00B.14 Chapter 7--Men Ought Always To Pray-- No. 5

VII. "Men Ought Always to Pray"

No. 5 "Is there an added force or special power in united prayer?" The most natural conclusion that we can draw from the teaching of the Scriptures is that united prayers or the prayers of several earnest souls together have more efficacy than the prayer of a single individual. If the Bible teaches this, we must accept it as true, whether or not we can know why it is true. Let us, therefore, study:

1. The Teaching o f the Scripture o n Thin Question. In Matthew 18:19-20, our Savior says: "Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This seems to teach that the fact that "two of you" are agreed in prayer will be a special guarantee that the prayer will be heard. However, the teaching of this entire para­graph is of the concerted action of the disciples—what they do as a body or a congregation. It relates to the decision of the church—the unanimous action of the body in a case of discipline. No doubt the principle applies in all decisions, and not only in disciplinary matters. "Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." The emphasis is, there­fore, on the word "agree" in our Lord’s promise that what they ask shall be granted. The disciples are here thought of as "gathered together" in Christ’s name; acting together with one accord; praying together in "agreement." The word for "agree" in this passage is "sumphonesosin" in the Greek. It is a musical term, and from it we get the word "symphony." Jesus teaches that our hearts should sym- phonize in prayer. Our prayers should go up like a beautiful melody unto the throne of God. This will assure us that they will be heard. This language of our Lord might be understood, then, as teaching that when two or more pray together, they must agree and pray with one purpose; that there should be no factions and contradictory prayers among them. The thought that the prayer of two souls would be more effica­cious than the prayer of one soul would not necessarily be implied in this passage if there were nothing else in the Bible bearing on this question. But this idea is implied in the teaching of the whole Bible. In the Old Testament when the people of God were in distress, the whole nation was called upon to fast and pray. When the nation was threatened with annihilation and Esther threw herself between her people and the death decree, she not only prayed herself, but had her maidens pray with her, and called upon all the Jews throughout the hundred twenty-seven provinces to join with her in prayer. When Daniel had persuaded the angry king to appoint him a time for the interpretation of the king’s dream, and when the time was set, Daniel began to pray that the Lord would enable him to reveal this secret. But he did not depend upon his own prayers alone. He asked his three companions to unite with him in this earnest praying. In the New Testament, Christians are taught both by precept and example to pray together. United prayers and intercessory prayers are repeatedly enjoined. Christ prayed for Peter, that his faith might not fail. (See Luke 22:31-32.) He prayed for all his disciples, that "they may be one." (See John 17:11.) He taught them to pray for one another, and even to pray for their enemies; and, as we have seen, to pray together in agreement.

Paul called upon his converts to join him in prayer for certain specified things. He was praying night and day for these ends that he desired to accomplish, but he must have thought that the prayers of others would add force to his petitions. If their prayers did not help his, why would he request their prayers? In fact, Paul uses the expression, "Ye also helping together by prayer." (2 Corinthians 1:11.) He praised God for delivering him from death, but he said that Christians had "helped" in this deliverance by their prayers. Peter also was once sentenced to die. "But prayer was made earnestly of the church unto God for him" (Acts 12:5), and he was delivered. When Paul was so weighed down with forebodings and anxiety that he was "striving" with God in prayer, he solemnly entreated his friends to "strive" with him: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that are disobedient in Judea, and that my ministra­tion which I have for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints; that I may come unto you in joy through the will of God, and together with you find rest." (Romans 15:30-32.) Surely we are justified by these passages in drawing the conclusion that united prayers are especially efficacious; that we can "help" one another in our prayers.

2. "Things Hard to Be Understood.” We are all ready to ask, why is it that God is more easily persuaded by two persons than by one? Since God has promised to hear and answer the prayer of his humblest child, since the "suppli­cation of a righteous man availeth much," why does such a prayer need to be augmented by the pleadings of other righteous men? Is prayer to God, like a petition to an earthly ruler, made stronger by the number of names signed to the petition? These are hard questions, but they are no more difficult for us to answer than many other questions that arise in our minds when we study the subject of prayer. God loves men better than I can love them; then why should I have to beg him to bless those whom he loves? Why should I, a sinful man, be found beseeching the infinitely good and holy God to work some good in the world? For what else does he sit upon the throne of the universe? Is he not much more concerned about the welfare of all his work than I can possibly be? Does he need my feeble prayer to remind him of some duty he has neglected, or of some sufferer he has overlooked, or of some obligation he has failed to fulfill? Is he not infinitely more interested in the salvation of men than I am, and has he not given his own Son to die for their redemption? Has he not sent his agents to the ends of the earth? Then, why should I pray him to "send forth laborers into his harvest?" Is God stubborn and implacable, that I should have to "strive" and plead and importune him in order to get him willing to do a good deed? Do we need to unite and organize and besiege God en masse in order to get his attention?

These questions are distracting and enervating to the spirit of prayer, and from one point of view they are dis­honoring to God. But despite that fact we are nevertheless taught to do the very things that these questions inquire about. What is the explanation?

