“Oh,” said the man, “I thought you meant something particular.”
Prayer is mighty in its operations, and God never disappoints those who put their trust and confidence in Him. They may have to wait long for the answer, and they may not live to see it, but the prayer of faith never misses its object.
“A friend of mine in Cincinnati had preached his sermon and sank back in his chair, when he felt impelled to make another appeal,” says Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman. “A boy at the back of the church lifted his hand. My friend left the pulpit and went down to him, and said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ The boy said, ‘I live in New York. I am a prodigal. I have disgraced my father’s name and broken my mother’s heart. I ran away and told them I would never come back until I became a Christian or they brought me home dead.’ That night there went from Cincinnati a letter telling his father and mother that their boy had turned to God.
“Seven days later, in a black-bordered envelope, a reply came which read: ‘My dear boy, when I got the news that you had received Jesus Christ the sky was overcast; your father was dead.’ Then the letter went on to tell how the father had prayed for his prodigal boy with his last breath, and concluded, ‘You are a Christian to-night because your old father would not let you go.’”
A fourteen-year-old boy was given a task by his father. It so happened that a group of boys came along just then and wiled the boy away with them, and so the work went undone. But the father came home that evening and said, “Frank, did you do the work that I gave you?” “Yes, sir,” said Frank. He told an untruth, and his father knew it, but said nothing. It troubled the boy, but he went to bed as usual. Next morning his mother said to him, “Your father did not sleep all last night.”
“Why didn’t he sleep?” asked Frank.
His mother said, “He spent the whole night praying for you.”
This sent the arrow into his heart. He was deeply convicted of his sin, and knew no rest until he had got right with God. Long afterward, when the boy became Bishop Warne, he said that his decision for Christ came from his father’s prayer that night. He saw his father keeping his lonely and sorrowful vigil praying for his boy, and it broke his heart. Said he, “I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for that prayer.”
An evangelist, much used of God, has put on record that he commenced a series of meetings in a little church of about twenty members who were very cold and dead, and much divided. A little prayer-meeting was kept up by two or three women. “I preached, and closed at eight o’clock,” he says. “There was no one to speak or pray. The next evening one man spoke.
“The next morning I rode six miles to a minister’s study, and kneeled in prayer. I went back, and said to the little church:
“‘If you can make out enough to board me, I will stay until God opens the windows of heaven. God has promised to bless these means, and I believe He will.’
“Within ten days there were so many anxious souls that I met one hundred and fifty of them at a time in an inquiry meeting, while Christians were praying in another house of worship. Several hundred, I think, were converted. It is safe to believe God.”
A mother asked the late John B. Gough to visit her son to win him to Christ. Gough found the young man’s mind full of sceptical notions, and impervious to argument. Finally, the young man was asked to pray, just once, for light. He replied: “I do not know anything perfect to whom or to which I could pray.” “How about your mother’s love?” said the orator. “Isn’t that perfect? Hasn’t she always stood by you, and been ready to take you in, and care for you, when even your father had really kicked you out?” The young man chocked with emotion, and said, “Y-e-s, sir; that is so.” “Then pray to Love—it will help you. Will you promise?” He promised. That night the young man prayed in the privacy of his room. He kneeled down, closed his eyes, and struggling a moment uttered the words: “O Love.” Instantly as by a flash of lightning, the old Bible text came to him: “God is love,” and he said, brokenly, “O God!” Then another flash of Divine truth, and a voice said, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,”—and there, instantly, he exclaimed, “O Christ, Thou incarnation of Divinest love, show me light and truth.” It was all over. He was in the light of the most perfect peace. He ran downstairs, adds the narrator of this incident, and told his mother that he was saved. That young man is to-day an eloquent minister of Jesus Christ.