A spirit of selfishness in prayer will lead to the sense of barrenness. By selfishness in prayer is meant that spirit in prayer which confines all our supplications to our own individual need. It is not that we do not include by name many of our friends and relatives within the circle of our prayers. Of course we all of us do this. But even when we do so, is it not often done in a perfunctory way? Is not the spirit which yearns over them very far removed from us? Is there the presence of that feeling of the Apostle, who described himself as travailing in birth-pangs for those in whose hearts he desired to see Christ formed? And God often visits us with barrenness because we fail to grow in heart-sympathy and Christian longing for the welfare of others. It is the very law of Christ that His love should spread, as it is the law of hydrostatics that pressure should circulate in all directions through a volume of water; and when we in a stingy forgetfulness of others violate that law, we are met with the punishment of a straitening in ourselves.
Is there any heaven surpassing in its sheer blessedness that which John Masefield in The Everlasting Mercy has described as flashing into a humble, seeking soul:—
I knew that Christ had given me birth
To brother all the souls on earth,
And every bird and every beast
Should have the crumbs broke at the feast. [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and Today, 252.]
1. How shall we guard ourselves against the sin of selfishness in prayer? Just as we guard ourselves against unreality or formality in prayer—by going out into the battle to fight for God. He who is most earnest and active in labour to win souls to Christ is sure to be most earnest in prayer for them. The surest remedy for selfishness is to give a man something to do for others; and so it is with prayer. As regards intercessory prayer, one important matter is to have a great deal to pray about, and that we shall find in active service for God.
The whole matter is in a nut-shell. That prayer is the most acceptable which leaves the best results. Results, I mean, in actions. That is true prayer. Not certain gusts of softness and feeling, and nothing more. [Note: Santa Teresa.]
2. Selfishness in prayer besets particularly Christians who are advanced in religious life, and to whom prayer has become a constant or at least a frequent exercise. This danger is one that belongs especially to intense natures; but all natures are more or less subject to it. We should be in such sympathy with God that we should have much to pray for touching the honour and glory of His name; we should be in such sympathy with Divine Providence that we should have much to offer thanksgiving for, in the events that every day transpire round about us; and we should be in such sympathy with our fellow men that we should find in their wants much subject-matter for petition.
I have often been suspicious of people who have come to me saying that they had made some specific subject a matter of prayer, and had been told by God what to do. I have feared that instead of praying to God to clarify their mental vision, and deliver them from the selfishness that might warp their judgment, they have prayed until they were able to persuade themselves that the thing they wanted to do was right. And I can remember cases in which the results were very sad. How liable we all are to self-delusion, and to the running into extremes! No doubt there are times when a man, finding himself unable to arrive at a settled judgment, has to wait for the openings and leadings of God’s providence. [Note: John Brash: Memorials and Correspondence, 167.]
Spiritual writers sometimes speak of “a ladder of prayer,” by which they mean that there are stages in the grace of prayer through which a man passes in his growth in the spiritual life. The first stage in prayer with most of us was possibly a cry for escape from some external evil, some disease or disaster, either of our own or of one dear to us. There will follow on that a cry for deliverance from sin, or for forgiveness. In this second stage there may be present in the mind a fear of punishment and little more, or a fear of exposure. At any rate the man is in both these cases dealing with God; he has come into God’s presence; his danger or his sin has brought him there. To God he has not come perhaps for God’s sake, but only for his own; still he has come, and that is much. The next stage is a prayer for virtue or grace. He has seen the worth and beauty of goodness, and desires it. He has seen it in the life of some man or woman, or has read it in story; or it may be that the sight of it has arisen in his heart as if through inspiration; and it holds him as by a power from without. He now prays for it, and prays for it as the chief good of life. He asks it as a thing desirable for him to possess. This is not selfishness, and yet there is in it a thought of the self. He may call it a desire for that self-realization which in a true sense is one of the ends of his existence; he is seeking that which is best for him, and which it will be best for the world (so far as he can help it) that he should become. But nevertheless there is present in the thought of his attaining the grace he prays for the thought also of a “culture” into which he is pressing. The next stage lifts the mind away from any thought of self at all; it is a desire that the will of God be done. To mortal man, however, the will of God continually presents itself as something to be borne; a trial or tribulation, a loss irreparable, a sorrow from which there can now be no escape.
At first he prayed that it might not come, but now he prays that he have strength to bear it. And that not in the meaning that the sorrow should not be too painful, but that he do not rebel or murmur against the wisdom and the love of God in sending it. The other thought contained in the prayer that the will of God be done is this: that he take up the will of God into his own will, and make it his life’s work to carry it through. It is not presented to his mind as a commandment coming upon him from without, but as an end, a career, a vast and abiding ambition that God prevail and God’s purpose be accomplished. It is a great thing, the greatest thing in the world for him to help in this grand, this age-long, this ever-conquering purpose of God. It is perhaps only a richer strain in this consecration of a man’s life that it becomes his chief joy; he delights and revels in the carrying of this ambition out. My strength and refreshment of soul, he says, come from my work in this. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” This is the spirit in which the mighty things in the world’s history have been achieved. Men in the heroic times did not think of themselves at all, or of their future, or even of their soul’s salvation; they thought of the will of God, and the necessity that they do it here and now, and at any cost. For this the Christian prays. He prays that this will be done without any regard for him at all. If we were to ask him, he would say that he does not believe that it can involve his final destruction, for the God whose will he prays may be done is a God of love who will somehow save His people. But in his prayer he is not thinking of that, but of something vaster, the great universe of men; and he desires that God take His own way whatever it may mean for him, and carry His will through at any cost to him. Now, there is joy, unspeakable joy, to a man in this complete emergence from the thought of himself; and that joy (as we see from the lives of some) will rise up to a note of triumph in the contemplation of the final victory of God over all evil, and the bringing of all His children home at last. [Note: George Steven, The Psychology of the Christian Soul, 289.]
If when I kneel to pray,
With eager lips I say,
“Lord, give me all the things that I desire,
Health, wealth, fame, friends, brave heart, religious fire,
The power to sway my fellow-men at will,
And strength for mighty works to banish ill,”
In such a prayer as this
The blessing I must miss.
Or, if I only dare
To raise this fainting prayer:—
“Thou seest, Lord, that I am poor and weak, And cannot tell what things I ought to seek; I therefore do not ask at all, but still I trust Thy bounty all my wants to fill,”
My lips shall thus grow dumb,
The blessing shall not come.
But, if I lowly fall,
And thus in faith I call:—
“Through Christ, O Lord, I pray Thee give to me,
Not what I would, but what seems best to Thee,
Of life, of health, of service, and of strength,
Until to Thy full joy I come at length,”
My prayer shall then avail, The blessing shall not fail.