3. Suggested Answers to These Hard Questions. One solu­tion to the whole problem is suggested by those who say that prayer does not move the will of God at all; that it is solely subjective; that it has only a reflex influence; that all al­truistic prayers cultivate a spirit of altruism, and that is why we are enjoined to pray for others. That earnest, sin­cere prayers do have a reflex influence upon the one who prays is no doubt true. But when a man comes to believe that his prayer never reaches God and that it can have no influence upon anyone except those who participate in it, he will no longer pray in an earnest and sincere manner. That which incited him to pray is gone. He will not pour out his soul unto God when he knows God is not hearing and that his prayer is wholly ineffectual, except as a means of working himself into a certain psychological state; and as such a means it is futile as soon as he realizes that he must arouse his soul to desire, long lor, and plead for the attention of a deaf God. In order for a man to pray in a way to bring about beneficial reactions in his own life, he must be deceived into believing that he is reaching divine favor. This would be to impute dishonesty to God. It is to attribute to God an uncandid makeshift. It is to say that in teaching us to pray to him and in promising to hear us and to give unto us the things that we ask for, God has deliberately deceived us by a monstrous falsehood. This explanation of prayer, therefore, becomes ultimately im­possible. When God calls upon us to pray that some good may come into the world, we must seriously believe that our prayer is in some way capable of bringing in that good, otherwise we shall not pray.

4. The Working of Prayer. There is an expression in the Epistle of James that may give us an idea about prayer that will help to answer some of the perplexing questions that have been propounded. James says: "The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working." (James 5:16.) The word "effectual," in the King James Version, has been replaced by the three words, "in its working," by the Revised Version. Anyone who will think for a moment will sec that "effectual" only restates what is already ex­pressed by the word "availeth." If a prayer is "effectual," of course it "avails"; and if it "avails," of course it is "effec­tual." Moreover, the Greek participle, which is translated "in its working," expresses lively and aggressive action. There is the idea of active energy in it. James conceived prayer as a force at work. It is a psychical force, a soul force, but a real and powerful force. It is unseen, like ether waves or like electricity, but it may be more powerful than either. Under this idea we can see that prayer is not in­tended to move the will of God, but that it puts at the disposal of God a force which he uses to move the wills of men. Thus, when we pray, we become "labourers together with God" as much as when we preach or do good deeds. In physical science there is a law known as the con­servation of energy. No force is ever lost. No mite of energy is ever wasted in the divine frugality of the physical world. As energy exhausts itself it creates new energy. The consumption of energy is the creation of energy. Work is always a sort of combustion, the eating up of fuel. May there not be some similar law to this in the spiritual world? May not spiritual force be produced by the wear which liberates power? Is not prayer the expending of spiritual energy? Is it not a sort of combustion of the soul? Is not the soul of a man in the act of passionate willing a living dynamo? Does not the soul afterwards feel the weary reactions of toil? Any man who has longed mightily for some­thing knows that "virtue" has gone out of him because of this yearning. Shall we say, then, that the God who in nature gathers all the fragments of dynamics and allows nothing to go to waste will not gather in and use the spiritual dynamics that are created by the exercise of the yearning souls of his children?

If this is what the working of prayer means, if this is the kind of force that prayer is, we can see that the law of the conservation of spiritual forces would attend to the utilizing of every sigh for the spread of righteousness or for the relief and salvation of men. it would see to the enfranchisement of every noble hope and aspiration that swells the human heart and consumes it. We can see, also, why the greater the number of souls that are being burned up by a given desire, the greater would be the energy created. Again, if this be a correct explanation of the force of prayer, we can understand why we have to "strive" in prayer and why we are taught to entreat God and to persist in prayer. The more we strive, the more of our souls we burn up; to keep up the figure, the more energy we create. We see at once, also, why a heartless, insincere, formal prayer would be worthless. A prayer that would avail would necessarily be a prayer that consumed the soul. Mere words and phrases would be in­effectual. Beautiful sentences and eloquent periods and perorations would be hollow mockery; and our Lord has taught us that such prayers are vain, whether our explana­tion of the working of prayer is correct or not.

There is no virtue in vehemence, and boisterousness will not render a prayer efficacious; but earnestness, soul ache, and soul agony will. "A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Therefore, let us get together and pray. Let us unite our hearts in a consuming purpose. Let us stretch the sinews of our souls in reaching out for the salvation of men. Let us pray.

PUBLIC PRAYERS

We have considered the phraseology of prayer, vain repe­titions, and meaningless expressions in prayer. We may now say that public prayer is one of the most difficult func­tions that any leader in religious services has to perform. It is difficult to close the audience out of one’s consciousness and talk to Jehovah in sincerity and with concentrated thoughts. The human listeners are in the leader’s sub­conscious mind, if not in his conscious mind, and he words his prayer with a view to impressing them. Sometimes he preaches to them and argues some point of doctrine or advertises some special interest or condemns some prevalent practice. Of course it is plain to all who hear such a prayer that the leader is saying these things for the effect he thinks such a prayer will have upon the audience. The prayer, therefore, fails of its purpose. It defeats itself. It will even cripple the influence of the leader over the people whom he desires to teach. A man who will take that sort of an ad­vantage of an audience or who is that anxious to stress his point will be regarded as an extremist or a crank.

