01.A 04. Why We Pray so Little
IV. WHY WE PRAY SO LITTLE “Could ye not watch with me one hour?”— Matthew 26:40.
Why do we pray so little? Why is prayer so much neglected? More answers than one have been given to the question, though each needs all the rest to make the answer all-complete. Three reasons, among them all most prominent, suggest themselves to me, 1. The first, which is after all the greatest and most inclusive, is our natural dislike for prayer. Who can doubt it was the first man’s chiefest joy to hold converse with his God. What delightful hours those must have been, those first sweet days, when Adam, with soul all pure and clean, could meet his Maker in communion face to face. But Adam sinned, and straightway something took hold of Adam’s God-like nature and twisted it and left it ever after predisposed to that which was crooked and distorted. It left him unable to please God (Romans 8:8), unable to love God (Romans 8:7), or to know the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). It was the same thing Paul had when he said, *’ When I would do good, evil is ever present with me”; the same thing that has been with us all through all the years since the first man’s sin. It is our perverted human nature, — the carnal life, — the self life, and although there is freedom from it (Romans 8:2), it is, alas! ever ready to assert itself and carry the mind in the very moment of communion away to the vain pleasures and perplexing business of the world. The holiest souls of earth have confessed that such disturbance is not unfrequent in their devotions, and unless the tendency of the self-life be checked by the overmastering presence of the Christlife, we are going to find our whole lives given to such things as tend not only to make prayer an uninviting duty instead of a joyful soul-absorbing privilege, but to make any prolonged communion a series of earthly interruptions.
“Never any more wonder,” says an old writer, *’that men so seldom pray, for there are very few that feel the relish, and are enticed with the deliciousness, and refreshed with the comforts, and acquainted with the secrets of a holy prayer,” And why? Simply because the self-life, which has created the natural dislike for prayer, has put a rake in the hands of so many of God’s children to-day and set them scratching in the muck of the earth. Well has Austin Phelps asked, “Who is it that has said, ’I will make them joyful in my house of prayer?’”
2. The second reason for the present day lack of prayer is the awful rush of modern life. “Evening, morning and No time noon will I pray,” said David, but most people are too busy for that in these strenuous times. A man hardly has time to stop and tie his shoestring, and we are allowing the rush of things to steal our minds away from God.
One does not need a cloister to commune with God. He can make, he ought to make, “the common round, the trivial task,” the tiresome toil of business life, the joyful sport of field or home a ministry for Christ even as the service in the sanctuary, and m them all find fellowship with God. Yea, more, behind desk or counter or on the busy street brushing sleeves with our hurrying fellows, you can for a moment, from time to time, build an altar and be alone with God. But all this we are sure will not be enough for the one who would know God intimately and who would experience the fulness of His strength for the toil, the trial and the temptation of life’s every day.
Such a one needs more time where with life’s busy cares and fretting noise shut out he can be quiet before his God.
But, you say, “How can I spare the time?” How can you afford not to spare it? You, a professing Christian, and not find time to pray! Wherefore hath God given you all the time there is save to implore His mercy and do His will? Take time!! You never lack for time to implore and importune those who hold earth’s favors in their hands, and yet, O God! no time to receive the eternal mercies from heaven’s gracious King. Do the concerns of this world outweigh those of the next? If God ministers to the fowls of the air, that neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, must you neglect your soul that your body may not starve? Time was never given us to waste, but its rigid monopoly to material interests is cheating the heart out of its chiefest joys and robbing life of all its beauty and its sweetness.
Take time for other things! Take time for the good-bye kiss! It will leave a lighter heart behind and send a braver one forth to the struggles of the day. Take time to be agreeable. The interest it will bear as the years go by you will some day find to be larger than all the worldly emoluments you have sought so hard to gain. Take time to show a little appreciation. It was only a bunch of dandelions, but the little one thought they were the sweetest of the flowers, and she meant them all for you. To have kissed her for them, much occupied mother, would have been quite as easy as to have said, “Too busy to be bothered.” It would have paid a thousand times more than any tidy home without a mother’s caress. Take time to get acquainted with the family. Your companionship, busy father, may be worth a good deal more to your boy, who is now almost a stranger to you, than your fortune; the latter is a doubtful blessing. Take time to encourage the down-hearted brother. Its income will be better than gold in the day when the angels of God stoop down to bind up your own broken heart.
