1. Faith.—Faith is the inevitable and essential accompani¬ment of all true prayer. Prayer must be based on Divine revelation and find its warrant in the promises and assurances of God’s love and grace. This distinguishes Christian prayer from everything that goes by the name of prayer in heathen religions. Christian prayer is based on the Word of God. God encourages, commands, invites, welcomes prayer. The charter of prayer was given by our Lord at the outset of His ministry. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” This charter was confirmed again and again through His earthly ministry until it found its crown in His fullest, deepest teaching on prayer on the eve of the cruci¬fixion, when He taught His disciples the meaning of prayer: “in my name”. This warrant of prayer is accordingly met by our response of trust. Our faith accepts the assurance that prayer will be heard and answered, and pleads the fulfilment of Divine promises. Faith is thus the only possible response to the Divine revelation, and apart from our belief in God as the Hearer of prayer there could not be any real prayer or genuine blessing. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him”. Herein lies the intimate and necessary connexion between the Word of God and prayer. The greater our knowledge of Scripture and the richer our experience of its preciousness, the fuller and deeper will be our prayers, until it shall become the simplest and most natural and most instructive experience of our life to live in the Divine Presence and rest on the Divine promises, and then to pour out our souls in the prayer of faith and believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 07:16:25 +0000