Moreover, the people will not have any regard for his spirituality or professed love for God. They will conclude that he has more zeal for his doctrine or his hobby than he has reverence for Jehovah, since, while he is ostensibly addressing the infinite Father, he is in reality preaching to men. Men will judge a leader’s sincerity much more quickly by the way he talks to God than they will by the way he talks to them. But regardless of what men think of a prayer, what must Jehovah think of a man who talks to him with his lips, but regards men in his heart? Such a prayer is vain wor­ship. A long verbal prayer giving information to the Deity is irreverent. A prayer that recites the news of the week, or that sings off a long catalogue of petitions for things that are not expected, and which, if granted, would produce as­tonishment, is blasphemous. It is to be hoped that the reli­gious consciousness, the sense of reverence and true worship, in the churches may be so developed that such prayers will never be heard—that such leaders in prayer will not be countenanced.

Public prayers are scriptural, if they are not made for the purpose of being heard of men; yet it is doubtful that our Lord expected us so often to pray before an audience of nonpraying people. Preachers are called upon to pray on all occasions of public gatherings; to "open with prayer" all kinds of meetings. Not infrequently there are other things in these meetings opened with a corkscrew. It is a matter of serious doubt as to whether any of our prayers on such occasions are acceptable to God. In fact, do we really pray to God on such occasions?

What the Bible sets forth as public prayer is a band or group of worshipers praying together. All are praying, and if only one man is speaking audibly, he is leading the others and they will all say the "amen." We would as well do away with congregational singing as to lose sight of, and therefore do away with, congregational praying. The song leader would as well sing by himself as for the prayer leader to pray b y himself. And as it is incumbent upon the song leader to sing such songs as the congregation can sing, just so it is the duty of the prayer leader to utter such prayers as the members can join in. It should be a concerted prayer. It should express the special desire of the people on that special occasion and should not include every petition the leader can think of or that he ever heard expressed by other leaders on other occasions. The special purpose of the prayer should be announced before the people are called upon to engage in the prayer. Then the leader should lead the souls o fhis fellow worshipers right up to the throne of God—lead them to draw nigh unto God, that he may, ac­cording to his promise, draw nigh unto them, and that they may have the consciousness of his presence and be filled with reverence and awe. "Lord, teach us to pray." Lord, give us men who can lead thy saints in prayer! The prayer leader should be up in front of the audience and should speak loud enough for all to hear. Otherwise, how can he lead them? Or how can they say the "amen"? He would as well speak in an unknown tongue as to speak in tones so low that the congregation cannot hear. The leader should go upon the stand or into the pulpit and pray with his face toward the audience. If he kneels, he should stand upon his knees.

Often men who are back in the audience are called upon to lead in prayer, and sometimes they kneel or squat or "hunker" down between the pews and mumble and mutter. The only way the audience knows when they have quit is by the movements of those who are near enough to hear or by a loud "amen" from the preacher who is up in the stand. His "amen" was not a "Lord, grant it," but it was an announcement to the audience that the prayer was over. Even leaders who go up into the pulpit sometimes have little enough grace to turn their backs to the audience and squat before them in ugly posture, put their faces down in the pulpit chair, and mumble words. "These things ought not so to be."

But, someone suggests, the people should not look at the leader and think about his posture and looks. No, they should not. Neither should they look at the preacher or the song leader to admire or criticize his dress or manners or gestures, but they d o just the same; and the preachers and song leaders know this, and most of them endeavor not to be offensive in appearance. The prayer leader should act upon the same principle.

Public prayer is public worship, and all worship must take place in the heart. All outward signs and postures and movements and all audible tones are simply manifestations or expressions of the worship that i s taking place i n the souL If the worshipful emotions are not in the soul, then the outward gestures and genuflections are mere mockery.

Prayer is not primarily petition. To many the primary idea of prayer is simply the asking for something that we do not have; too often it is a kind of spiritual beggary or even worse. Prayer, in its essence, should be the soul’s realization of its vital relation to the universal indwelling Spirit; the consciousness of the nearness, the living presence, of the Father, who is the "life of our life." He is not a "God afar off," to whom the soul must call from a distant country.

Mrs. Browning said that in its deepest agony the soul’s only prayer is "O God!" because we want God himself rather than anything he can do for us. A young man has gone far from home and becomes ill. He longs for his mother—not for her services, that she may watch at his bedside night and day, but for her simple presence. So the strongest aspiration of the human soul is for a consciousness of the infinite Presence, for a realization of the Spirit, an awareness of that Being in whom "we live, and move, and have our being." The deepest and fullest prayer that any soul can ever pray is, "Thy will be done." This is no objective petition; it is entirely subjective. In this the soul seeks to submerge itself in the divine will; to become one with the great Je­hovah. Aspiration can go no higher.

Let us pray.