The Prayer of Faith
“This is the confidence
we have
in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he
hears us.
And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have
what we
asked of him.” 1 John 5:14, 15
Please
notice carefully exactly what God tells us in this passage. Here we are
told
that there is a way in which certain people can pray so as not only to
get the
very thing that they ask, but also to know before they actually get it,
that
God has heard their prayer and that therefore the thing which they have
asked
of Him He has granted to them. Listen again to these wonderful words
that the
Holy Spirit inspired John to write: “This is the confidence we have in
approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he
hears us.
And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have
what we
asked of him.” Certainly that is an astonishing statement: it gives us
the
plain and positive assurance that there are some people who can pray in
a
certain way, and that if those people pray in that way they will not
only get
whatsoever they ask, but that, furthermore, they may know before they
get it
that God has heard their prayer and granted what they have asked. It is
certainly a great joy when one prays to be able to know that the prayer
we have
offered has been heard and that what we have asked has been granted,
and to be just
as sure that it is ours as we shall be when we actually have it in our
hand.
Please
note, first of all, just who it is to whom God makes this promise. As I
have
said so often before, when you try to understand and apply the promises
of God
which you find in the Bible you must always be very careful to note
just
exactly who the people are to whom the promise is made. Just who the
persons
are to whom this promise is made we are told in the immediate context,
in the
verse that immediately precedes, “I write these things to you who
believe in
the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal
life.”
Then immediately follows the promise that we are studying today, so it
is as
clear as day that the promise is made to those who “believe on the name
of the
Son of God,” to them and to nobody else, and anyone who does not
believe on the
name of the Son of God has no right whatever to take this promise to
himself,
or to think that if he does take the promise to himself and it is not
fulfilled, God’s Word has failed. The fault is with himself, and not
with God’s
Word. He has taken to himself a promise that was made to somebody else.
Just
what it means to believe on the Son of God we are told in the Gospel
written by
the same one who wrote this Epistle, the Gospel of John; John 1:12, “To
all who
received him [that is, received Jesus Christ], to those who believed in
his
name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
So
John himself interprets “believing on the name of the Son of God” to
mean
receiving the Son of God, that is, receiving Him to be to ourselves
what He
offers Himself to be to all who put their trust in Him, our personal
Savior,
who bore our sins in His own body on the cross, and our Lord and Master
to whom
we surrender the absolute control of our thoughts, our will, and our
conduct.
So, then, this promise is made to those who have received Jesus Christ
as their
personal Savior and trusted God to forgive them because Jesus Christ
died on
the cross in their place, and also who have received Him as their Lord
and
Master to whom they have surrendered the absolute control of their
thoughts,
their will, and their conduct, those who have made an absolute
surrender to
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is made to them, and to no one else,
and no
one else has the least right to claim it.
Just
here is where many go astray, they do not really “believe on the name
of the
Son of God,” they have not really “received him,” yet they appropriate
to
themselves this promise that was never made to them.
Now
we come to the question, How must “those who believe on the name of the
Son of
God” pray in order to know that God has heard their prayer, and has
granted the
thing that they asked? Read the fourteenth verse again. “This is the
confidence
we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his
will, he
hears us.” In order to know that God has heard our prayer and granted
us what
we asked, we must pray according to His will. When we who believe on
the name
of the Son of God pray for anything that we know to be according to His
will,
then we may know, for the all-sufficient reason that God says so in His
Word,
that God has heard the prayer and granted us what we asked. We may know
it, not
because we feel it, not because of any inward illumination of the Holy
Spirit;
we may know it for the very best of all reasons-because God says so in
His
Word, and “God cannot lie.”
But
is it possible for us to know what the will of God is, so that we can
be sure
while we are praying that we are asking something that is “according to
his
will”? We can know the will of God with absolute certainty in many
cases when we
pray. How can we know the will of God?
1.
In the first place, we may know the will of God by the promises in His
Word.
