II. The prayer of faith invariably succeeds
II. The prayer of faith invariably succeeds
Success in prayer is more than access in prayer. Access is conscious audience with God; success is getting what you ask for. Paul had access to God when he prayed in repeated supplication for the healing of his body in the removal of the thorn in the flesh; but his prayer did not have success.
The thorn was not removed; the cure was not granted; and simply because he did not offer the prayer of faith for it, and his lack of faith arose from his having no inwrought persuasion that it was the will of God that he should be healed. As access in prayer is a conscious, blessed experience, so also is success in prayer; it is a conscious, indubitable persuasion that the thing asked for is granted. When the saintly Fletcher of Madeley was lying in the last stages of consumption, and his condition was pronounced hopeless, John Wesley visited him, fell upon his knees at his bedside, and began to pray for his recovery. He had uttered only a few petitions when he sprang to his feet, and exclaimed: He shall not die, but shall live and declare the works of the Lord. Wesley knew he had succeeded. Fletcher recovered, and lived eight years to do the most effective work of his long and useful life. The prayer of faith does avail much. It brings to pass much that is not possible to prayer in its ordinary exercise. Prayer, in its usual offices, avails for all that is essential to spiritual life, growth in grace, and the ordinary blessing of Providence, but does not avail for special interventions in behalf of souls and the Church.
These results are only possible to inspirational prayer, or prayer in the Holy Ghost, which is distinctively the prayer of faith. The Tyndale prayer-test, insisted on a few years since, was unscientific and unreasonable, inasmuch as it proposed that any company of righteous persons who might choose should go into the ward of a hospital and pray for the recovery of a hopelessly sick patient, and, if immediate recovery should ensue, it would demonstrate the efficacy of prayer for results beyond the ordinary course of nature. In that proposition, however, there was not a single condition upon which the Bible teaches that God will heal the sick in answer to prayer. To have been a proposition compassing the Scriptural doctrine of prayer for supernatural results, it should have allowed that the suppliants must be a company of devout persons, consciously persuaded that it was the will of God to heal that patient, and believing that he would do it in answer to their prayers; or, in other words, it ought to have been a challenge to some person or persons who were consciously endowed with the gift of prayer for the healing of that patient. Inasmuch as it is not promised in Gods Word that prayer, in its ordinary office, shall accomplish such supernatural results, but only prayer as a specific endowment of the Holy Ghost, the so called test was no test at all.
The prayer of faith always succeeds. A most touching spectacle of prayer occurred seven years since when, for almost three months, all Christendom was on its knees before God in supplication for the recovery of President Garfield. Yet he did not recover, and many good people began to say: What profit is it that we pray unto Him? And the skeptics said: Prayer is a failure, as we have always held. Was all that prayer useless? No; the spirit of it was eminently proper and Scriptural. The people did as they should have done; they, with prayer and thanksgiving, let their requests be made known unto God. They did say in their closets, at their family altars, and from their sanctuaries: If it be thy will, let our Chief Magistrate live. All the prayer offered in that spirit was useful, but it was not successful; it did not avail for the Presidents recovery. And why? Because in all the prayers prayed no petitioner offered the prayer of faith. No one had the persuasion it would be done; no one apprehended that it was the will of God that it should be done.
Every one said: If it be thy will. But faith never can build on a contingency, or an if; its ground is always a divine assurance, given either by the Word or the Holy Spirit of God. Had there come into the heart of the most ignorant, obscure freedman, who was a child of God, the assurance that it was the will of God to restore President Garfield, if he would believe, that humble soul might have, and doubtless would have, prayed the prayer of faith, and according to his supplication it would have been done unto him.
For the prayer of faith never fails; it prospers in the thing whereunto it is sent.
Its answer is specific in kind in respect to the asking, while in degree most frequently it is above that which we think or ask. Elijah asked for rain; it came not in showers, however, but in torrents. Hannah asked for a son; he was given, but was a mighty prophet as well. Hezekiah plead for life; it was given, not in a temporary respite from death, but in fifteen years of regal life. The simplicity of the prayer of faith, in its inception compared with its effectiveness, is marvelous. Said a man to one noted for the results of his praying: I suppose you struggle a great deal in prayer. O no, he replied, I scarcely know when I pray. When I desire any thing of the Lord I just look up to him in my soul and say, Thou wilt do it, and feel that it will be done.
When the soul is given the spirit of prevailing prayer there is fulfilled the promise (Isaiah 65:24), And it shall come to pass [in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost] that before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking I will hear; that is, the Holy Spirit shall inbreathe a spirit of prayer so quickly as that the soul shall receive the thing desired before the petition for it can be framed into words, and that while it is putting it in words God will be doing for it the thing desired.
It is no uncommon experience for a devout heart just to think of something it would have of the Lord, and while forming the purpose to ask it of the Lord, to be made conscious that it is granted, and the succeeding prayer for it to become rather praise that it shall be done. Praise the Lord, O my soul!
The phenomenal manifestations of impassioned utterance, vehement gesticulation, or ecstatic emotions may attend or not the prayer of faith, but are no essential part of its power. When Elijah opened the windows of heaven there was no demonstration, only a prostrate, voiceless form, and but for the apostle Jamess allusion to the wonderful event we should not have known that he prayed at all. The prayer of faith enters the heart by the inspiration of the Almighty, and never fails to rise as high as its source in almighty results. The prayer of faith being itself supernatural, what wonder is it that it accomplishes supernatural results.