•[j The greatest thing any one can do for God and for man is to pray. It is not the only thing. But it is the chief thing. A correct balancing of the possible powers one may exert puts it first. For if a man is to pray right, he must first be right in his motives and life. And if a man be right, and put the practice of praying in its right place, then his serving and giving and speak- ing will be fairly fragrant with the presence of God. The great people of the earth to-day are the people who pray. There are people that put prayer first, and group the other items in life's schedule around and after prayer. These are the people to-day who are doing the most for God ; in winning souls ; in solving problems; in awakening churches; in supplying both men and money for mission posts ; in keeping fresh and strong these lives far off in sacrificial service on the foreign field where the thickest fighting is going on ; in keeping the old earth sweet awhile longer.^
^ S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 12.
±4 CEASELESS PRAYER
11.
How TO Maintain the Spirit of Pkayer.
This spirit of devotion is itself the fruit of ceaseless prayer this strong consciousness of dependence on God becomes an ever- present and abiding thing only when in all our necessities we betake ourselves to Him. Occasions are never wanting, and will never be wanting, which call for the help of God ; therefore, let us pray without ceasing. It is useless to say that the thing cannot be done, before the experiment has been made. There are few works that cannot be accompanied with prayer; there are few indeed that cannot be preceded by prayer ; there are none at all that would not profit by prayer. Take the very first work to which we must set our mind and our hand, and we know it will be better done if, as we turn to it, we look up to God and ask His help to do it well and faithfully, as a Christian ought to do it for the Master above.
1. Thus the spirit of prayer is created and fostered by frequent and deliberate approaches to the Throne of Grace. This medical advice is given to students who sit much at their desks, contract- ing their chests by bending over their books : " Eise from time to time, throw back your head and shoulders, and draw a deep, full breath." This is what we do when we definitely and consciously pray : we draw a deep, full breath. And it is a habit which it were well for us to acquire and practise. We need our still hours, our stated seasons of communion, morning by morning, evening by evening ; but these are not enough. It would rid us of many a vexation and deliver us from many a temptation if, amid our toil and fret, we would ever and anon remember Jesus and tighten our grip upon Him, escaping for one refreshing moment from the noise and dust and getting our heads into Eternity.
•[j I do not believe in silent adoration, if there is nothing but silence ; and I do not believe in a man going through life with the conscious presence of God with him, unless, often, in the midst of the stress of daily life, he shoots little arrows of two-worded prayers up into the heavens, " Lord ! be with me " ; " Lord ! help me " ; " Lord ! stand by me now " ; and the like. " They cried
I THESSALONIANS v. 17 25
to God in the battle," when some people would have thought they would have been better occupied in tiying to keep their heads with their swords. It was not a time for very elaborate supplica- tions when the foemen's arrows were whizzing round them, but " they cried to God in the battle, and he was intreated of them." ^
^ While your hands are busy with the world, let your hearts still talk with God ; not in twenty sentences at a time, for such an interval might be inconsistent with your calling, but in broken sentences and interjections. He who prays without ceasing uses many little darts and hand-grenades of godly desire, which he casts forth at every available interval.^
2. Further, if we honestly try to obey this precept we shall more and more find out, the more earnestly we do so, that set seasons of prayer are indispensable to realizing it. There must be, away up amongst the hills, a dam cast across the valley that the water may be gathered behind it, if the great city is to be supplied with the pure fluid. Otherwise the pipes will be empty. And that is what will become of Christian professors in regard to their habitual consciousness of God's presence, if they do not take care to have their hours of devotion sacred, never to be interfered with, be they long or short, as may have to be determined by family circumstances, domestic duties, daily avocations, and a thousand other causes. But, unless we pray at set seasons, there is little likelihood of our praying without ceasing. Unless we set apart each day certain times for private prayer, we should tend to neglect it altogether; we should be giving a terrible oppor- tunity to the world to take advantage of a day of forgetfulness to encourage us to forget God altogether. If we said that this prayer without ceasing of which the Apostle is here speaking was the only kind we needed, that our aspirations always accompanied our actions, we should indeed be presumptuous, we should indeed be forgetting our real character ; we should become day by day less definite in our efforts, because we should be omitting periodical self -judgment, and so through want of any regulation we should tend to relapse into carelessness or pre- sumptuous fanaticism. Private prayer at definite periods re- minds us of our aims, enables us to judge of our actions, brings back our life into God's presence, from which it has too often strayed.