Take time to pray. Even so the Master did.
It will make you a braver and a better man.
“No time to pray!
Oh, who so fraught with earthly care As not to give to humble prayer Some part of day?
“No time to pray!
What heart so clean, so pure within, That needeth not some check from sin.
Needs not to pray!
“No time to pray!
’Mid each day’s dangers, what retreat More needful than the mercy-seat? Who need not pray?
“No time to pray!
Must care or business’ urgent call So press us as to take it all, Each passing day?
“What thought more drear Than that our God His face should hide. And say, through all life’s swelling tide. No time to hear!” A note of warning may well be sounded here to the busy minister and those given to special forms of religious work. With all these demands upon us, the sermon that must be written, the letters that must be answered, the calls that must be made, the unexpected that must be attended to, how little time we have for prayer. In Andrew Murray’s first chapter on the “Ministry of Intercession” he has called attention to the confession that came up on every side from the ministers and workers in convention as to the little place that closet prayer had occupied in their busy lives, and they were wondering how, with all the pressure of duty, they could ever hope for much change. But, Beloved, if it is God’s work we are doing and He has told us to give ourselves somewhat to prayer, will He not take care of that work while we are doing it.’
If we are to believe the records that have come down to us, then God’s most useful men have mostly been those who, according to their own testimony, had so much to do they could not get along with out several hours of prayer each day; if they could not be found at one time, they were found at another. It is said of J. Hudson Taylor that he rose at three o’clock in the morning that he might spend two hours alone with God before the other business of the day broke in upon him. Note you, that of praying he made a business, too.
If God calls to prayer, all other calls for the time being are calls of men, and if God is waiting to meet us and to better prepare us for the work that lies before us, it would certainly seem the part of wisdom as well as duty to wait on God before we go.
Oh, how few the hours before the day is done, and when perchance there comes an hour on which some duty does not lay immediate demand, what books we fain would read and feel we ought to, what lines of study follow out. But after all, I wonder if a little less study and a little more prayer wouldn’t make better preachers out of us anyhow. I wonder if, after all, the amount of real success may not be measured somewhat by the amount of real prayer in our lives. And when we think of the solemn service to which we have been dedicated, with its holy functions, its vast responsibilities, its issues of life and death, with its perplexities and its trials, how much we need the nearest presence and the fullest strength of our God which comes to us and which we take with us from the place of prayer.
“I pray for strength, O God! To bear all loads that on my shoulders press Of thy directing or Thy chastening rod.
Lest from their growing stress My spirit sink in utter helplessness.
“I pray for strength to run In duty’s narrowest paths, nor turn aside In broader ways that glow in pleasure’s sun.
Lest I grow satisfied, Where Thou from me Thy smiling face must hide.
“I pray for strength to wait Submissively when I can not see my way, Or if my feet would haste, some close-barred gate Bids my hot zeal delay, Or to some by-path turns their steps astray.
“I pray for strength to live To all life’s noble ends, prompt, just and true;
Myself, my service, unto all to give, And, giving, yet renew My store for bounty of life’s journey through.
“I pray, O God, for strength.
When, as life’s love and labors find surcease.
Cares, crosses, burdens to lay down at length, And so, with joy’s increase. To die, if not in triumph — in Thy peace.”
3. The third reason for our lack of prayer is that we realize so little the value of prayer. Doubtless no Christian would excuse himself by saying, What good will it do? But he is all the while impoverishing himself by failing to realize how much good it really will do. This brings up the whole question as to what prayer is and what God meant it should be Christian. This opens a most interesting field of investigation to which we urge your attention in the immediately following pages.