[b]DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP[/b]

Prayer - protracted prayer, groaning prayer, fasting prayer, weeping
prayer, speechless prayer - belongs to. those initiated into a spirit of
prayer, that is, into "praying in the Holy Ghost." To the uninstructed,
terms like these mean "works." But praying friend, faint not; such
critics may yet learn. In the language of Horatius Bonar it may be said
of protracted, groaning, speechless prayer, "It is the way the Master
went. Should not the servant tread it still?"

Dr. Tozer sets forth the new approach and mediation of modern evangelism
in a brilliant article, "The Old Cross and the New." I think he could
well have added a spicy chapter on our new ways of praying. Isn't it
pitiable, regrettable, and indefensible that we try to operate almost
all our churches on one "sweet hour of prayer"? Yet in actuality, that
sweet "hour" is much taken up with Bible study.
There certainly has to be Scripture read so that faith may be generated
(Rom. 10:17) and we may have God's promises as a foundation for prayer.
But after all, the prayer meeting is a prayer meeting. The fact that far
too many churches are combining the prayer meeting with a Bible study is
the church's self-acknowledged prayer weakness. In short, the church is
saying that it can not hold out in prayer, so it fills in the time with
Bible study. Yet no church these days can operate on one hour of prayer
a week, let alone on the half hour we are giving collectively to
intercession. To those who have never developed a prayer life, the
demand for time spent in prayer makes all the more strange the
description of true prayer mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

I believe most of us will need the tears wiped from our eyes when the
books are opened at the judgment bar of God, and our personal prayer
record is read. By a strange paradox those who pray most, feel they pray
little. This much is sure: No man who prays, struts!
Prayer is a two-way operation - man talking to God and God talking to
man. Solomon was wise when he requested a listening heart (I Kings 3:9,
margin). To many, prayer is dry because they do all the talking. I
remember chatting one day with a teen-ager and asking him, "What is your
trouble?" "I am a backslider," he replied with some heat.
"How do you know you are backslidden?" I countered.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, "Because God doesn't talk
back to me anymore!"

Friend, how about you? Does God talk back to you? After the
Resurrection, Jesus had been seen by over five hundred brethren at once,
and thousands of others had been born of God at and subsequent to
Pentecost. Then why, I wonder, was Ananias the Lord's choice of a man to
visit a seeking Jew and to "go into the street called Straight to
enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus"? Was it
that Ananias had stayed to listen to God and to get directions from the
Lord for the day's operations? What Saul of Tarsus do you and I miss
contacting because in morning devotions we pray for help just to get
through the day and fail to pray for specific guidance in testimony?
Without prayer we can not live the Christian life. Prayer means power.
More prayer means more power.

Recently a racing motorist came within an ace of winning one of the
world's greatest motor races, but because he risked going the last lap
without checking his gas tank, he failed. within a few hundred yards of
the winning flag, he was stalled. As the competitor who had chased him
so long flashed past him to gain the coveted award, the near-winner was
chagrined.
The place where the Christian stops to refuel is prayer. Yet it is
prayer far beyond "refuelling" that .engages us now. In his masterly
Epistle to the Romans, Paul talks of the witness of the Spirit (8:16).
We Christians have isolated this passage to one single interpretation -
the Spirit bearing witness to our justification. But in the Christian's
life, the Spirit also bears witness to our praying, as well as to
everything else. As a Christian, our Advocate is truly with the Father,
and we talk to the Father through the Son.
Yet the Father talks to us through the Spirit. Jesus is our Advocate,
but the Spirit is the Advocate of God the Father. The Spirit bore
witness to Paul that he had the true burden and spirit of prayer, for
Paul says, "My conscience. . . bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost"
(Rom. 9:1). How often, if ever, do we stop to see whether the Holy Ghost
bears witness to our praying?

Prayer is, I think, the language of heaven. A sage of old spake of
prayer as thinking God's thoughts after Him. But in Spirit-born prayer,
I believe we pray God's burden into and through our hearts. With God we
share in prayer. Prayer is no magic transformation of words into
heavenly language just because we close our eyes. Words are not prayer
because we utter them on our knees, nor because we say them in the
pulpit, nor yet because they are breathed within the confines of a
church.
Concerning our praying today, a phrase from Shakespeare often comes into
my mind: "What do you read, my lord?" Polonius asked Hamlet. To this the
melancholy man replied, "Words! Words! Words!" Likewise in prayer what
do we so often say? Words! Words! Words! We can use words without
praying, and we can pray without using words. We can also pray when
words are used. But there is a language of the Spirit beyond words -
groanings that cannot be articulated, that defy language, that are above
language, that are beyond language, that are the yearnings of the heart
of God committed to those who seek to know His will and to care for a
lost world and feeble Church.

There is no stagnation in the Holy Ghost, for "holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Spirit "moves." In the beginning
when this old world was like a slab of ice - lifeless and locked in the
black womb of the universe - the Spirit moved and the earth came forth.
Years later the Spirit "moved" over the matrix of the Virgin Mary and
brought the Son into being. When that Son was laid dead in the tomb, the
Spirit came and wrought the mighty resurrection. In the upper room the
Spirit brooded over the men; then the world felt the impact of that
Spirit operation. The mighty Roman Empire knew Spirit-filled men were
around. The temple crowd, in their great authority, knew the Spirit had
come on the upper-room men. Even now, the world still feels the tremor
from that Spirit-baptized group who waited for the promise of the
Father. The Spirit moved on those upper-room men. They in turn moved out
to the lost multitudes. These multitudes were in turn moved upon by the
Holy Ghost's moving through men.