The Bible was given us for the specific purpose of revealing to us the
will of
God, and when we find that anything is definitely promised in the Word
of God
we know that that is His will, for He has said so in so many words. And
when we
who believe on the name of the Son of God go to God and ask Him for
anything
that is definitely promised in His Word, we may know with absolute
certainty
that God has heard our prayer and that what we have asked of God is
granted. We
do not have to feel it--God says so, and that is enough.
For
example, God says in His Word, James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom,
he
should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and
it will
be given to him.” So when I go to God and ask for wisdom, if I am a
believer on
the name of the Son of God, I know with absolute certainty that God has
heard
my prayer and that wisdom will be granted.
Some
years ago I was speaking at a Y.M.C.A. Bible Conference at Mahtomede,
White
Bear Lake, Minnesota; I was speaking on the subject of prayer. I had to
hurry
immediately from the amphitheater to the train. As I passed out of the
amphitheater I saw another minister from Minneapolis, who was to follow
me
immediately on the program. He was greatly excited. He stopped me and
said,
“Mr. Torrey, I am going to tear to pieces everything that you have said
to
these young men this morning.” I replied, “If I have not spoken
according to
the Bible, I hope you will tear it to pieces. But if I have spoken
according to
the Book you had better be careful how you try to tear it to pieces.”
“But,” he
exclaimed, “you have produced upon these young men the impression that
they can
pray for things and get the very thing that they ask for.” I replied,
“I do not
know whether that is the impression that I have produced or not, but it
certainly is the impression that I intended to produce.”
“But,”
he said, “that is not right; you must say if it be according to God’s
will.” I
replied, “If you do not know that the thing which you have asked is
according
to God’s will, then it is all right to say, ‘If it be according to Your
will.’
But if you know God’s will, what is the need of saying, ‘If it be
according to
Your will’?” “But,” he said, “we cannot know God’s will.” I answered,
“What was
the Bible given to us for if it was not to reveal God’s will?” “Now,” I
said,
“when you find a definite promise in the Bible and take that promise to
God,
don’t you know that you have asked something according to His will? For
example, we read in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should
ask God,
who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given
to
him.” “Now,” I said, “when you ask for wisdom do you not know that God
is going
to give it?” “But,” he said, “I do not know what wisdom is.” I said,
“If you
did you would not need to ask it, but whatever it may be, do you not
know that
God is going to give it?” He made no reply. I never heard that he tried
to tear
what I said to pieces, but I know that later he himself spoke very
boldly on
the subject of confidently asking God for the things that we need of
Him, and
that are according to His will.
No,
when you have a definite promise in God’s Word you do not need to put
any “ifs”
before it. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus (2
Corinthians 1:20). They are absolutely sure, and if you plead any plain
promise
in God’s Word you need not put any “ifs” in your petition. You may know
that
you are asking something that is according to God’s will, and it is
your
privilege to know that God has heard you, and it is your privilege to
know that
you have the thing you have asked; it is your privilege to get up from
prayer
with the same absolute certainty that that thing is yours that you will
afterward have when you actually see it in your hand.
Suppose
some cold winter morning when I lived in Chicago I had gone down on
South Clark
Street that was then teeming with poor men, and some shivering tramp
should
have come up to me and said, “Mr. Torrey, it is very cold and I need an
overcoat. Will you give me an overcoat?” And then I had replied, “If
you will
come over to my house this afternoon at 39 East Pearson Street, at two
o’clock,
I’ll give you an overcoat.” Promptly at two o’clock the tramp makes his
appearance. I meet him at the door and bring him into the house. Then
he says
to me, “Mr. Torrey, you said to me this morning on South Clark Street
that if I
would come to your home at two o’clock this afternoon you would give me
an
overcoat. Now, if you will, please give me that overcoat.” What would I
say?
I’d say, “Man, what did you say?” He would reply, “I said, if you will,
please
give me that overcoat.” “But why do you put any ‘if’ in? Did I not say
I
would?” “Yes.” “Do you doubt my word?” “No.” “Then why do you put in an
‘if’?”
