1. The first thing, then, to notice in dealing with the difficult and much discussed matter of “answers to prayer” is that we are distinctly told by our Lord to expect that our prayers will be answered. At the very outset of His instruction to those who would learn to pray He seeks to lodge this truth deep into their hearts: prayer does avail much; ask, and ye shall receive; every one that asketh, receiveth. Christ has no mightier stimulus to persevering prayer in His school than this. As a child has to prove a sum to be correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is the answer.
According to this teaching of the Master, prayer consists of two parts, has two sides, a human and a Divine. The human is the asking, the Divine is the giving. Or, to look at both from the human side, there is the asking and the receiving—the two halves that make up a whole. It is as if He would tell us that we are not to rest without an answer, because that is the will of God, the rule in the Father’s family: every childlike believing petition is granted. If no answer comes, we are not to sit down in the sloth that calls itself resignation, and suppose that it is not God’s will to give an answer. No; there must be something in the prayer that is not as God would have it; childlike and believing, we must seek for grace to pray so that the answer may come. It is far easier to the flesh to submit without the answer than to yield itself to be searched and purified by the Spirit until it has learnt to pray the prayer of faith.
There may be cases in which the answer is a refusal, because the request is not according to God’s word, as when Moses asked to enter Canaan. But still, there was an answer: God did not leave His servant in uncertainty as to His will. The gods of the heathen are dumb and cannot speak. Our Father lets His child know when He cannot give him what he asks, and he withdraws his petition, even as the Son did in Gethsemane. Both Moses the servant and Christ the Son knew that what they asked was not according to what the Lord had spoken: their prayer was the humble supplication whether it was not possible for the decision to be changed. God will, by His Word and Spirit, teach those who are teachable and give Him time, whether their request be according to His will or not. Let us withdraw the request, if it be not according to God’s mind, or persevere till the answer come. Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer. It is in prayer and its answer that the interchange of love between the Father and His child takes place.
The most remarkable thing about Christ’s words on prayer is that there is not a syllable in them as to the philosophy of prayer, or difficulties about prayer, but simply a word of promise on which He causes us to hope; a threefold call to prayer, and a threefold promise that our prayer shall be heard. If we take Christ for what He gave Himself out to be, we must believe that He could have lifted out of the way the stumbling-blocks that seem to lie between us and the mercy-seat. He could have explained how prayer is related to the decrees of God, and to the laws of the universe. He does nothing of the kind. He simply asks us to take His word for it. And He had a right to take this way of it, because, according to the belief of the Church of Christ in every age, He came from God. We pray to God as children to a Father, because of Christ’s word of promise on which He hath caused us to hope.
He answered all my prayer abundantly,
And crowned the work that to His feet I brought
With blessing more than I had asked or thought—
A blessing undisguised, and fair and free.
I stood amazed and whispered, “Can it be
That He hath granted all the boon I sought?
How wonderful that He for me hath wrought!
How wonderful that He hath answered me!”
Oh, faithless heart! He said that He would hear
And answer thy poor prayer, and He hath heard
And proved His promise. Wherefore didst thou fear?
Why marvel that thy Lord hath kept His word?
More wonderful if He should fail to bless
Expectant faith and prayer with good success!
If If anyone should question whether Christ meant His great prayer-command to be believed and acted upon, let him read the life of Pastor Gossner. He read the Lord’s promise: “Ask, and it shall be given you,” and then he went off and asked. More than that, he expected and prepared for replies. As a result, he sent into the foreign fields upwards of one hundred and forty missionaries. He provided outfits and passage-money. An average of over twenty missionaries were dependent upon him at all times. The net outcome of this man’s life was summed up at his funeral in a sentence thus: “He prayed up the walls of a hospital, and the hearts of the nurses; he prayed mission stations into being, and missionaries into faith; he prayed open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands”. [Note: C. B. Keenleyside, God’s Fellow-Workers, 151.]
2. In agreement with this are the answers to prayer recorded in the Bible. They are to be measured in value not by the peace and tranquillity which flowed through the hearts of those who prayed, but by real answers seen in sensible results. The torrents which swept over the altars on Carmel, and threatened to stay the royal chariot’s course, were no mere subjective conceptions in the prophet’s or the monarch’s mind. The widow of Zarephath and the Shunammite saw and clasped in their arms their sons given back from the grave in answer to prayer. The lengthening of Hezekiah’s life and the victory of Jehoshaphat were real and intelligible blessings which followed prayer. Everywhere the primary idea that prayer is the asking for something which we hope to obtain is, to say the least, pointedly maintained in all Scripture representations; and though the notion of the spiritual elevation which is wrought in the soul by praying is neither denied nor forgotten, yet nowhere is it put forward as a substitute—
To palter with us in a double sense:
To keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter, Thoughts in Prayer, 54]
A good story is told of Bishop Pelham, of Norwich. A rather forward young man, who was by no means indisposed to thrust himself into distinguished society when a chance occurred, happened to see the Bishop enter a first-class compartment in a train by which he was himself intending to travel. On learning from the station-master that it was the Bishop of Norwich, he promptly took his seat opposite to him, and contrived to induce the good Bishop to lay aside the book he was reading and enter into conversation with him. It was not long before they found themselves discussing the wonderful developments of science in recent years, and the revolution they have wrought in the habits of modern society. “Yes,” said the Bishop, “it’s all very marvellous, and it is not easy to say which of all our modern inventions is the most amazing. I was present at a meeting of scientific men only the other day at which a discussion arose as to which of all our modern discoveries and inventions was in itself the most wonderful or likely to prove of most service to civilization. Much was said about the triumphs of steam by land and sea, but one prominent scientist, himself an enthusiastic electrician, stoutly maintained that nothing else could compare with the wonders of electricity. ‘Just think of the marvel of it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here you belt the world round with a wire, and you send your message off to the right, and in the twinkling of an eye you get it back on your left, it having travelled the wide world round in the meanwhile. Can you conceive anything more astonishing than that?’
“It was to an elderly clergyman, who happened to be of the company, that he thus appealed, and he replied: Yes, I can think of something even more amazing than that, and I was reading about it in a very old book only this morning’. ‘What! in an old book? You surprise me; I should never have suspected an old book of being able to describe anything that could for a moment be compared to the wonder of electricity. Whatever was it?’ ‘Well,’ said the clergyman, ‘you shall judge for yourself. Here are the words in which this wonder, greater even than that of electricity, is described: “In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul”. Now, here we have, first, a message sent all the way from earth to heaven, however far that may be, and the very same day the answer arrives. But more than that, here you have the practical effect that had been desired actually produced, a thing that electricity can never accomplish. You can send your message across the Atlantic, if you please, but there the matter ends; and if you want to get something practical done, you must trust to something else besides electricity to accomplish it. But here you have the message sent, the answer returned, and the practical result desired induced, and all in one day. That leaves even electricity a long way behind, doesn’t it? ’ ”
“And you, my lord,” exclaimed the irrepressible tuft-hunter” you were that elderly clergyman! “Whereupon, with a demure smile, the Bishop resumed the perusal of his book. [Note: Canon Hay Aitken, The Divine Ordinance of Prayer, 31.]
