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The Power of Prayer

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 18, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 51.

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The Power of Prayer

By Kathirina Blossom Wilcox

KATHIRINA BLOSSOM WILCOX
“More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day; For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is bound in every way, Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
“Ask, and it shall be given you.”
How easy the conditions, and yet how few accept the promise! What does it mean to ask? What is prayer? Montgomery has thus defined it:—
“Prayer is the heart’s sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed; The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast.”
Another says:—
“Say, what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed?— The mighty utterance of a mighty need. That man is praying who doth press with might Out of his darkness into God’s own light.”
“To pray is to desire, but it is to desire what God would have us desire. He who desires not from the bottom of his heart offers a deceitful prayer.”
Our will must be wholly submitted to his will; we must have confidence in him as we do in our dearest earthly friend, knowing, however, that he has all power in heaven and in earth, that he knows the end from the beginning, and that he always gives us what we ask for, or something better.
Let us turn to that God-breathed masterpiece of all literature,—the Sacred Scriptures,—and find therein the records of those noble men who, through faith, the golden chain which binds us to the heart of the Infinite, “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens.”
“Call upon me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”
“If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
“Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart; . . . trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”
These are only a few of the many precious promises with which God’s unchangeable Word abounds, and which were to his people of old, and are to his people now, an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast.
For one example, let us take the life of Moses, the man of God. Israel, notwithstanding the loving-kindness and tender mercies of Jehovah and the wonderful patience of Moses, even while Moses was in the mountain of God receiving instruction for the people, yielded to their carnal natures and went back into idolatry.
God was displeased. “Get thee down,” he said to Moses. “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people: let me alone that I may destroy them.” Then, said the Lord, “I will make of thee a nation greater . . . than they.”
O, what an offer! Who could resist the temptation? Long and patiently had Moses borne with the murmurings and complainings of the children of Israel, and now even the long-suffering and forbearance of God seem almost to have become exhausted in his dealings with this disobedient people.
The father of a great nation! What an opportunity! What glory and prominence it would bring to Moses! How it would exalt him in the eyes of the world! Will he accept the offer?
His heart is filled with love for his people. How he pleads with God! “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. . . . Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.”
Ah, what a prayer is this! Can human mind fathom the simplicity, the grandeur, the self-abnegation, combined in this brief petition? A man of God indeed! Human?—Yes, but with his humanity so deeply buried that self is completely forgotten in his overwhelming love for God and humanity. The same possibilities of perfection are ours today. Can we fall short of this standard and yet succeed?—Surely we cannot.
We call to mind the prayer of Hezekiah, as he spread out the letter of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, before the Lord, and in his utter helplessness, but in all the earnestness of his soul, pleaded that God would vindicate his cause and put to flight the great army of the Assyrians, the leader of which had so boldly and blasphemously defied the God of Israel. The result?—The angel of the Lord smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand.
“Frail art thou, O man, as a bubble on the breaker, Weak, and governed by externals, like a poor bird caught in the storm; Yet thy momentary breath can still the raging waters, Thy hand can touch a lever that may move the world. O Merciful, we strike eternal covenant with thee! For man may take for his ally the King who ruleth kings. How strong, yet how most weak; in utter poverty, how most rich; What possible omnipotence to good is dormant in a man! Prayer is a creature’s strength, his very breath and being; Prayer is the golden key that can open the wicket of mercy; Prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscles of Omnipotence.”
In idolatrous Babylon, in the king’s palace, holding a position of honor and trust in the king’s court, was a man of God, greatly beloved, a man who knew what it meant actually to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. With fasting and sackcloth and ashes he confessed his sins and the sins of his people, and pleaded with God to forgive and have mercy. Did he receive the assurance? Listen to his own testimony:—
“And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people; . . . yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel . . . touched me . . . and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter.”