So why should we put any “ifs” in when we take to God any promise of
His own?
Does God ever lie?
There
are many cases in which we do not know the will of God, and in such
cases it is
all right to put in “if it be Your will.” And even in cases where we do
not
know His will, our prayers should always be in submission to His will,
for the
dearest of anything to the true child of God is God’s will, but there
is no
need to put any “ifs” in when He has revealed His will. To put in an
“if” in
such a case as that is to doubt God, to doubt His Word, and really is
to “make
God a liar.”
This
passage of Scripture is one of the most abused passages in the Bible.
God put
it into His Word to give us “confidence” when we pray. It is constantly
misused
to make us uncertain when we pray. Oftentimes when some young and
enthusiastic
believer is asking for something with great confidence, some cautious
brother
will go to him after the meeting is over and say to him, “Now, my young
brother, you must not be so confident as that in your prayers. It may
not be
God’s will, and we ought to be submissive to the will of God, and you
should
say, ‘If it be Your will.”‘ And so some men always have an element of
uncertainty in their prayers, and one would think that 1 John 5:14
read, “This
is the lack of confidence we have in approaching God: that we can never
know
God’s will, and therefore can never be sure that our prayer is heard.”
But that
is not the way the verse reads. It reads, “This is the confidence [not
uncertainty, but absolute confidence] we have in approaching God: that
if we
ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he
hears
us--whatever we ask--we know that we have what we asked of him.” Oh,
how subtle
the devil is to take a passage of Scripture that God has put into His
Word to
fill us with confidence when we pray, and use it to make us uncertain
when we
pray.
2.
But can we know the will of God when we pray, even when there is no
definite
promise in regard to the matter about which we are praying? Yes, in
many cases
we can. How? Romans 8:26-27, answers the question: “In the same way,
the Spirit
helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but
the
Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
And he
who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the
Spirit
intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” It is the
work of the
Holy Spirit when we pray to make known to us what is the will of God in
the
matter about which we are praying, and to show us if the thing is
according to
His will, that it is according to His will. There are many things we
need which
are not definitely promised in the Word, and it doesn’t follow at all
that
because they are not definitely promised in the Word they are not
“according to
the will of God.” It is the will of God to give us very many things
which He
has not definitely promised in His Word, and it is the method of God,
when we
pray, to give us, by the direct illumination of the Holy Spirit, to
know His
will even in regard to things about which He has given us no definite
promise.
For
example, while I was pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago, the child
of a man
and woman who were both members of our church was taken very sick. The
child
first had the measles, and the measles was followed by meningitis. The
child
sank very low, and the doctor said to the mother, “I can do no more for
your
child. Your child cannot live.” She immediately hurried to my house to
get me
to come up to their house and pray for her child. But I was out of town
holding
meetings in Pittsburgh. So she sent for my assistant pastor, Rev. W. S.
Jacoby,
and he went to the house with one of my colleagues in the Bible
Institute, and
prayed for the child. That night when I got home from Pittsburgh he
came around
to my house to tell me about it, and he said, “Mr. Torrey, if I ever
had an
answer to my prayers in my life, it was today when I was praying for
the Duff
child.” He was confident that God had heard his prayer and that the
child would
be healed. And the child was healed right away. This was Saturday. The
next
morning the doctor called again at the house and there was such a
remarkable
change in the child that he said to Mrs. Duff, “What have you done for
your
child?” She told him just what she had done. Then he said, “Well, I
will give
her some more medicine.” “No,” she said, “you will not. You said you
could do
no more for the child, that the child must die, and we went to God in
prayer
and God has healed the child. You are not going to take the honor to
yourself
by giving him some more medicine.” Indeed, the child was not only
improved that
morning, the child was well, and Mrs. Duff was at the morning service
and would
have brought the child with her if it had not been such a stormy
morning that
she thought it would be better not to take it out in the intense cold.
