PRAYER has to do with God, and with God directly. In a day, therefore, when God is being increasingly ignored, we may be sure that prayer is correspondingly ignored also.
On the other hand, we may be equally sure that in the very midst of this state of things the one who believes "that God is," and who diligently seeks His face in prayer, will find Him the Rewarder of all such, even unto the darkest hour of that general apostasy which has been so plainly predicted in Scripture. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, strongly to hold with them whose heart is perfect towards Him" (2 Chron. 16:99For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars. (2 Chronicles 16:9), margin). "They sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them" (2 Chron. 15:1515And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them: and the Lord gave them rest round about. (2 Chronicles 15:15)).
We place the following short authentic story on record as an encouragement for all who seek His face thus, or desire to do so.
Three things we would place before the reader:
1. The person prayed for. A hardened sinner, between thirty and forty, working in one of the South Wales coal-pits. Until last New Year's Day he was a slave to strong drink, and terribly violent and quarrelsome when under its influence. Hence he was constantly in the hands of the police; and once arrested and tried for manslaughter.
2. The person praying. The one who constantly bore him on her heart in prayer was his aged Christian mother. Vile though his character, and desperate his behavior, she loved him. More than once she devoted large sums—large for one in her circumstances—to the payment of legal defense for him in courts of justice.
To use her own words to the writer: "Hundreds of times have I pleaded—" O God, stand right in front of James and stop him!" Let us now see
3. How the prayer was answered.
The wife of another collier, with a very large family of her own, was devoting the last hour of the year 1906 to special prayer for the blessing of those who are still strangers to any experimental knowledge of the love of Christ. Yet it was not so much their side that pressed upon her spirit as His. Not so much what was needed by them, as what was due to Him. As the Spirit of God brought before her heart the sufferings and death of Jesus, and His desired end in it all, she felt more and more ashamed that her life and words had not spoken more powerfully for Him. This continued until she felt she could not get low enough in the dust before Him. But in that place of self-abasement she could and did express to Him her longings for His gracious help to make-Him better known during the coming year.
It was, you will see, love for Christ and an ardent longing for the due appreciation of His, suffering and death in the hearts of men that was moving her, rather than her love for souls and the meeting of their need. These cannot really be separated; but there must ever be a serious defect in the latter when it is not directly the result of the former.
But to proceed. While her longing soul was thus engaged a very peculiar thing transpired. A sort of picture of the Welsh Wesleyan Chapel came vividly before her closed eyes. She had not been thinking of it, and was not herself accustomed to attend there.
Next day a neighbor came in that did go there, and she named the circumstance to her. "Oh, then, you'll be coming to us, perhaps?" "I cannot say," she replied, "for I cannot yet see what purpose the Lord has in it!”
But that evening on her way to the prayer meeting held at her own chapel, she felt pressed to go to the Welsh Wesleyan Chapel. But it was rather extraordinary that when she had reached the little porch she could not possibly bring her mind to the thought of entering, and stood there with her face toward the glass door for about ten minutes. Then heavy footsteps approached. A man entered the porch and passed her. He pushed open the door to enter, but almost immediately turned back again. As he did so, their eyes met. He recognized her, and addressed her by her maiden name. She recognized in him the man already referred to, and saw that he was the worse for drink. At once she pleaded with him for Christ's sake—His love, His suffering, His death, His present longings, and yet that the only response he had rendered for such kindness was the giving up of his whole life to the service of His great enemy. Then he told her how it was that he had come there just then. He was drinking with his comrades in a certain public-house when the thought of this same little chapel came suddenly into his mind. His mother had taken him there when a boy. He had just then ordered another pint, but he felt on having it brought to him that he dare not drink it, that he must go at once to this chapel.
This was, then, how they were brought together. She could not go in: he could not stay in The happy result was the poor man's conversion and a consequent gracious revolution in his whole life.
Think, my reader, how remarkably God had answered that aged mother's oft-repeated cry, "O God, stand right in front of James and stop him!" Had He not in that public-house, and without any direct instrumentality, stopped him? Yes, and done it nearly as suddenly as He stopped Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus.
And further, had He not sent one of His willing messengers to stand face to face with her son and speak of Jesus to him; and this as really as He took Philip into the desert to speak of Jesus to the Eunuch?
Blessed be His Name, spite of all that man is doing and saying today in daring disregard of the truth of God and the Spirit of Grace, the gracious work of God continues, and will continue till the house be filled. Men may spend their time in studying and discussing theological points. God goes on in soul-subduing power. Happy for all who in faith go on with Him! But He will go on, and He is the God of all encouragement.
Where is Perfect Freedom found?—"A fallen creature—where shall he find liberty? Where shall he find a land, a life of perfect freedom? Is this earth a land of perfect freedom to the sinner? this earth with all the tears, death, sorrow, crying and pain which are its very atmosphere? The very thought is folly—the teaching it is deception. To such a one is the life of self-will and the pleasures of sin (which are but for a moment) a life of perfect freedom, leading as it does to death, and after that the judgment? They are better than hell-fire—better than that life which shall have its worm that dieth not, and its fire is not quenched; better, alas! to an un-renewed heart, than would be heaven (with no joys there but those of God and the Lamb) to it in its unrenewedness; but land of liberty, life of perfect freedom, must be looked for elsewhere, and where alone they can be found, stared up in rich provision for the very chiefest of sinners.”
G. V. W.