The Possibilities of Prayer
by E M Bounds (1835-1913)
3. PRAYER AND THE PROMISES (Continued)
"Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which
may be pleaded before Him with this reasonable request: 'Do as Thou hast said.' The Creator will not cheat His
creature who depends upon His truth; and, far more, the Heavenly Father will not break His word to His own child.
'Remember the word unto Thy servant, on which Thou hast caused me to hope,' is most prevalent pleading. It is a
double argument: It is Thy Word, wilt Thou not keep it? Why hast Thou spoken of it if Thou wilt not make it good?
Thou hast caused me to hope in it; wilt Thou disappoint the hope which Thou hast Thyself begotten in me?"
-- C. H. Spurgeon
THE great promises find their fulfillment along the lines
of prayer. They inspire prayer, and through prayer the promises flow out to their full realization and bear their
ripest fruit.
The magnificent and sanctifying promise in Ezekiel, thirty-sixth chapter, a promise finding its full, ripe, and
richest fruit in the New Testament, is an illustration of how the promise waits on prayer:
"Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all
your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit
within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell
in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God."
And concerning this promise, and this work, God definitely says:
The more truly men have prayed for these rich things, the more fully have they entered into this exceeding great
and precious promise, for in its initial, and final results as well as in all of its processes, realized, it is
entirely dependent on prayer.
No new heart ever throbbed with its pulsations of Divine
life in one whose lips have never sought in prayer with contrite spirit, that precious boon of a perfect heart
of love and cleanness. God never has put His Spirit into the realm of a human heart which had never invoked by
ardent praying the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A prayerless spirit has no affinity for a clean heart.
Prayer and a pure heart go hand in hand. Purity of heart follows praying, while prayer is the natural, spontaneous
outflowing of a heart made clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.
In this connection let it be noted that God's promises are always personal and specific. They are not general,
indefinite, vague. They do not have to do with multitudes and classes of people in a mass, but are directed to
individuals. They deal with persons. Each believer can claim the promise as his own. God deals with each one personally.
So that every saint can put the promises to the test. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord." No need
of generalizing, nor of being lost in vagueness. The praying saint has the right to put his hand upon the promise
and claim it as his own, one made especially to him, and one intended to embrace all his needs, present and future.
Jeremiah once said, speaking of the captivity of Israel and of its ending, speaking for Almighty God:
But this strong and definite promise of God was accompanied
by these words, coupling the promise with prayer: "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto
me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
This seems to indicate very clearly that the promise was dependent for its fulfillment on prayer.
In Daniel we have this record, "I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of
the Lord came to Jeremiah, the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
And I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fastings and sackcloth and ashes."
So Daniel, as the time of the captivity was expiring, set himself in mighty prayer in order that the promise should
be fulfilled and the captivity be brought to an end. It was God's promise by Jeremiah and Daniel's praying which
broke the chains of Babylonish captivity, set Israel free and brought God's ancient people back to their native
land. The promise and prayer went together to carry out God's purpose and to execute His plans.
God had promised through His prophets that the coming Messiah should have a forerunner. How many homes and wombs
in Israel had longed for the coming to them of this great honour! Perchance Zacharias and Elizabeth were the only
ones who were trying to realize by prayer this great dignity and blessing. At least we do know that the angel said
to Zacharias, as he announced to him the coming of this great personage, "Thy prayer is heard." It was
then that the word of the Lord as spoken by the prophets and the prayer of the old priest and his wife brought
John the Baptist into the withered womb, and into the childless home of Zacharias and Elizabeth.
The promise given to Paul, engraven on his apostolic commission, as related by him after his arrest in Jerusalem,
when he was making his defense before King Agrippa, was on this wise: "Delivering thee from the people and
from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee.'' How did Paul make this promise efficient? How did he make the promise
real? Here is the answer. In trouble by men, Jew and Gentile, pressed by them sorely, he writes to his brethren
at Rome, with a pressing request for prayer:
Their prayers, united with his prayer, were to secure his
deliverance and secure his safety, and were also to make the apostolic promise vital and cause it to be fully realized.