Now,
neither Mr. Jacoby nor I could pray for every sick child in that way,
for it is
not the will of God to heal every sick child, nor every sick adult. It
is God’s
general will in regard to His children that they be well in body, but
there are
cases when God, for wise purposes of His own, does not see fit to heal
the
sick; and there are cases, if we are living near to God and listening
for the
voice of His Spirit, and are entirely surrendered to the Spirit in our
praying,
in which the Spirit of God will make clear to us the will of God, and
we shall
know that our prayer is heard, and we will know that the request is
ours long
before we actually get it.
Take
another and entirely different illustration, for the healing of the
body is
only one of the ways in which God answers prayer, and not by any means
the most
important. In my first pastorate we had a union meeting of all the
churches of
the town. In the course of the meetings we had a day of fasting and
prayer.
During the morning meeting while we were praying, God led me to pray
that one
of the most unlikely men in the town might be saved that night. The man
had led
a wild, roaming life; few in his family were Christians; but as we
knelt in
prayer that morning God put a great burden on my heart for that man’s
salvation, and I prayed that he might come to the meeting and be saved
that
night. And as I prayed, God gave me great confidence that the man would
come
and be saved. And come he did, and saved he was, that night. There was
not a
man in that whole town who was more unlikely to be saved than he. That
was more
than forty years ago, but when I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a few
years
ago, I met another man whose mother was saved about the same time, and
he told
me that this man was then living in Tennessee and was still living a
Christian
life. Now, I cannot pray for the salvation of every unsaved person in
that way,
but by His Spirit, God revealed to me His will regarding that man, and
in many
a case He has revealed His will.
Take
still another illustration. One day, when I was in Northfield, Mass., I
received word from Mr. Fitt, Mr. Moody’s son-in-law, in Chicago, that
we needed
five thousand dollars for the work in Chicago at once, and asking me to
pray
for it. Another member of the faculty of the Bible Institute was in
Northfield
at that time, and that night we went out into a summer-house on my
place and
knelt down and prayed God to send that five thousand dollars. And God
gave my
friend great confidence that He had heard the prayer, and he said to
me, “God
has heard the prayer and the five thousand dollars will come.” Mr. Fitt
and Mr.
Gaylord also prayed in Chicago, and God gave Mr. Gaylord a great
confidence
that the five thousand dollars would come. We knew it was ours, we knew
that
God had heard the prayer and that we had received the five thousand
dollars.
And a telegram came the next day (I think it was) from Indianapolis,
saying
that five thousand dollars had been deposited in a bank in Indianapolis
to our
account and was awaiting our order. Though we had prayed for the money
and
expected it, Mr. Fitt could hardly believe the news, and sent to our
bank in
Chicago, which inquired of the bank in Indianapolis if the information
were
true, and learned that it was. So far as I know, the man who put that
money in
the bank in Indianapolis at our call had never given a penny to the
Bible Institute
before. I did not know there was such a man in the world, and, so far
as I
know, he has never given a penny to the Bible Institute since. Now, I
cannot go
to God every time I want money and think I need it and ask God for it
with that
same confidence, but there are times when I can. There have been many
such
times in my life, and God has never failed, and He never will. Banks
sometimes
fail; God never falls.
To
sum it all up, when God makes known His will, either by a specific
promise of
His Word or by His Holy Spirit while we are praying, that what we ask
for is
“according to His will,” it is our privilege to know--if we really
believe on
the name of the Son of God--that our prayer is granted, and that it is
ours,
just as truly ours, as it will be when later we actually have it in our
hand.
The
passage we have been studying is closely related to another passage in
the
Gospel of Mark, which contains a promise of our Lord Himself that God
will
answer prayer. It is a very familiar passage; you will find it in Mark
11:24,
“I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have
received it,
and it will be yours.” I will not stop to call your attention to whom
this
promise is made, further than to say that it is made, as are all the
other
promises of God to answer prayer which we have been studying, to those
who
believe on Jesus Christ, those who are united to Jesus Christ by a
living faith
that manifests itself in an obedient love. This is evident from the
context, as
you can find out for yourself if you will read the promise in its
context.
