- No Substitutes Accepted

EVERYTHING HAS ITS PROPER CAUSE—in the kingdom of God as well as in the natural world. The reason for God’s obvious refusal to send revival may lie deep, but surely not too deep to discover. We need only be realistic and honest as we confront the undeniable fact. I believe that our problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply won’t work.
A church, for instance, follows its traditions without much thought for whether or not they are scriptural. Or it surrenders to pressure from public opinion and falls in with the popular trends that carry it far from the New Testament pattern. Then the leaders notice a lack of spiritual power among the people and become concerned about it. What to do? How can they achieve that revitalization of spirit they need so badly? How can they bring down refreshing showers to quicken their fainting souls?
The answer is all ready for them. The books tell them how--pray! The passing evangelist confirms what the books have said--pray! The word is echoed back and forth, growing in volume until it becomes a roar—pray! So the pastor calls his people to prayer. Days and nights are spend begging God to be merciful and send revival upon His people. The tide of feeling runs high and it looks for a while as if the revival might be on its way. But nothing happens, and the zeal for prayer begins to flag. Before long the church is back where it was before and a numb discouragement settles over everyone. What has gone wrong?
Simply this—neither the leaders nor the people have made any effort to obey the Word of God. They felt that their only weakness was failure to pray, when actually in a score of ways they were falling short in vital matters of obedience. “To obey is better than sacrifice.” Prayer is never an acceptable substitute for obedience. The sovereign Lord accepts no offering from His creatures that is not accompanied by obedience. To pray for revival while ignoring or actually flouting the plain precept laid down in the Scriptures is to waste a lot of words.
It has been quite overlooked in recent times that the faith of Christ is an absolute arbiter. It preempts the whole redeemed personality and seizes upon the individual to the exclusion of all other claims. Or, more accurately, it makes every legitimate claim on the Christian’s life and without hesitation decides the place each claim shall have in the total scheme. The act of committal to Christ in salvation releases the believing man or woman from the penalty of sin, but it does not release him or her from the obligation to obey the words of Christ. Rather it brings that person under the joyous necessity to obey.
Many people think that the New Testament epistles are largely concerned with exhortation—merely good advice. By dividing the epistles into “doctrinal” and “exhortative” sections we have relieved ourselves of any necessity to obey. The doctrinal passages require nothing from us except that we believe them. The so-called exhortative passages are harmless enough, for the word by which they are described declares them to be words of advice and encouragement rather than commandments to be obeyed. This is a palpable error. There is no advice in the New Testament, except three passages in the seventh chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, and these are clearly marked as not bearing the credentials of divine inspiration (1 Corinthians 7:6, 1 Corinthians 7:12, 1 Corinthians 7:25).
Apart from these, the “exhortations” in the epistles are to be understood as apostolic injunctions carrying the weight of mandatory charges from the Head of the church. They are intended to be obeyed, not weighed as bits of good advice that we are at liberty to accept or reject as we will.
If we would have God’s blessing upon us we must begin to obey. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience. We only deceive ourselves when we try to make the substitution.