Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It?Moody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It?
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Christian life; Prayer -- Christianity
The Rev. Newman Hall, in his work on the Lord’s Prayer, says: “Man’s
worship, apart from revelation, has been uniformly characterized by
selfishness. We come to God either to thank Him for benefits already
received, or to implore still further benefits: food, raiment, health,
safety, comfort. Like Jacob at Bethel, we are disposed to make the
worship we render to God cor-relative with ‘food to eat, and raiment to
put on.’ This style of petition, in which self generally precedes and
predominates, if it does not altogether absorb, our supplications, is
not only seen in the votaries of false systems, but in the majority of
the prayers of professed Christians. Our prayers are like the Parthian
horsemen, who ride one way while they look another; we seem to go
toward God, but, indeed, reflect upon ourselves. And this may be the
reason why many times our prayers are sent forth, like the raven out
of Noah’s ark, and never return. But when we make the glory of God the
chief end of our devotion, they go forth like the dove, and return to
us again with an olive branch.”
Let me refer you to a passage in the prophecies of Daniel. He was one
of the men who knew how to pray; his prayer brought the blessing of
heaven upon himself and upon his people. He says: “I set my face unto
the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and
sackcloth, and ashes; and I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my
confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the
covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep His
commandments!”
The thought I want to call special attention to is conveyed in the
words, “O Lord, the great and dreadful God!” Daniel took his right
place before God--in the dust; he put God in His right place. It was
when Abraham was on his face, prostrate before God, that God spoke to
him, Holiness belongs to God; sinfulness belongs to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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