6. "_My God will hear me._" _What a need of Divine teaching!_--We need this, both to enable us to hold this word in living faith, and to make full use of it in intercession. It has been said, and it cannot be said too often or too earnestly, that the one thing needful for the Church of our day is, the power of the Holy Spirit. It is just because this is so, from the Divine side, that we may also say as truly that, from the human side, the one thing needful is, more prayer, more believing, persevering prayer. In speaking of lack of the Spirit's power, and the condition for receiving it, someone used the expression--the block is not on the perpendicular, but on the horizontal line. It is to be feared that it is on both. There is much to be confessed and taken away in us if the Spirit is to work freely. But it is specially on the perpendicular line that the block is--the upward look, and the deep dependence, and the strong crying to God, and the effectual prayer of faith that avails--all this is sadly lacking. And just this is the one thing needful. Shall we not all set ourselves to learn the lesson which will make prevailing prayer possible--the lesson of a faith that always sings, "_My God will hear me_"? Simple and elementary as it is, it needs practice and patience, it needs time and heavenly teaching, to learn it aright. Under the impression of a bright thought, or a blessed experience, it may look as if we knew the lesson perfectly. But ever again the need will recur of making this our first prayer--that God who hears prayer would teach us to believe it, and so to pray aright. If we desire it we can count upon Him He who delights in hearing prayer and answering it, He who gave His Son that He might ever pray for us and with us, and His Holy Spirit to pray in us, we can be sure there is not a prayer that He will hear more certainly than this: that He so reveal Himself as the prayer-hearing God, that our whole being may respond, "_My God will hear me._" A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER CHAPTER XIII Paul a Pattern of Prayer "Go and inquire for one called Saul of Tarsus: for, _behold, he prayeth_."--ACTS ix. 11. "For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting."--1 TIM. i. 16.