Prayer is a natural function in human life, but such a
thought should keep us from yielding too easily to disbelief or discouragement
when we have difficulty with prayer in our individual experience.
“My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my
groaning? my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I
find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you
our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried
and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.” Psalm 22:1-5
David felt discouraged when nothing seems to result from his
praying. He had three troubles with God: He cannot make God respond to Him, his
prayer brings him no relief from his difficulties and even persistency in prayer accomplishes nothing.
Then he
remembers that prayer is not something with which he, for the first time in
history, is experimenting. “In
you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them”.
He sees
that the accumulating testimony of his fathers in all ages bears witness to
the power of prayer. He therefore sensibly concludes that he would better not ditch
a few months of individual failure in praying against the general experience of
the race.
In view of what prayer has meant to all peoples, he
sees that probably the trouble is with himself and not with prayer. He
sets himself therefore to understand prayer as much as he can, and in the 22nd
verse of the Psalm, he begins the recital of the victorious outcome: “I
will declare thy name unto my brethren: In the midst of the assembly will I
praise thee.”
May God make us as sensible as this psalmist and give us as
real a triumph!
A word of prayer
O God, Who is, and
was, and is to come, before whose face the generations rise and pass away; age
after age the living seek You, and find that of Your faithfulness there is no
end. Our fathers in their pilgrimage walked by Your guidance, and rested on Your
compassion; still to their children be the cloud by day, the fire by night. In
our manifold temptations, You alone knows and is ever nigh: in sorrow, Your love
revives the fainting soul; in our prosperity and ease, it is Your Spirit only
that can wean us from our pride and keep us low. You are sole Source of peace
and righteousness! take now the veil from every heart; and join us in one
communion with Your prophets and saints who have trusted in You, and were not
ashamed. Not of our worthiness, but of Your tender mercy, hear our prayer.
Amen. — James Martineau (1805-1900).
"He sees that the accumulating testimony of his fathers in all ages bears witness to the power of prayer. He therefore sensibly concludes that he would better not ditch a few months of individual failure in praying against the general experience of the race."
ReplyDeleteGod bless you for this message. So many people before us have trusted this same God before we were even born. One seeming difficulty shouldn't make us conclude our knowledge of God. Cos in our limited way we have no idea who and what God is.