And
how must we pray in order to get the thing that we ask? We must pray in
faith,
that is, we must pray with confident expectation of getting the very
thing that
we ask. Some say that any prayer that is in submission to the will of
God, and
in faith and dependence on Him, is a prayer of faith. But it is not
“the prayer
of faith” in the Bible sense of “the prayer of faith.” “The prayer of
faith,”
in the Bible sense, is the prayer that has no doubt whatever that God
has heard
and granted the specific thing “which we have asked of him.” This is
evident
from James 1:5-7, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who
gives
generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
But when
he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a
wave of
the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he
will
receive anything from the Lord.” No matter how positive the promises of
God may
be, we will never receive them in our own experience till we absolutely
believe
them, and the prayer that gets what it asks is “the prayer of faith,”
that is,
the prayer that has no doubt whatever of getting the very thing that is
asked.
This
comes out clearly in Mark 11:24, “I tell you, whatever you ask for in
prayer,
believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” When we pray
to God,
and pray according to His will as known by the promises of His Word, or
as
known by the Holy Spirit revealing His will to us, we should
confidently
believe that the very thing that we have asked is granted us. We should
“believe that” we “have received,” and what we thus believe we have
received we
shall afterward have in actual personal experience.
Take,
for example, the matter of praying for “the baptism with the Holy
Spirit.” When
anyone prays for the Holy Spirit, anyone who is united to Jesus Christ
by a
living faith that reveals itself in an obedient love, anyone who has
received
Jesus Christ as his Savior and is trusting God to forgive him on the
sole
ground that Jesus Christ died in his place, and who has received Jesus
Christ
as his Lord and Master, and has surrendered all his thoughts and
purposes and
conduct to God’s control, he may know that he has prayed for something
according to God’s will, for Jesus Christ definitely says in Luke
11:13, “If
you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children,
how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask
him!” And as one knows that he has asked something which is according
to God’s
will as God has clearly revealed it in His Word, it is one’s privilege
to say,
“I have what I asked. I have the Holy Spirit.”
It
is not a question at all of whether one feels that he has received the
Holy
Spirit or not; it is not a question of some remarkable experience: it
is simply
a question of taking God at His Word and that he who prays believes
that he has
received, just because God says so. And what he has taken by naked
faith on the
Word of God, simply believing he has received, because God says so, he
will
afterward actually possess. There is no need that he go to any “special
meeting,” no need that he work himself up into a frenzy of
emotionalism, no
need that he fall into a trance, or fall into unconsciousness, an
experience
utterly foreign to anything described in the New Testament. He has far
better
ground for his assurance that he has received what he asked than any
feeling or
any ecstasy; he has the immutable Word of God, “God who cannot lie.”
Praying
in faith, that is praying with an unquestioning belief that you will
receive
just exactly what you ask; yes, believing as you pray that God has
heard your
prayer and that you have received the thing that you ask, is one of the
most
important factors in obtaining what we ask when we pray. As James puts
it in
1:6-7, “When he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who
doubts is
like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should
not think
he will receive anything from the Lord.” That is, let not the man who
has any
doubt that God has heard his prayer think that he shall receive
anything of the
Lord. So the tremendously important question arises, How can we pray
the prayer
of faith? How can we pray with a confident, unquestioning certainty in
our
minds that God has heard our prayer and granted the thing that we ask?
This has
been partly answered in what we have already said, but in order that it
may be
perfectly clear, let us repeat the substance of it again.
1. To pray the prayer
of faith
we must, first of all, study the Word of God, especially the promises
of God,
and find out what the will of God is and build our prayers on the
written
promises of God. Intelligent faith, and that is the only kind of faith
that
counts with God, must have a warrant. We cannot believe by just trying
to make
ourselves believe. Such belief as that is not faith but credulity, it
is
“make-believe.”
