Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 059. Chapter 13: The Value Of Prayer

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 059. Chapter 13: The Value Of Prayer



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 059. Chapter 13: The Value Of Prayer

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THE VALUE OF PRAYER.

1. WHAT can prayer do for us? What can it effect? What is its positive value and significance? For there cannot be a doubt that in some way or another prayer is power. The greatest men of history have been men of prayer. The most spiritual men, the prophets and saints and reformers, have been precisely those who were most instant and active in prayer. Our Lord Himself could not dispense with prayer. And all alike, knowing what prayer had actually wrought in their personal experience, bear witness to its wonder-working force for the ennoblement of life. They tell us that prayer is power, that prayer is victory. They tell us that, whatever else we leave undone, we must not leave this undone. They tell us that all is lost unless we pay attention to it. Our whole effectiveness in the last resort depends on our intercourse with God and the unseen world of God in prayer.

I have intimated my fear that it is visionary to expect an unusual success in the human administration of religion unless there are unusual omens; now a most emphatical spirit of prayer would be such an omen; and the individual who should determine to try its last possible efficacy might probably find himself becoming a much more prevailing agent in his little sphere. And if the whole, or the greater number, of the disciples of Christianity were with an earnest and unalterable resolution of each to combine that heaven should not withhold one single influence which the very utmost effort of conspiring and persevering supplication would obtain, it would be a sign that a revolution of the world was at hand. [Note: John Foster.]

2. The question formerly so much debated, “Are the effects of prayer merely subjective, or are they objective as well?” has assumed a new form. The truth is that the subjective and the objective cannot be separated, as though the material world were a closed circle, whereas, as all the higher thought of our time assures us, it is penetrated through and through by spirit; and more especially is this true of the matter which in our physical organism lies closest to human consciousness. Prayer creates the new self, but the new self does not live in a vacuum. It in turn creates the new environment as regards both the physical organism and the world around; and thus it comes about that objective changes take place which would not have taken place but for the intervention of the spiritual state induced by prayer.

Prayer is a reasonable service, in which both heart and mind can participate. It is neither a mere act of obedience, nor a sort of work of supererogation, in which we may or may not participate according to our passing inclination. It is a holy activity of the soul, carrying a double blessing with it—blessed in itself as one of the loftiest functions of the human spirit, and blessed in its consequences, some of them direct and palpable, and some of them reaching far beyond our fondest dreams into the wealth of ultimate benediction. [Note: Canon Hay Aitken, The Divine Ordinance of Prayer, 21.]

Let us look at the value of prayer:—

I.       For Deliverance.

II.      For Character.

III.     For Power.