislature with a petition worded thus: “We humbly pray your honourable house to do everything for the nation, to take infinite care of it, to let the affairs of the nation tax your attention day and night, and lavish all your resources upon the people”. Suppose that a petition like that should be handed in to the House of Commons, what would be the fate of it? It would be laughed down, and the only reason why the petitioners should not be confined to Bedlam would be lest their insanity should alarm the inmates. That is not a petition. It is void by generality; by referring to all it misses everything. You must specify what you want when you go to the legislature. You must state your case with clearness of definition, and with somewhat of argument. If it be so in our social or political prayers, shall we go to Almighty God with a vagueness which means nothing, with a generality which makes no special demand upon His heart? [Note: Joseph Parker.]

A mother who had been long anxious for her son’s conversion, and had long prayed for this blessing, was sitting one evening in the large hall of the Carrubber’s Close Mission Buildings. As she sat listening to the speaker of the evening the desire for her boy’s conversion presented itself very strongly to her mind. She prayed the Lord that He might graciously lead her son to the meeting that evening, and that a particular worker might speak to him. At the close of the service, and while the inquiry meeting was going on, she turned round to see what was being done. What was her astonishment to see her son seated there in a back seat, and this particular worker who had been in her prayers quietly speaking to him. At this glad sight she calmly settled herself down to prayer again that the Lord that night might lead him to decision. Need we say that that night she had the joy of knowing that her son had accepted Jesus as his Saviour? [Note: William Robertson of Carrubber’s Close Mission, 142.]