“Pray without ceasing ” (1 Thess. 5:17.)
What a wonderful privilege it is to pray to the living God and to be heard. The end of the world is near.
Judgment for every man has come. Prayer means that we know and enjoy our heavenly Father. We come boldly to the throne of grace to receive help in time of need. We are daily sensible of our dependence on the living God, on that unseen Power who looks from His throne and ministers to us all His love and mercy through His Spirit and the angels.
When the Amalekites battled Israel in the wilderness Moses held high his hands to God till the going down of the sun. God was honored so long as they looked to Him. So it will always be.
We need continually the assurance of God’s presence. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). The Lord counsels us to pray to Him, since this is the most reasonable thing for God’s children to do. He continually gives us precious promises to induce us to come to Him, find mercy and grace and strength. On almost every page of the Bible there is the assurance that prayer avails with God. Our weaknesses and necessities constitute no barrier to God. We do not need to wait until we feel strong. To come to Him with our needs and desires is entirely agreeable to Him. We affirm that the God we worship is infinitely wise and loving.
God does not fail to answer us, to deliver us from evil, and to guide our lives. Through prayer God’s richest blessings flow down to us. Sinful though we may be, we may pray. We should always pray.
We may roll all our burdens upon Him, confident that He will sustain us. We seek divine guidance for our whole life through, rejoicing in the fact that every good and perfect gift comes from our heavenly Father, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17).
Prayer involves a lifetime with God — a year, a month, a week, a day, a minute of vital contact between ourselves and God. We do not stoop to whine or to beg. We come to see ourselves as we really are before God and still are loved. We come to grow more like Jesus. That is what is bound to happen .
Edward Heppenstall,
In Touch With God, Sept 9.
