Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 044. Practice

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 044. Practice



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 044. Practice

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VI.

Patience.

To earnestness and effort in prayer add patient expectation. To say that we are earnest in our prayer is just to say that we conceive ourselves good; in being earnest, people think they have done their part, and that they have manifested a right feeling when they have asked a thing sincerely and pleaded hard for it. But their earnestness proves only something about themselves and their own choice of good things, not any confidence in God’s goodness or love. Prayer is the offering of our desires to God for things according to His will; and our concluding with the word “Amen!” is understood to express our confidence that God both hears our prayers and will answer them. Whatever God has revealed to us as a subject for prayer He has placed within our reach. To ask God for a thing, not believing that He is willing to give it, is to go not on God’s promise but on a venture. The most familiar, and perhaps the most impressive, description of prayer in the Old Testament is found in those numerous passages where the life of intercourse with God is spoken of as a waiting upon Him. Professor A. B. Davidson has given a beautiful definition of waiting upon God: “To wait is not merely to remain passive. It is to expect—to look for with patience, and also with submission. It is to long for, but not impatiently; to look for, but not to fret at the delay; to watch for, but not restlessly; to feel that if He does not come we will acquiesce, and yet to refuse to let the mind acquiesce in the feeling that He will not come.”

The discovery of the Hebrew original of the Apocryphal book known as Ecclesiasticus has restored an interesting text to us: Sir_7:10, “Be not impatient in prayer”. It is lost in the Greek version but the Hebrew preserves it. Be not impatient in prayer. It is one of the wisest things ever said on the subject. Impatient our prayer mostly is; yet impatience destroys at least the half of our prayer’s worth. The Hebrew noun tephillah, “prayer,” is of the same root as the Hebrew verb for “judge,” “arbitrate”. An element of judgment or deliberation is the requisite complement to the flow, the rush of spiritual emotion. The two elements—consideration and free abandonment, restraint and impulse—must go together to compose the genuine idea of prayer. Impatience is the child’s posture. Tom Tulliver’s faith in prayer broke down when, after praying in bed overnight for Divine help, he still could not remember his Latin verbs in school next day. We must approach God as children: simple, reliant, trustful. But we must not approach Him childishly. “Wait thou for the Lord,” says the Psalmist; or, as the fine English Prayer-Book version has it: “O tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,” “Be strong; let thine heart take courage; yea, wait thou for the Lord”. [Note: I. Abrahams, in Jewish Addresses, 164.]