The great warrant for
intelligent faith is God’s
Word. As Paul puts it in Romans 10:17, “Faith comes from hearing the
message,
and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” The faith that is
built
on the sure Word of God is an intelligent faith, it has something to
rest on.
So if we would pray the prayer of faith we must study much the Word of
God and
find out what God has definitely promised, and then, with God’s promise
in
mind, approach God and ask Him for that thing which He has promised.
Here is the point at
which many go astray. Here is
the point at which I went astray in my early prayer life. Not long
after my
conversion I got hold of this promise of our Lord Jesus in Mark 11:24,
“I tell
you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it,
and it
will be yours.” I said to myself, “All that I need to do if I want
anything is
to ask God for it and then make myself believe that I am going to get
it, and
I’ll have it.” So whenever I wanted anything I asked God for it and
tried to
make myself believe I was going to get it, but I didn’t get it, for it
was only
“make- believe” and I did not really believe at all. But I later
learned that
“faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through
the
word of Christ,” and that if I wished to Pray “the prayer of faith” I
must have
some warrant for my faith, some ground on which to rest my faith, and
that the
surest of all grounds for faith was the Word of God. So when I desired
anything
of God I would search the Scriptures to find if there was some promise
that
covered that case, and then go to God and plead His own promise; and
thus
testing on that promise I would believe that God had heard, and He had,
and I
got what I asked.
One of the mightiest
men of prayer of the last
generation was George Mueller of Bristol, England, who in the last
sixty years
of his life (he lived to be ninety-two or ninety-three) obtained the
English
equivalent of seven million four hundred dollars by prayer
($7,000,400). But
George Mueller never prayed for something just because he wanted it, or
even
just because he felt it was greatly needed for God’s work. When it was
laid on
George Mueller’s heart to pray for anything, he would search the
Scriptures to
find if there was some promise that covered the case. Sometimes he
would search
the Scriptures for days before he presented his petition to God. And
then, when
he found the promise, with his open Bible before him and his finger on
that
promise, he would plead that promise and so he received what he asked.
He
always prayed with an open Bible before him.
2. But this is not all
that is
to be said about how to pray the prayer of faith. It is possible for us
to have
faith in many an instance when there is no definite promise covering
the case,
and to pray with the absolute assurance that God has heard our prayer,
to
believe with a faith that has not a shadow of doubt in it that we have
received
what we have asked. The way that comes to pass we are plainly told in
the
passage to which I have already referred in the earlier part of this
sermon,
Romans 8:26-27, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
We do
not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes
for us
with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts
knows the
mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in
accordance
with God’s will.” That is to say, the Holy Spirit, as we have already
said,
often times makes clear to us as we pray what it is the will of God to
do, so
that, listening to His voice, we can pray with absolute confidence,
with a
confidence that has not a shadow of doubt, that God has heard our
prayer and
granted the thing that was asked.
My first experience, at
least the first that I
recall, of this wonderful privilege of knowing the will of God, and
praying
with confident faith even when one had no definite promise in the
written Word
that God would hear the prayer, came very early in my ministry. There
was a
young dentist in my congregation whose father was a member of our
church. This
dentist was taken very ill with typhoid fever, and went down to the
very gates
of death. I went to see him and found him unconscious. The doctor and
his
father were by the bedside, and the doctor said to me, “He cannot live.
The
crisis is past and it has turned the wrong way. There is no possibility
of his
recovery.” I knelt down to pray, and as I prayed a great confidence
came into
my heart, an absolutely unshakable confidence that God had heard my
prayer and
that the man was to be raised up. As I rose from my knees I said to the
father
and the doctor, “Ebbie will get well. He will not die at this time.”
