01.A 03. The Neglect of Prayer
III. THE NEGLECT OF PRAYER “ Ye have not, because ye ask not.” — James 4:2.
If prayer be so great a privilege and one so universally recognized, what more reasonable expectation than to find people everywhere and always praying? More especially would we expect to find this true of the Christian. With his more intelligent understanding of what prayer is and what it means for the soul, it ought not be surprising if he be found always at it. And yet, alas! for the number of God’s people for whom prayer is but the cry of a child in distress. Possibly the life is not without the form of prayer — a sentence of thanks for general mercies on retiring and a brief petition for protection through night’s defenceless hours — but let the storm come and like the heathen and the atheist it drives us to our knees in earnest appeal to God. But even then we ofttimes do not pray. The form is there, a certain earnestness and agony of soul are there, but the elements that make prayer real are wanting. He who does not pray when the sun shines knows not how to pray when the clouds arise. But how many of us do pray in sunshine as well as shadow? How many of us are not only stirring ourselves up to take hold on God in crisal times, but are giving heed to God’s injunction to “pray without ceasing”? With how many of us is prayer a habit of the soul? Is it- not the deplorable lack of the church to-day that we pray so little? On every hand comes the sad confession. Let that one to whom these pages come answer for himself or herself — What place has prayer in your life? Is the secret of His presence the place where your soul delights to hide, or is it the thought that you ought to pray out of respect to the divine command that takes you betimes to your knees?
God says, “Ask and ye shall receive.” Prayer is the appointed means for bringing the blessing of heaven down to earth. God is just standing in heaven’s portal, more ready than an earthly parent to give good gifts to His children, and with His hands full of choicest favor is saying, *’ Ask what I shall give thee.” What more grateful to His heart than the confidence which leads His children to ask these favors at His hand? What more unfilial than to ignore the yearning of His great heart to give?
If God’s Word is true as to what prayer has done and will do; if what we read that prayer has wrought as it “moved the arm that moves the world” is true, where further need we look for what the church needs to-day to make His will prevail throughout the earth?
If history be true, God’s great men were all men of prayer. Prayer is the channel of power. It is true what Macgregor once said, that, “So important a factor is prayer in Christian experience, that the history of a man’s progress in the Divine life is just the history of his progress in the knowledge and in the use of prayer.” And yet we pray so little. Why is it?
“Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others — that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak or heartless be.
Anxious or troubled, while with us is prayer, — And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee?”