All is to be sanctified and realized by the Word of God and prayer. God's deep and wide river of promise will turn
into the deadly miasma or be lost in the morass, if we do not utilize these promises by prayer, and receive their
full and life-giving waters into our hearts.
The promise of the Holy Spirit to the disciples was in a very marked way the "Promise of the Father,"
but it was only realized after many days of continued and importunate praying. The promise was clear and definite
that the disciples should be endued with power from on high, but as a condition of receiving that power of the
Holy Spirit, they were instructed to "tarry in the city of Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from on
high." The fulfillment of the promise depended upon the "tarrying." The promise of this "enduement
of power" was made sure by prayer. Prayer sealed it to glorious results. So we find it written, "These
continued with one accord, in prayer and supplication, with the women." And it is significant that it was
while they were praying, resting their expectations on the surety of the promise, that the Holy Spirit fell upon
them and they were all "filled with the Holy Ghost." The promise and the prayer went hand in hand.
After Jesus Christ made this large and definite promise to His disciples, He ascended on high, and was seated at
His Father's right hand of exaltation and power. Yet the promise given by Him of sending the Holy Spirit was not
fulfilled by His enthronement merely, nor by the promise only, nor by the fact that the Prophet Joel had foretold
with transported raptures of the bright day of the Spirit's coming. Neither was it that the Spirit's coming was
the only hope of God's cause in this world. All these all-powerful and all-engaging reasons were not the immediate
operative cause of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The solution is found in the attitude of the disciples. The answer
is found in the fact that the disciples, with the women, spent several days in that upper room, in earnest, specific,
continued prayer. It was prayer that brought to pass the famous day of Pentecost. And as it was then, so it can
be now. Prayer can bring a Pentecost in this day if there be the same kind of praying, for the promise has not
exhausted its power and vitality. The "promise of the Father" still holds good for the present-day disciples.
Prayer, mighty prayer, united, continued, earnest prayer, for nearly two weeks, brought the Holy Spirit to the
Church and to the world in Pentecostal glory and power. And mighty continued and united prayer will do the same
now.
Nor must it be passed by that the promises of God to sinners
of every kind and degree are equally sure and steadfast, and are made real and true by the earnest cries of all
true penitents. It is just as true with the Divine promises made to the unsaved when they repent and seek God,
that they are realized in answer to the prayers of broken-hearted sinners, as it is true that the promises to believers
are realized in answer to their prayers. The promise of pardon and peace was the basis of the prayers of Saul of
Tarsus during those days of darkness and distress in the house of Judas, when the Lord told Ananias in order to
allay his fears, "Behold he prayeth."
The promise of mercy and an abundant pardon is tied up with seeking God and caring upon Him by Isaiah:
The praying sinner receives mercy because his prayer is grounded
on the promise of pardon made by Him whose right it is to pardon guilty sinners. The penitent seeker after God
obtains mercy because there is a definite promise of mercy to all who seek the Lord in repentance and faith. Prayer
always brings forgiveness to the seeking soul. The abundant pardon is dependent upon the promise made real by the
promise of God to the sinner.
While salvation is promised to him who believes, the believing sinner is always a praying sinner. God has no promise
of pardon for a prayerless sinner just as He has no promise for the prayerless professor of religion. "Behold
he prayeth" is not only the unfailing sign of sincerity and the evidence that the sinner is proceeding in
the right way to find God, but it is the unfailing prophecy of an abundant pardon. Get the sinner to praying according
to the Divine promise, and he then is near the kingdom of God. The very best sign of the returning prodigal is
that he confesses his sins and begins to ask for the lowliest place in his father's house.
It is the Divine promise of mercy, of forgiveness and of adoption which gives the poor sinner hope. This encourages
him to pray. This moves him in distress to cry out, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me."
How large are the promises made to the saint! How great the promises given to poor, hungry-hearted, lost sinners, ruined by the fall! And prayer has arms sufficient to encompass them all, and prove them. How great the encouragement to all souls, these promises of God! How firm the ground on which to rest our faith! How stimulating to prayer! What firm ground on which to base our pleas in praying!
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