03.21. How To Use The Word In Prayer

How To Usse the Word in Prayer

It is best to have no book but the Bible, that scripture may be interpreted by scripture. I find it well to take the sayings of psalmist and prophet and turn them into prayers.

Avoid the lure of sidetracks. I have been interested to find that men known far and wide for their biblical scholarship always use the Authorized Version in their devotions. I commend their example. Search the Scriptures. The heart is soon aglow when the Word is alight. The Word of God is like God’s world: it is all interesting and all wonderful, but there are places to which we go often in thought and affection if not in actual visits: beauty spots of which we never tire, and sacred places of hallowed association. So there are pages of the Bible that wear thin with use, and some that are stained with tears. There is no psalter like the book `of Psalms. There are favorite psalms that register the pilgrimage of the soul. I love Psalms 37:1-40, the Psalms 46:1-11, Psalms 80:1-19, and Psalms 116:1-19, and many more besides. Usually I read through the psalm, and then return for meditation to a few verses that have appealed to me. How often I have countered "fret" with "trust" in Psalm thirty-seven, committed my way unto the Lord, and hummed and prayed through the matchless words, "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him;" and my soul rejoices in the assurance that if I delight myself in the Lord, He will give me the desires of my heart. It is great to take the Lord’s own words and speak them in praise and plead them in prayer.

Psalms 46:1-11 is just as wonderful, with its threefold division of catastrophe, hostility, and testimony. Then I go back to the first verse, with its description of God as Refuge, Strength, and Help. The Refuge is for sanctuary in perils in which man is utterly helpless. What can he do against a changing earth, hurtling mountains, and raging storms?’ When sudden calamity comes, and the foundations slip from under our feet, God is our Refuge. "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Always underneath! Always lower than our deepest depths! God is also our Strength. There are demands for which we have no might and enemies against whom we have not strength. "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength." (Isaiah 40:29) Immediately the mind is among the heroes of God, and faith rejoices in the assurance of strength that shall be as the day. God is a Help. There are experiences in which we are incomplete. A Helper is near, companionable, encouraging, inspiring, achieving. Could assurance be more complete? No wonder the heart nestles near to God and whispers, "I will trust, and not be afraid."

"The Lord of hosts is with me [us]; And the God of Jacob is my [our] refuge." (Psalms 46:7)

I wonder how often I have prayed through Psalm one hundred and sixteen. It was one of God’s earliest gifts to me. There is no need to change the pronoun, for there is a personal pronoun in every verse. I love the alternating surge of a sorrow escaped and the triumphant note of thanksgiving, and I linger long over the vows of the redeemed soul. He had been down into the depths. Every kind of trouble seemed to come at once, and greatest of all was his loss of faith in God and man. Deliverance came when he prayed. Praise followed prayer, and praise became a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

"Return unto thy rest, O my soul; For the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, Mine eyes from tears, And my feet from falling.

I will walk before the Lord In the land of the living." (Psalms 116:7-9)

There are scriptures that I read at stated seasons. One of my earlier attempts at real Bible study was to try to write out in order the doings and sayings of our Lord in the week of His Passion, and I go over those passages always in the sacred week. There are similar passages for Advent and other festivals of the Christian year. The first thing I do with a new Bible is to mark the passages in Saint John in which our Lord makes His promise of the Paraclete, and those I read always between Easter and Pentecost, and then I find my inner chamber becomes my Lord’s Upper Room.

There are three scriptures that I have read on fixed days of the week for more than forty years. Every Sunday morning I read the fifth" chapter of Revelation, and every Sunday night the seventh chapter from verse nine. Why do I do this? Sunday is the great day of my week. I preach other days, but there is only one day in seven that is specially the Lord’s Day. It is a day devoted to worship and the ministry of the Word. To me is given the responsibility of intercessor and prophet, teacher and evangelist. I have to represent Christ, preach Christ, plead forChrist. For all this I need the vision of Christ, and nowhere do I find the vision as He is there revealed in the midst of the throne, in the midst of the redeemed, in the midst of the angels, and in the midst of creation. I can face the day when I have beheld His glory, and said "Amen, Hallelujah!" in His presence. At night I come back to the vision of His ultimate triumph and commit the day unto Him and rest my heart within the veil. On Monday morning I invariably read Isaiah forty-one from verse eight. Monday morning is a difficult time for the prophet-evangelist. Sunday looks somber on Monday. A blue Monday is the devil’s chance, so I resolved at the beginning of my ministry that if I had to have a blue Monday, I would have it in the middle of the week and God gave me this scripture as a protection against the "blues." Perhaps you would like to know how He did it. It was in my first month out of college. I was in my room on a Monday morning, wrapped in a rug, for I had a cold and the room was cold. It rained pitilessly all the morning. Just before noon a cab stopped at the door, and H. S. B. Yates, the minister of Leith, was announced. We had met only twice. When I asked how he was, he answered, "I am a worm, and no man." He had the blue Monday so badly that he had taken a cab and come to see me for a change. His church had been crowded the night before for the first time, and Satan taunted and tormented him into sheer terror. I listened with amused amazement. I am not made that way. He asked me what I did when I felt myself a creeping, crawling, contemptible worm? I had just read the forty-first of Isaiah, and I said "Here is the very chapter for you. It is God’s promise to a worm" We read it. We prayed through it, and he went away greatly comforted. Since then I have read it every Monday morning, and I have found it a rare defense against depression, with the result that Monday has been one of my busiest and happiest days I go through the Bible, as I have gone through these passages of Scripture.

These are intimate words, but at any rate you do not wonder now that to me the Word of the Lord is precious. All the time I have tried to keep in mind the overworked and toil-driven who have little or no space for an inner sanctuary. That is why I urge the Bible as the only necessary book for the devotional hour. For the same reason I advise that it be studied in short portions, lest prayer become secondary in the place consecrated to prayer.