02.12. Chapter 12. Supplication
Supplication But our scripture, we must specially note, lays down three primary conditions of successful prayer: (1) it must be "supplication"; (2) this must be made by a "righteous" man; and (3) it is the "prayer of faith" that has power.
(1) Supplication is an intense word. Of its meaning and force there are two chief examples.
Jacob, after twenty years absence, is returning home.1 As he neared the old regions conscience made him afraid. He had deeply wronged his brother : was Esau still nursing that dread resolve for deadly vengeance? The messengers he had sent to him had returned with the ominous tidings, "Thy brother cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him." For what possible purpose could such a host of desert warriors he needed save to eat him up, with all his substance? Occupied with such gloomy thoughts, Jacob is passing the night alone, when suddenly, out of the shadows, a form springs upon him in fierce attack. Did Jacob imagine it to be an assassin sent in advance by his wrathful brother? He throws himself into the struggle; and all the night the conflict rages, until at dawn the Angel, by supernaturally crippling Jacob, reveals Who he is.
We not seldom hear of "wrestling with God in prayer." Is there warrant for the thought? Just so long as Jacob wrestled he hindered God. It was crippled Jacob that secured the blessing. Much of God’s dealings with us has to be directed to reducing our strength and exhausting our self-confidence. Did not Hudson Taylor say that when God resolved to open inland China to the gospel, He looked around to find a man (himself) who was weak enough for the purpose? But of Jacob crippled, halting, weeping, no more able to wrestle but only to cling, it is said "he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him."2 What a picture! what a lesson! In imminent peril from Esau, and in utter helplessness, he felt the situation intensely: and thus was begotten that supplication which has prevailing strength. That night was wrought the miracle that the next day disclosed—the thorough changing of Esau’s heart from revenge to forgiveness, from hatred to love. It is when we feel deeply that we pray powerfully; and herein pre-eminently is that word true, "When I am weak, then am I strong."3 As long as we can with complaisance contemplate our friends, and even our loved ones, going a godless road to perdition: as long as things temporal are to us more urgent than things eternal: as long as it affects us little or nothing that Christ’s church, for which He bled, is harried by wolves, and paralyzed by agnostic, theosophic, and pantheistic poison-gas, let loose by demon foes: as long as the novel and the newspaper are more attractive than the Bible, and the office and the fireside are preferred to the prayer-closet and the prayer meeting—so long we shall be little stirred in spirit and our prayers will be but formal and weak.