The doctor
smiled and said, “That is all right, Mr. Torrey, from your standpoint,
but he
cannot live. He will die.” I replied, “Doctor, that is all right from
your
standpoint, but he cannot die; he will live.” I went home. Not long
after, word
was brought to me that the young man was dying. They told me what he
was doing,
and said that no one ever did that except just when he was dying. I
calmly
replied, “He is not dying. He will not die. He will get well.” I knew
he would:
he did. The last I knew of him he was still living, and his healing
took place
between forty and forty-five years ago. But I cannot pray for every
sick man in
that way, not even though he is an earnest Christian, as this man was
not at
that time. Sometimes it is God’s will to heal, usually it is God’s will
to
heal, if the conditions are met; but it is not always God’s will to
heal. “The
prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well,” God tells us
in James
5:15; but it is not always possible to pray “the prayer of faith”; we
can pray
it only when God makes it possible by the leading of His Holy Spirit
But “the prayer of
faith” will not only heal the
sick, it will bring many other blessings, blessings of far more
importance than
physical healing. It will bring salvation to the lost; it will bring
power into
our service; it will bring money into the treasury of the Lord; it will
bring
great revivals of religion. In my first pastorate one of the first
persons to
accept Christ was a woman who had been a backslider for many years. But
she not
only came back to the Lord, but came back in a very thorough way. Not
long
after her conversion God gave to her a great spirit of prayer for a
revival in
our church and community. When I had been there about a year she was
called to
go out to California with a sick friend, but before going she came into
the
prayer meeting on her last prayer-meeting night there, and said, “God
has heard
my prayer for a revival. You are going to have a great revival here in
the
church.” And we did have a revival, not only in the church, but in the
whole
community, a revival that transformed every church in the community and
brought
many souls to Christ. And the revival went on again the next year, and
the
next, and the next, until I left that field. And it went on under the
pastor
who followed me and the pastor who followed him.
Oh, yes, “the prayer
of
faith” is the great secret
of getting the things of all kinds that we need in our personal life,
that we
need in our service, that we need in our work, that we need in our
church, that
we need everywhere. There is no limit to what “the prayer of faith can
do,” and
if we would pray more and pray more intelligently, and pray “the prayer
of
faith,” there is no telling what we could do as a church and as an
institute
(Moody Bible Institute). But as we have said, in order to pray “the
prayer of
faith” we must, first of all, study our Bible much in order that we may
know
the promises of God, what they are, how large they are, how definite
they are,
and just exactly what is promised. In addition to that, we must live so
near to
God, be so fully surrendered to the will of God, have such a delight in
God and
so feel our utter dependence on the Spirit of God, that the Holy Spirit
Himself
can guide us in our prayers and indicate clearly to us what the will of
God is,
and make us sure while we pray that we have asked for something that is
according to God’s will, and thus enable us to pray with the absolute
confidence that God has heard our prayer, and that “we have received”
the
things that we asked of Him.
Here
is where many of us fail in our prayer life: We either do not know that
it is
our privilege to “pray in the Spirit,” that is, to pray under the
Spirit’s
guidance; or else we do not realize our utter dependence on the Holy
Spirit,
and cast ourselves on Him to lead us when we pray, and therefore we
pray for
the things which our own heart, our own selfish desire, prompts us to
pray for;
or else we are not in such an attitude toward God that the Spirit of
God can
make His voice heard in our hearts.
Oh
that we might all be made to realize the immeasurable blessings for
ourselves,
for our friends, and for the church and for the world, that lie within
the
reach of “the prayer of faith,” and determine that we would pray “the
prayer of
faith”; and then get down to the study of the Word of God so that we
could know
God’s will and what to pray for; and be in such a relation toward God,
be so
fully surrendered to His will and in utter, constant dependence on the
Holy Spirit,
looking to the Holy Spirit that as we pray it might not be so much we
who pray
as the Holy Spirit praying through us! Then we would soon see this
spiritual-desert city, and our spiritual-desert churches, “blossom as
the
rose.”