God does not always answer immediately. Other agencies are often at work. “Wait on the Lord; . . . and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”
“And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”
Time and words fail us to tell of other wonders of prayer recorded in the Old Testament, how—
“Abraham’s servant prays, Rebecca appears; Jacob wrestles and prays, and prevails with Christ; Esau’s mind is wonderfully turned from the revengeful purpose he had harbored for twenty years. Moses prays, Amalek is discomfited; Joshua prays, Achan is overtaken; Hannah prays, Samuel is born; David prays, Ahithophel hangs himself; Asa prays, a victory is gained; Jehoshaphat cries to God, God turns away his foes; Mordecai and Esther and the Jews fast and pray, Haman is hanged on his own gallows in three days; Nehemiah darts a prayer, the king’s heart is softened in a minute; Elijah prays, a drought of three years succeeds; Elijah prays, rain descends apace; Elisha prays, Jordan is divided; Elisha prays, a child is brought back to life—because prayer reaches the heart of the Infinite.”
Did Alfred Tennyson overstate it when he said,— “More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of”?
We must not fail, however, to mention, among the New Testament examples, the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer which our Saviour taught his disciples, and which has been passed down through all the ages and is known throughout the world. This prayer expresses, in brief, all the essential requisites of a daily morning prayer,—praise to God, petition for daily needs, prayer for forgiveness, for guidance, for deliverance from temptation, unto him whose is “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.”
The prayer of Christ for his disciples and for us his followers, recorded in the seventeenth of John, is the most beautiful in the Sacred Record. Not for himself did he pray, though he knew that the cross was just before; but, O, how his great heart of love yearned for his disciples, even though he knew that they would all forsake him and flee, and that one of them would deny him! He loved them, as he does us, with an everlasting love, and with loving-kindness he drew them to himself. He pleaded that they might be kept from the evil in the world, and that their hearts might be filled with love for God and for one another, even as he had loved them and the Father loved him.
We cannot pass over the night in Gethsemane with its agony of supplication, so full of sweet submission. While the heart of Jesus was wrung with anguish, and the weight of the sins of the whole world was resting upon him, hear that prayer, as the bloody drops stand out on his forehead, revealing something of the intensity of the struggle within; hear the words from a heart so full, a frame so weak, with all the hosts of darkness hovering near, almost triumphant in their seeming victory, and all heaven silently, longingly watching the conflict: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass.” It seems that he cannot bear it alone, forsaken, despised, rejected of men. Yet hear him still: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
How heaven rejoices at this prayer, so full of sweet submission, so utterly empty of self! How the angels honor their noble Captain! how they long to strengthen and encourage him! Three times this yearning petition ascends to the throne above, and then a heavenly messenger is sent to strengthen him. He has prevailed with God, he faces the foe, meets the test of the ages, and, later, rises triumphant, the victorious, glorified Redeemer.
These answers came hundreds of years ago, but God is no respecter of persons. What he has done for others, he will most certainly do for us; for he is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Says Daniel March, D. D.: “We must not think that God was more interested in the world in ancient times when he spoke by miracles and prophets and apostles than he is now when he speaks by his written Word and by his holy providence. The heart of the infinite Father never yearned toward his earthly children with a deeper and more tender compassion than now. There never was a time when God was doing more to govern, to instruct, and to save the world than he is doing now. . . . We need only add the faith of the patriarchs to the science of the philosophers, and we shall find Bethels in the city and in the solitude, Mahanaims in every day’s march of the journey of life.”
“There is no joy, or duty, or conflict, or sorrow of life for which we cannot be better prepared by prayer. If the child would be kept from the paths of the destroyer while his heart is tender and his mind is not skilled to discern between good and evil, let him pray. If the young man (or the young woman) would pass in safety through the dark scenes of trial and temptation, let him pray. If the weary, hard-working, anxious man of business would not be wholly given up to a life of care and disappointment, let him pray. If the aged pilgrim would find the last days of life the best, and enter the valley of the shadow of death in peace, let him pray. If any one does not know by personal experience how much of heaven’s promised rest can be secured even now for the soul by prayer, he had better leave every other lesson of life unlearned until he has mastered that. The mightiest man on earth is the man who has most power with God.”
*Mountain View, Cal.