The Necessity of Prayer
Edward M. Bounds
III. PRAYER AND TRUST
"One evening I left my office in New York, with a bitterly cold
wind in my face. I had with me, (as I thought) my thick, warm muffler, but
when I proceeded to button-up against the storm, I found that it was gone. I
turned back, looked along the streets, searched my office, but in vain. I
realized, then, that I must have dropped it, and prayed God that I might find
it; for such was the state of the weather, that it would be running a great
risk to proceed without it. I looked, again, up and down the surrounding
streets, but without success. Sudden]y, I saw a man on the opposite side of
the road holding out something in his hand. I crossed over and asked him if
that were my muffler? He handed it to me saying, 'It was blown to me by the
wind.' He who rides upon the storm, had used the wind as a means of answering
prayer." -- WILLIAM HORST.
PRAYER does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty and independent
principle. It lives in association with other Christian duties, is wedded to
other principles, is a partner with other graces. But to faith, prayer is
indissolubly joined. Faith gives it colour and tone, shapes its character, and
secures its results.
Trust is faith become absolute, ratified, consummated. There is, when all is
said and done, a sort of venture in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm
belief, it is faith in full flower. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of
which we are sensible. According to the Scriptural concept it is the eye of the
new-born soul, and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul,
the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling -- these one and all have to
do with trust. How luminous, how distinct, how conscious, how powerful, and more
than all, how Scriptural is such a trust! How different from many forms of
modern belief, so feeble, dry, and cold! These new phases of belief bring no
consciousness of their presence, no "Joy unspeakable and full of glory" results
from their exercise. They are, for the most part, adventures in the
peradventures of the soul. There is no safe, sure trust in anything. The whole
transaction takes place in the realm of Maybe and Perhaps.
Trust like life, is feeling, though much more than feeling. An unfelt life is
a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, a delusion, a contradiction.
Trust is the most felt of all attributes. It is all feeling, and it works
only by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of
which we are now speaking is a conviction. An unfelt conviction? How absurd!
Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yea, more. It rises to a lofty
eminence, and looking into the invisible and the eternal, realizes that God has
done things, and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into
the annals and happenings of time, transmutes the substance of hope into the
reality of fruition, and changes promise into present possession. We know when
we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of
touch. Trust sees, receives, holds. Trust is its own witness.
Yet, quite often, faith is too weak to obtain God's greatest good,
immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, pressing obedience,
until it grows in strength, and is able to bring down the eternal, into the
realms of experience and time.
To this point, trust masses all its forces. Here it holds. And in the
struggle, trust's grasp becomes mightier, and grasps, for itself, all that God
has done for it in His eternal wisdom and plenitude of grace.
In the matter of waiting in prayer, mightiest prayer, faith rises to its
highest plane and becomes indeed the gift of God. It becomes the blessed
disposition and expression of the soul which is secured by a constant
intercourse with, and unwearied application to God.
Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was
answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig-tree, the disciples were much
surprised that its withering had actually taken place, and their remarks
indicated their in credulity. It was then that Jesus said to them, "Have faith
in God."
"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to
pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore, I say unto you, What
things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye
shall have them."
Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as
in the prayer-chamber. Its unfolding and development are rapid and wholesome
when they are regularly and well kept. When these engagements are hearty and
full and free, trust flourishes exceedingly. The eye and presence of God give
vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit
and flower to grow, and all things glad and bright with fuller life.
"Have faith in God," "Trust in the Lord" form the keynote and foundation of
prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of God, but rather trust in the
Person of God. For trust in the Person of God must precede trust in the Word of
God. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me," is the demand our Lord makes on
the personal trust of His disciples. The person of Jesus Christ must be central,
to the eye of trust. This great truth Jesus sought to impress upon Martha, when
her brother lay dead, in the home at Bethany. Martha asserted her belief in the
fact of the resurrection of her brother:
"Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day."
Jesus lifts her trust clear above
the mere fact of the resurrection, to His own Person, by saying:
"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in
Me, shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord: I
believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the
world."
Trust, in an historical fact or in a mere record may be
a very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, fructifies
it, informs it with love. The trust which informs prayer centres in a Person.
Trust goes even further than this. The trust which inspires our prayer must
be not only trust in the Person of God, and of Christ, but in their ability and
willingness to grant the thing prayed for. It is not only, "Trust, ye, in the
Lord," but, also, "for in the Lord Jehovah, is everlasting strength."
The trust which our Lord taught as a condition of effectual prayer, is not of
the head but of the heart. It is trust which "doubteth not in his heart." Such
trust has the Divine assurance that it shall be honoured with large and
satisfying answers. The strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the
present, and counts on a present answer.