Has the blessed Spirit toned down His operations? With reverence we ask,
"Did God close down His production lines after the Spirit had come upon
Wesley, upon Finney, and such men? Were those leaders spiritual freaks?
Were they oddities of grace, eccentrics who were a little 'off' in their
spiritual operations?" These days we are spiritually so subnormal that
to be just normal (according to the New Testament pattern) seems to make
us abnormal.
Despite the psychologists (the Freud and Jung followers of the gleaming
star of human knowledge), we still have to admit that the human body is
a mystery, and that the human mind is complicated and ambiguous; and so
there are depths in man that only the Spirit knows (I Cor. 2:11). Yet if
the Holy Spirit is power, we need to learn how to operate the throttle.
And if the Holy Spirit is a Person (and He is), then we really need to
learn how to let Him operate us.
I admit to being resentful when some soul, uninstructed in the Spirit,
suddenly closes a prayer meeting that very obviously the Spirit has in
control. How can shrinking flesh be so stupid? We cannot turn the Holy
Spirit on and off with the lights of the sanctuary. If President Kennedy
invited us to hear him give a speech, would we dare leave his presence
on any given impulse? We often presume upon Christ's promise connected
with "two or three gathered together in [His] name" because if we were
gathered "in His name," then we would be gathered by His Spirit. I feel
deeply that we trifle with the Holy Ghost even in prayer. What a trivial
round of petitions we get in the average prayer meeting!

In prayer we need holy men, for holy men are bold, reaching out in the
Spirit and feeling the tug of I divine yearnings. Like their Master,
holy men also know strong crying and tears. Would to God our Bible
schools would give a special period each year to training men in prayer.

Satan fears prayer and offsets it at every angle. At every opportunity
he stalls the impulse to take part in it, for he has felt the smart of
men who pray in the Holy Ghost. Again and again hell has shuddered
because of the onslaughts of men who have taken the kingdom of heaven by
violence. In the book of Acts we read that demons cried, "Jesus I know
and Paul know." Because Paul knew how to pray in the Holy Ghost, hell
rocked in fury. Bloody Mary is said to have feared the prayers of John
Knox more than the tramping feet. of armies. Has the devil less
intelligence than that queen? Ah brethren, in this kind of praying most
of us feel like worms (Isa. 41:14 - a blessed experience if it is not
mock humility.

Years ago in Dundee, Scotland, I stood reverently and read the great
inscription on the cornerstone of the Church of St. Peter, where Robert
Murray McCheyne used to minister. McCheyne knew Hebrew well enough to
converse with learned European Jews. His scholarly tastes gave him
appetite for finer poets of the Greek classics. He kept his diary from
prying eyes by writing in Latin. He was no mean musician. As a hymn
writer, his great hymns ("Jehovah Tsidkenu" and "When This Passing World
Is Done") gave him a place with the immortals. He also painted fine
pictures.
But Robert Murray McCheyne excelled in a greater art than any of these
or all of them combined, for McCheyne is remembered as a man of prayer.
Churches larger than his offered a rich price tag for his ministry, but
with grace he refused them all. He was contented with his lot because no
church could offer him more time for prayer. "How real God is!" he once
said to himself. "God is the only person I can talk to."

After this saintly pastor's death, a visitor went to see the great
church. The sexton showed him around. Some of McCheyne's books were
still there. "Sit down here," said the canny sexton, leading the young
visitor to the chair where McCheyne used to sit. "Now put your elbows on
the table." The visitor obeyed. "Now put your face in your hands." The
visitor again obeyed. "Now let the tears flow. That was the way Mr.
McCheyne used to do!"
Then the amazed visitor was led into the very pulpit where the
impassioned McCheyne had once poured out his soul to God and poured out
God's message to the people. "Put your elbows on the pulpit," instructed
the old sexton. The elbows were put in place. "Put your face in your
hands." The young man obeyed. "Now let the tears flow. That was the way
Mr. McCheyne used to do!"

To be much for God. we must be much with God. Jesus, that lone figure
fasting in the wilderness, knew strong crying, along with tears. Can one
be moved with compassion and not know tears? Jeremiah was a sobbing
saint. Jesus wept! So did Paul. So did John. Mr. Bounds says, "There are
tears that are only the surface slush on the iceberg." (Such tears are
bursts of emotion.) But there are tears that are as blood from the
heart.
Oh brethren in the ministry, pray that you and I might covet something
of this holy art of intercession.

As I see it, there are two things for a minister to do - pray and
preach. The mighty men of the early Church gave themselves. to prayer
and the Word and left to the elders the serving of tables and visiting
of the sick. Even so, the elders were men of faith and of the Holy
Ghost.
Yet in our day the qualifications for an elder seem to be that he has a
bit more cash than other members. How we need Bible elders as well as
Bible preachers! Not long ago I went to speak at a church where a fine
man had resigned as an elder. "I am not ruling my house as I should," he
said, "and therefore I am Biblically disqualified from holding that
office." Honest soul!

The early Church prayed; every revival church has prayed; every
participant in revival prayer has known travail. Though there are some
tearful intercessors behind the scenes, I grant you that to our modern
Christianity, praying is foreign.
At a Bible conference in England, I met a fine-built man who was
laboring deep in the bowels of the earth as a coal miner. In a quiet
talk he told me that he knew a little about a burden for revival.
Because of this prayer burden, he said that for twenty-one days he had
labored in the oppressive heat of the coal mine without food and with as
little water as possible. From that prayer period he emerged spiritually
renewed and without physical harm. He had learned to pray in the Holy
Ghost.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon