Part VII: One Man's Answers to Prayer
FOR MORE THAN forty years I have kept a record of answers to prayer. Looking back over the years since I first came to know the Lord, I think I have learned certain principles in the matter of praying which throw light on why our prayers tend to become less and less specific as we mature, especially those prayer requests which relate to our personal needs.
Though it sometimes surprised my friends when they first learned about it, I had many answers to prayer before I became a Christian. Moreover, these answers were exceedingly specific. After I had become a Christian but while I was still very young in the faith, my answers to prayer were less dramatic than they had been previously, yet they were still more specific than when I had grown somewhat older in the faith. In some ways one might have expected the opposite to be the case.
It seems to me that in the time of youth we have more concrete decisions to make, even though most of these decisions (not all of them) are probably less crucial to the rest of our lives--contrary to our own impressions at the time! As we grow older we have fewer decisions to make but they are apt to be more critical, partly because there is less time to make corrections. Thus at first, like the prayers themselves, our answers to prayer are more concrete and specific, often the simple yes or no kind of thing. Later on, the prayer life of a child of God tends to become more diffuse, more like a conversation with God than an appointment arranged in time of emergency for the presentation of some request.
For this reason, any record of answers that we may have kept in the earlier days is likely to be more event-centered, the need-and supply kind of thing. It will be journalistic, a record dealing with the works of God. Later on with the passage of years, the record tends to become more reminiscent, more private as it were, not written for public consumption, often difficult to put into words and frequently best expressed simply in the form of an actual quotation from Scripture. We find we have begun to be more aware of the principles which govern God's dealings with us, the ways of God rather than His works. The lesson is learned by an unconscious process of assimilation. We learn to prove His Word until it comes to reflect our own experience in a wonderfully personal way, as though passage after passage were written with us in mind.
As often as not, there is no specific answer to a specific request just a proving out of the faithfulness of God, whose promises are so perfectly expressed in Scripture that one needs no more than to record the words of a text and perhaps to add "Amen!" Such a text is "Commit thy way unto the Lord...and He shall bring it to pass" (Ps. 37:5) or "In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths" (Prov. 3:6). So guidance is not so much sought as experienced, and one can no longer record a succession of discrete answers but only God's unfailing faithfulness. Or so it seems to me as I look at my own journal.
The consequence is that keeping such a journal becomes increasingly difficult, not because of a less vital experience of the Lord's goodness, but because that experience so pervades the fabric of daily life as to be scarcely noted at all. What might then become worthy of note in such a record might turn out to be only the periods of shadow--but in such times the incentive to keep a record is not usually there. And so the account of God's dealings, by a kind of process of default, in the end fails to reflect the real course of our life. My journal is like this: the real record is in heaven. But what follows is nevertheless taken from it, directly or indirectly, for a concrete record made at the time often recalls to one's mind the attendant circumstances. I have not embellished this record except where some words or background explanation seemed essential. The earliest entries are not only the most specific, but they also account for events which took place in the very depths of the Great Depression in Canada when literally every cent was vitally important, when one could support a family (and even have something left over to buy books!) on as little as $10 a month! I have noted this, because some of the most exciting answers to prayer recorded involved tiny sums of money which today would seem of no account whatever but at the time were tremendously important. The reader will need to exercise considerable imagination to realize how critical it could be to save five cents on a purchase in those days.
I have tried to thread these answers to prayer together so that certain principles emerge which may perhaps make them more than simply an entertaining record or a personal testimony to the faithfulness of God. There are lessons to be learned.
WE HAVE IN the New Testament only one recorded request by the disciples that the Lord teach them to do something, and that was how to pray. This is surprising in a way, because prayer seems such a natural thing to people who are neither proud nor irreligious, and the disciples seem to have been humble men in their way; and they were almost certainly members of some local synagogue where prayer was regularly made both in public and in private. Some of them at least had praying parents. Yet they seemed to have realized, being daily in the Lord's company, that their own prayers were somehow powerless, ill-conceived, misdirected (Luke 9:54 !), and probably peculiarly impersonal in tone. One day, after watching Jesus at prayer, they seemed to have caught a glimpse of an entirely new kind of communion with God and they asked Him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1).
Prayer is the child of God's privilege and I believe it gives great pleasure to our Father in heaven. Not to pray is to defraud ourselves and to surrender in time the ability to wield one of the mightiest weapons in the Christian's armory. Some people argue that we don't need to pray, since God knows our situation perfectly and, being what He is, will supply all our needs (Phil. 4:19). Indeed, if He has promised to answer before we call (Isa. 65:24), why do we need to call at all? Why indeed?
And yet, the worst of all diseases of the soul is detachment from God, whether by ignorance or by neglect. If all our wants were to be supplied while we had no thought of God, this could only confirm us in our detachment; so what might otherwise be supposedly a state of blessed assurance drifts easily into a condition of total indifference and becomes occasion for spiritual decline.
By contrast, one might then suppose that God would always encourage our prayers by answering us at once. But we know He does not. And we learn by experience that while some fall by the way in discouragement, scarcely anything deepens and purifies a vital faith as surely as perseverance in prayer, despite long disappointment.
So I should like to share a few of the things I have personally discovered about praying: who can pray, when one should pray, what to pray about, the form of one's prayers, why prayer is unanswered sometimes, and even where prayer is best offered--whether in public or in private. I am not suggesting that my answers to some questions will satisfy those whose temperament is different; but they might serve perhaps to explain why some of us form certain habits as the result of experience which seem to others either not helpful or even a hindrance. It might help our fellowship together in the Lord to understand a little more clearly why there are differences between us in our practices.
To begin with, we may consider briefly whether effectual prayer is necessarily limited to the child of God: and if not so limited, what advantage there is for the Christian in this regard.
The Prayers of the Non-Christian
Many years ago a friend and I found ourselves working on neighboring farms as hired men. We were both what might be called "healthy pagans," but I also think we were both what could be described as reverent in our attitude toward God. Among the books my friend found at his farmhouse, one told the wonderful story of an Irish woman who was totally illiterate and yet had marvelous answers to her prayers. The woman's name was Ann Preston, and the book was called The Life Story of an Irish Saint. If I remember rightly, she had come over from Ireland somewhere about the turn of the century and was employed as a servant in a well-to-do household north of Toronto. Her answers to prayer were truly extraordinary, and only in very recent years did the book go out of print. My friend, Ted, read this book and was deeply moved. He brought it to me to read, which I did. I was equally stirred by it. We both agreed to see whether we too could get such answers to prayer. My recollection is that Ted did not experience the kind of answers which I did, though in due course he became a far more mature Christian. But this was sometime later.
When I subsequently found myself in the company of young Christians of my own age in the University of Toronto within the framework of an organization then known as TICCU (Toronto Intercollegiate Christian Union), which is now known as IVCF (Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship), no one doubted at first that I knew the Lord because I was still experiencing such specific and constant answers to my prayers. But I knew that these people had had an experience which I did not have, for I had no sense of sonship. I did not think of God as my Father, I lacked assurance of salvation entirely, and the Word of God was almost a closed book to my understanding. All this changed, of course, when the Lord broke through my darkness and revealed Himself to me as my Savior. The nearness and reality of His presence in those first weeks was something I shall never forget. It was all so new. And thereafter whenever I prayed, I felt as though my Father in heaven leaned forward personally to attend to my concerns.
Now, I have recorded this because I want to underscore the fact that an individual may indeed experience concrete answers to his prayers even though he has no sense of the Lord's presence and knows God only as He who answers prayer. It is perhaps the only requisite for such an experience that the non-Christian believe that God hears and answers (Heb. 11:6). Let me give one or two illustrations from that early record, dating around 1931.
One winter day I was skidding logs, that is, driving a horse dragging the log from where the tree had been felled up to the saw itself. I had a beautiful little mare whom I knew well and had a real affection for. Queenie was willing and fast. Through my carelessness I allowed her, pulling for all she was worth and at some speed through the underbrush, to run the end of the log she was dragging against a tree-stump almost buried in the snow. The log stopped instantly and, unfortunately for her, the trace did not break. The sudden shock was too much for her chest muscles, and she tore them so badly that the vet subsequently said she would never recover.
Needless to say, I felt broken-hearted, for it really was my fault; and needless to say, the boss was more than a little displeased. We managed to get Queenie back to the stable and into her stall. The vet said, "If she ever lies down, she'll never get up. The best thing really is to shoot her." I asked the boss if he would leave her for one day. I wanted to pray about it--though I didn't tell him so. After quitting time that evening, I went down to the stable and put my hand on her breast and asked God if He could heal her. Queenie was motionless, being reluctant to move at all because of the injury to her front legs. In the morning I went down before breakfast to see whether she was still on her feet. She was not only on her feet, but actually eating hay. She moved over a little as I went in beside her, and though she hobbled she didn't seem to be in pain. Naturally I told the boss about it at breakfast, but I don't think he really believed anything had happened except that he was surprised she was still standing. Well, to make a long story short, three weeks later Queenie was hitched up to a cutter and took the boss's children to school. She was never again used for logging, but there was no evidence in the subsequent months that she had suffered the slightest permanent injury.
A skeptic might say that perhaps the vet was mistaken. Perhaps he was. But I had a succession of answers to prayer like this that could not all have been the result of misinterpretation. I remember buying a bicycle and riding it back to the farm along a country road that at one point cut through a hilltop which was all sand. In the summer the road was all sand too, as loose as dry sand always is. I found it impossible to ride through that two-hundred-foot section. One day, as I came to it on the bicycle, I said to God, "You can keep me on the bicycle." And, taking my hands off the handlebars, I rode straight through it and almost experienced a sense of being supported on either side by what I then supposed must have been angels!
Yet I not only prayed specifically upon occasion, but tried also to cover myself against contingencies. Among my other duties during the winter was responsibility for the watering and feeding, at an otherwise deserted homestead, of some ninety Poll Angus steers, the wildest "critters" imaginable. I used to pray that God would keep them together when I drove them down to a running stream to water them. I had to be particularly careful when the job was done to make sure that three barnyard gates were all securely closed once they were penned up again. One day as I rode away from the yard and was about 150 to 200 feet from the last gate, which I supposed I had closed behind me, I suddenly heard my name called very distinctly. I stopped for a moment, wondering who had called, and then went on again down the road, only to be called again. This time I turned the horse around and looked toward the barnyard some distance back up the road and saw, to my grief, that I had not properly closed the gate and that it had swung wide open. I quickly asked God to keep the cattle in until I could get back to it and galloped my horse as fast as he would go. The cattle simply stood around, looking at the open gate, but made no move to pass through it. I soon had it closed and all was well. But there was no one there who might have called my name. Yet had it not been called, the cattle might have been all over the countryside by next afternoon when I would have revisited them
The record of those pre-Christian years is filled with such things, which demonstrate clearly that there is a real relationship between man and God as between creature and Creator, which can be exploited and is exploited in wonderful ways by those who do not yet know Him as Father nor the Lord as Savior. It should be remembered of Cornelius that we are told specifically how his alms and his prayers both had "come up" before God and were acceptable (Acts 10:1-4), even though it can hardly be doubted he was not yet a saved man.
In his book The Origins of Religion (p. 137), Samuel Zwemer records prayers of non-Christians from around the world which are wonderful in their perceptiveness, in their humility, in their sense of unworthiness, and in their expression of faith: and there is little doubt that they owe nothing to Christian influence. Like a Delaware Indian before going to war: "Great Spirit above! Have pity on my children and on my wife. Let them not mourn for me.... Have pity on me and protect my life." Or this, from a Galla of East Africa: "To Thee, O God, we take our flight [in sleep]; do not take Thy flight and go away from us." And this, from a Kekchi of India: "Who is my father, who is my mother? Only Thou, O God, Thou seest me and guardest me on all my path in darkness and trouble. Thou, Lord of the valleys and the mountains." An Algonquin Indian, dedicating his dwelling place: "I am thankful, O Thou Great Spirit, that we have been spared to live until now to purify with cedar smoke this our house, because that has always been the rule in the ancient world since the beginning of creation."
In the literature of antiquity, especially in the Cuneiform and hieroglyphics of the Middle East, there are many prayers which reveal a tremendous sense of dependence upon God and of unworthiness in His sight, often written by men in high positions. It seems to me that some of these prayers cannot possibly have gone unanswered, the very wording of them revealing--as it often does--a genuine sense of personal contact with God to whom they are addressed.
So the question arises, "In what sense is the Christian's position different?" What did Jesus mean when He said (John 14:6), "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me"? Did these ancient people go to God through Jesus Christ? That men could pray in those days and end their prayers as we do today, with the words "for the Lord's sake," is borne out by the fact that Daniel did (Dan. 9:17):
Now, therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant and his supplications, and cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake.
While we have no record of any pagan suppliant addressing himself to God through such a Mediator, yet we do have many records from antiquity of genuine prayers directed to God in such a way that the suppliant clearly believed God is approachable. Certainly the prayers of Cornelius were heard, as we have noted. I suggest that the Lord was speaking much more precisely than we have normally assumed when He avoided saying that no man goes to God except through Him. Any man may approach God as a creature before his Creator, but only a child of God can go to Him as Father and he does so through the mediation of Jesus Christ. This was my experience exactly. I went to God as a creature to his Creator, and God in His goodness met me in the way. But I did not know Him as my Father until I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior.
The point is a very important one, I believe. There are people who are religious, devout, having not the slightest doubt of the reality of God's existence and His accessibility to man, yet who do not know Him as Father and have no assurance whatever of salvation. Such people need conversion, as I needed conversion--and as I knew I needed conversion once I had associated with some of the Lord's children. They were deceived a little bit by my devoutness and answers to prayer, but in my own heart I knew otherwise. It is easy to be misled.
I also consider the issue important because we should never suppose for one moment that only Christians can expect answers to prayer, or that when men in public office sincerely engage in prayer they are merely pretending or fooling themselves or wasting their time. We should never discourage men from looking to God in faith for help in time of need: nor should we encourage them in the belief that such activities will compensate when their lives are assessed in the time of judgment.
Let us next consider the exercise of prayer as a function of a normal healthy life for the child of God speaking to his Father in heaven.
IN THE PAST I have often been chided by friends who did not know the Lord, for praying about trivial things. Usually people say, "Oh, don't you think that it is a little childish to expect God to be concerned about such unimportant details of your personal life?" Sometimes they would add, "After all, you wouldn't expect the king to bother himself with such little things." True. But it makes a difference if the King happens to be my Father. We tend to be ready enough to say, Is anything too hard for the Lord? Out of my own experience, I would ask in the same spirit, Is anything too small for the Lord? To both, the answer seems to me to be no!
Looking over the record I have kept, I am still amazed at my Father's condescension, and I honestly doubt whether anything is too small to be the subject of prayer. I have a few illustrations that will make you smile: only I should emphasize again that some of these were during the worst years of the Depression in Canada when cents were almost as important as dollars are now, pennies like pounds. I have to elaborate the circumstances a little in some cases.
One summer between university terms, I managed to get a job dispensing blocks of ice from a small ice station, one of many scattered around the city of Toronto. A 25-pound block of ice was 6 cents and a 50-pound block was 11 cents. I don't know why the odd figure...But it was very important always to have coppers for change, for the ice company that ran these stations and kept them supplied had considerable competition from other companies in the city. Each station was really a giant icebox with a little lean-to attached for the attendant. Not to have change could mean the loss of a number of early sales and a low tally for the day, and in those times, one man's job was continually in jeopardy.
On this particular morning, I had no personal resources, and the small-change kitty we were allowed to retain from the previous day had somehow ended up with no pennies either. I went to a local store, but they could spare none. I sat down at the ice station a little troubled, but decided to pray about it. Almost immediately, the storekeeper sent his son across with 5 coppers just received unexpectedly. Then a man came up for 50 pounds of ice, the first customer that morning, with 6 coppers and a nickel. The next customer came for 50 pounds, also with 6 coppers and a nickel! This was really exceptional, because most people only had small ice-boxes in those days.
Imagine my surprise when a third customer came for 50 pounds and handed me 6 coppers and a nickel. It is scarcely believable, but the next customer--the fourth man in a row--did precisely the same thing. So I now had 29 coppers!
I never recall this little incident without thinking of the Flood for some reason: but more seriously, it does make me think of the words in the original Greek of II Corinthians 9:7 which quite literally could be translated, "God loves a hilarious giver"--because He is one Himself!
Let me give another little illustration of this aspect of God's giving hilariously. I used to play on the cricket team for Toc H, an army club with quite an active program at the time. Cricket is not the same as baseball, and the score for the team can run into the hundreds; even one player can score a hundred runs or more. On the occasion I have in mind, we were doing very badly indeed: in fact, we had scored only 35 runs and we were all out. Unlike cricket as a rule, this particular game was very unpleasant because the opposing team was behaving in what was always considered in cricket a very unsportsmanlike manner. Our players were put out one after the other by various shady means which are completely out of place in any decent cricket match.
I said to the padre who was captain of our team, "Do you believe in prayer?" He was rather surprised, and a little amused, I think. But as we walked out to the field for our opponent's turn at bat, he looked at me and said, "Sometimes."
To make a long story short, or perhaps to make a short story even shorter, this is what happened. In the first 6 bowls they scored 9 runs right off--which looked promising for them but not for us. But then one man was put out. By the eighteenth bowl (the third "over"), the second man was out. In 3 more bowls a third man was out. Then came the most unpleasant character on their team, Who apparently was considered quite a notable player. He was out on the first ball! Their second-best man came in next and was out for 3 runs, so they now had lost 7 men for a total of 17 runs. Light men were out for 18 runs; 9 were out for 20 runs; and the whole team was out for 21 runs! In less than a half-hour our opponents were utterly demolished, and yet we learned afterward that they had been winning every game and in the last game had scored 95 with a loss of only 5 men. (1)
Can it really be that God answers prayers of this kind? I believe He did: although looking at my record of the event at the time, I don't really think I prayed that we might win. I'm not sure what I prayed for at the time. But God is surely a hilarious giver sometimes.
Here is another illustration of the Lord's faithfulness in a very concrete way. While I was in residence in university, I established a wonderful friendship with a Hebrew Christian, Morris Kaminsky He was a much more mature Christian than I. He used to put his arm on my shoulder when I had misbehaved and say, "Art, I love your soul but I hate your ways!" One Sunday evening we went together to High Park Baptist Church in Toronto and shortly after the service had started, I suddenly realized that I had no collection money. Actually I had a two-dollar bill, but it was the only money I had to my name. This was enough to last me for a week or more of normal expenses in those days. I was also facing the need on Monday to go down to the registrar's office and pay my ten-dollar examination fee for the year. Failing this, I could not write the examinations and would lose my year. I'm afraid that as the service progressed, I was more preoccupied with this problem than with what was happening in the church; but I did finally come to the conclusion that I ought to trust the Lord and put in the whole two dollars. I would think that, at that time, five cents was all that most people put into the offering. The plate came around, and there went my two-dollar bill.
The next morning I went over to University College to attend one lecture, since the registrar's office was not open till ten o'clock. On my way over to the college, I met a professor with whom I had been talking about the Lord a few days before. He stopped me and with some diffidence gave me an envelope: in it was a ten-dollar bill, the amount I needed to pay my examination fee. He had no idea whatever of my specific needs.
A couple of years later, on the spur of the moment, I did what seemed a very foolish thing: I gave to a man on the street, who seemed to me such a pitiful sight, a five-dollar bill I had reserved to buy some little extras for Christmas, about a week away. That afternoon I had to go downtown. As I was walking along Adelaide St. West when the street was crowded with Christmas shoppers, I happened to look down at a step leading into a building (in my journal I noted it was No. 33) and there, in full view of people walking in and out of the building and passing it on the sidewalk, was a five-dollar bill and a ten-dollar bill--simply lying there! It was almost unbelievable. Somehow, nobody was noticing these two bills...in the very depths of the Depression years!
I notice in my records many occasions upon which the Lord allowed me to recover things I had lost. Usually they were things which had no "spiritual" value yet were important in their way. They were such small things as a rule. Take the following case as an illustration. This is how I wrote it down:
A few days ago I lost my fountain pen, a special one, while playing football in an open field. How impossible to find such an item, in long grass well tramped over! Yet as I went back to look for it, I said to the Lord that He could help me to find it if He would. So I walked to the centre of the field, took a dozen steps in one direction, and there it was at my feet--after 30 seconds of search! Lord, how good Thou art to me--and why, Lord?
Sometimes the Lord's goodness was expressed in unsought ways. Now and then these occasions were related to circumstances in which one might perhaps have expected the Lord to act, but in other cases they expressed an element of pure kindness on His part. Let me give a few examples of provision which in some ways might be viewed as "expected," and then one or two examples of unexpected kindness.
In 1933, the very worst year of the Depression in Saskatchewan where its effects were unbelievably severe, we were reduced to living on bread and porridge, occasionally some apples to make into a sauce, and upon even rarer occasions a few potatoes. It is amazing what one can accept as standard fare! Well, just before Christmas we had received a gift of four or five potatoes and a few apples. They did not seem to be the makings of a traditional Christmas dinner, but we were thankful. A morning or two later, I looked out the window and saw a flock of prairie chickens fly over an orchard which was between us and a very near neighboring farmer, Richard Ellison, with whom we had wonderful times of fellowship. One of these birds for some reason landed in an apple tree while the rest of them flew on.
We had no means of shooting it, and I'm not much of a shot anyway. Moreover, it was at least two hundred feet away. But it was clearly visible because there were no leaves on the trees. I thought it just possible that I could run across to Dick Ellison's house without disturbing the bird and get him to try to shoot it for us. However, as I opened our door, Dick's hired man, Fred, happened to come out on their back porch at the same moment. I signaled to him and pointed across the orchard to the prairie chicken, still sitting well exposed on a branch. He caught on immediately, disappeared quickly, and returned with a rifle. Though he told me afterward that he too was not a particularly good shot, he succeeded in shooting it straight through the head. It dropped without a movement: when we picked it up, it proved to be one of the biggest prairie chickens I have ever seen. And so we had our Christmas dinner of roast potatoes and prairie chicken and baked apples.
This was pure goodness on the Lord's part, and it really involved a whole series of events, for I only "happened" to look out the window, and it only "happened" that one bird stayed behind for some reason, and it only "happened" that Fred came out on the back porch at that very moment, and it only "happened" that he shot it in the head and left its body unmarred in any way. Or did it only "happen?"
Here is another incident which occurred a few years later. I used to ride down to university on a bicycle--old when I inherited it and certainly nearing the end of its useful life by this time. One morning I rode down to Knox Church in Toronto to visit with Christie Innis, the minister. I parked my bicycle at the curb outside the church office. Curiously, in those days one could safely leave a bicycle unlocked...though so many people were desperately in need.
When I came out about a half-hour later, my bicycle was lying at the curb a total wreck: it had evidently been run over by a car. It was a severe loss in the circumstances. But as I looked at what was left of it, I noticed a little slip of paper had been pushed into one of the open handlebar ends. On it was written the words, "Dis is the nobbin of the car." Clearly the writer was not exactly an educated man, but he must have seen what had happened, and the Lord prompted him to send me this little message. At any rate, a lawyer friend of mine wrote a note to the owner of the car demanding some compensation for me. No doubt the driver was surprised that he had been seen, but there was not much he could do but replace the bicycle: and it turned out he was actually well able to do so. And so I had a new bicycle just when mine was about worn out, and I learned again the truth of the promise that all things work together for good to them who love the Lord (Rom. 8:28).
Both these provisions were not really answers to prayer, since I had not really prayed about them, but they were clear witnesses to the fact that God delights to care for His children. For all this, there was an element of need involved in both cases. Yet the following is a case of rather extraordinary provision in which the aspect of need did not exist at all.
About thirty years ago, when my son was just a little boy, somebody gave him a picture book with a story about some animals. It was not particularly well printed, but in it was one picture of a mare and her foal which, to my thinking as a lover of horses, was absolutely beautiful. I have it yet and it is still in every way as beautiful. As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself that I would like to take that page out and preserve it. But this, of course, would have spoiled the book, and though it was only a child's book, this somehow seemed an improper thing to do. As the weeks went by I watched the book slowly deteriorate. The covers became torn, the earlier pages curled at the edges, and my son scribbled with gay abandon on every page, both with pencil and crayon. Within a few months, he had lost interest in this book and it was laid aside with other discarded toys. One day I picked it up, regretting that I had not taken the one picture of the horses out of it long before this. But as I quickly went through it, I found to my amazement that not every page had been scribbled on. One single page was unmarked, uncreased, undirtied in any way at all. My two horses were as clean and perfect as the day they came from the printer. It was really an extraordinary thing when one looked at all the other pages in the book. As I said, I still have it; a wonderful testimony, in my mind, to the kindness of God.
Let me give one more example of this kind of provision which is essentially so "unnecessary." During my first university years, I took a study course in fine art and enjoyed it tremendously. The professor used slides extensively. One of his slides was of Constable's painting of Salisbury Cathedral. Gothic architecture has always kind of overwhelmed me by its sheer beauty, and the setting of Salisbury Cathedral in this famous painting only increased this effect. But I had not found in any book that I could afford a good reproduction of Constable's painting until, one day in downtown Toronto, I saw a British travel poster, about 18 inches by 24 inches in size, reproducing this very picture. I went in at once and asked if I could buy it or obtain a copy somehow. The proprietor told me that they were only loaned these posters for display, and they were in short supply and consequently were circulated among the different travel agencies. He felt that the chances of obtaining a copy from England were rather slim. So I abandoned the idea.
But then about a week later as I was traveling on the streetcar, I spotted another copy of the same poster--in a Christian bookstore! I got off the streetcar at the next stop and went quickly back to the store and, lo and behold! they were just beginning to clear the window out to redecorate it. I asked him what he planned to do with this poster, and he said, "Oh, I don't know. Why? Do you want it?" I told him I did indeed. He rolled it up without hesitation, slipped an elastic band over it, and gave it to me. He said he had no idea how it had come into their possession. And, as an example of difference in tastes, he had no particular interest in it. Like the picture of the horses, I have this large poster still: framed, lighted, and displayed to good effect. Had I not seen the picture in this Christian bookstore from the streetcar window, I'm almost certain it would have been thrown away. Such is the Lord's kindness.
Frequently, perhaps more often than not, answers to prayer involve circumstances which far antedate the specific need that becomes the subject of our prayers. Some twenty-five years ago we decided, as a family, to go down to Lunenberg during the summer, hoping to find a house that could be rented in that historic little place for perhaps six months or so while I came back to Toronto to continue my work. We wrote to various official bodies and to the YMCA and the Salvation Army, asking them if they could give us any leads for procuring such accommodation, only to receive word back from each of them that was entirely negative. The Salvation Army people said, "There is not a chance--over fifty families are already waiting to reunite in homes here." I don't remember exactly why this was, except that the war had indeed created this situation all over the country.
So we went to the Lord about it, and feeling rather sure that we should make the trip anyway, we asked the Lord to give us a house that we could afford to rent already equipped with a radio, a piano, a view of the harbor, and a separate room for Nigel, my son. And then we set out.
When, in due time, we arrived in the little town, we went straight to the office of the local newspaper. It was down several steps from the sidewalk, the main street having been gradually elevated in its long history by accumulated debris. As I went in, an elderly lady went in immediately ahead of me. She greeted the proprietess by name and then stood to one side, obviously waiting for me to finish my business first. The proprietess said to me, "Can I do something for you?" I told her what I wanted: namely, to put a little advertisement in her paper. But she shook her head and said, "I'm afraid it would be a waste of money."
But then the elderly lady said, "Well, Mrs. [I didn't write down her name], as a matter of fact I had thought of going to live with my sister for a while and renting the house. I came to put an ad in the paper..."
Well, we drove back with her to her house! It had a piano, a radio, a room for Nigel, a very nice little garden, and it overlooked the harbor. It was spotlessly clean and shipshape, her late husband having been a sea captain. It cost us thirty dollars per month for rent. It is doubtful whether the Lord could have more completely and precisely timed everything and prepared the way for us.
Another rather wonderful case of prevision occurred in connection with a book I particularly wanted. During my studies of the Hebrew language, we were naturally introduced to some Hebrew writings which, though not modern, are still actively in use. One of the textbooks we used had to be obtained from the library, being rather difficult to purchase. I don't know why this was, but I tried to get hold of a copy for my own library without success. I tried several sources of Jewish publications, equally without success. The little book was referred to in class as Pirke Aboth, which was usually interpreted into English as "Prayers of the Fathers." It was of particular interest to me because it showed that in one respect at least, the Authorized Version was perfectly justified in rendering the Greek word aion as "world," this particular Greek word being the translation used by the Septuagint for the Hebrew word olam. The word 'olam in many of the prayers which appeared in this little book clearly meant "world" or "society" and was used in such phrases as "in this world" or "in the world to come."
The Jewish people themselves so understood it. The importance of this was that, at the time, there was considerable controversy among us about the meaning of these words aion and 'olam in connection with the question of eternal punishment. The point of this little introduction is that I was particularly anxious to obtain a copy of this prayer book somehow, and I wrote to many secondhand bookstores during the next year and a half without any success. Then one day a very dear Christian lady phoned me and said, "Arthur, in rummaging around in the attic, I came across a little book that might interest you. I have no idea where it came from, but I think it is in Hebrew."
I hardly need to say that it was a copy of Pirke Aboth. It was badly battered, yet easily repaired. How many years ago did the Lord arrange for that little book to be buried up there in the attic of a great big old house on Avenue Road in Toronto, only to be rediscovered under these particular circumstances? I add one more case of the timing of the Lord's goodness. After the end of World War II, I bought a piece of property in Muskoka and built a summer cottage in a little bay which, at the time, could not be reached with a car. I have always loved an open fireplace, and so I provided the necessary foundations to put one in it. My plan was to install a Heatilator fireplace, a prefabricated, double-walled, heavy sheet metal frame, around which one builds up with stone, or any other material, for decorative and architectural reasons. It is the heart of the system, and in Canada many fireplaces are constructed in this way. Such metal units are quite heavy, and the one we planned to use must have weighed close to two hundred pounds.
I rented a trailer to convey the unit to the site from Toronto, realizing that it would have to be carried the last one hundred to two hundred yards through the woods in some other way. We had thought that perhaps two of us could roll it over and over between the trees, but when we got there, we soon found this was impossible. It was simply too heavy for us. In the meantime we were about a mile from the nearest source of help, and we were newcomers without acquaintances. It looked as though, having got it off the trailer, we were going to have to leave it beside it at the end of the road until we could come up again with more friends. And in the meantime, it would have been an invitation to anyone who happened to discover it to load it onto his own trailer and make off with it.
In my record I wrote, "Well, we unloaded everything else and carried it into the cottage. We had no sooner done this than we heard voices, and two of our old friends from the Engineering Department Of the University of Toronto stood at the door! They were just on their way up to their own cottage on a motorcycle trip and had dropped by for fun to see how the site was coming along. Of course, the three of us carried the fireplace in and twenty minutes later they were gone! Praise the Lord!!"
I do not think for one moment that my own experience of the Lord in such ways is at all unique, though I may have made it look that way. I do think, however, that it is a tremendously worthwhile thing to keep a record like this. No matter how vivid an experience is at the time, later events overlie it and the details become merged with other details until one has only a growing impression that the Lord is always there behind the scenes, but one can no longer testify to His faithfulness in this kind of concrete way that inspires others to prove Him for themselves. Yet He invites us to do this (Mal. 3:10). I know there are occasions upon which "we have not because we ask not" (James 4:3): but I also believe that there are occasions when we fail to recognize that we do have, when we receive answers to our prayers but because of the busy-ness of life fail to perceive them for what they are. The result is that we become less and less thankful.
There is a danger, as I know from experience, of harping on the Lord's constant grace and kindness, of developing a kind of spiritual pride and as a consequence, of becoming critical of others who are not as thankful as we are ourselves. Such is human nature that we are easily capable of turning every blessing into a hindrance. But I think the risk is worth taking. And I believe that the very effort of writing down what the Lord has been doing can help us to perceive more clearly, not only what He has been doing, but the ways in which He acts.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
It will indeed!
References:
1. I hope my English friends will excuse the terminology in this account which I adopted for the sake of many readers to whom the correct terminology would have been almost meaning less.
SUSTAINED PRAYER requires considerable energy and since habit is an economy of energy, it is helpful to establish some habits in this regard. There are things that one can do to energize one's prayer life as there are things one can do to condition one's muscles or discipline one's brain. Setting a time, choosing a format, adopting an orderly sequence with an established list of requests, and fixing on a "place"--all these may help one to overcome the daily distractions and temptations to postpone.
One can learn best how to pray by doing it, not merely by reading about it, though learning of the experience of others can be helpful at times. But I remember reading in S. D. Gordon's Quiet Talks on Prayer that more books were being written on prayer than on any other aspect of the Christian life and yet few people really engage themselves in it. I don't know whether that is still true. But not too many people have discovered how many occasions there really are when praying is not merely all one can do but is the very best thing one can do. When you are waiting for someone, think of the ministers you know who need the Lord's blessing; or when you can't sleep, have a list handy of your friends and their needs, and work through the list as you lie in bed or sit in the dark. You would be surprised how it opens up a whole new world--and how time flies! And only eternity will show the results. One can go for a walk alone (or even with someone else) and can pray as one walks, instead of bend occupied in idle conversation. And I mean people can pray aloud together. I know people who normally always pray standing with their eyes open. And why not!
There is no need to suppose that prayer should never be "planned" but always entirely spontaneous and unprepared. Yet most of us are inherently lazy--or to speak euphemistically, low in energy--and it is worthwhile therefore to work out a schedule: missionaries on Monday, ministers on Saturday, Christian schools some other day, one's own relatives some other day, and so on. We really should obey the injunction to "Let everything be done decently and in order"--not necessarily being regimented, but not being haphazard and casual either. Without some kind of plan, prayer life becomes anemic like muscle undisciplined in its use. And we have a better chance of getting our sights above and beyond our own little problems if we take the trouble to look around us at the needs of others.
There are times when prayer is not the best thing, either because the situation demands action rather than request, or because the objective is clearly not according to the mind of God. To pray for vengeance is surely wrong. So is praying for a miracle when one has it in one's power to do something oneself. There is a time for action, and when that time comes it does no good to say, "We must pray about it." In Exodus 14:15 we have a good example of this kind of thing: "Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." There are times when praying about a matter is merely a timid alternative to unjustifiable inaction. Sometimes inaction is caused by belief that we must do something but don't know exactly what it is: and so we ask for a sign. Is this acceptable with the Lord, or should we step out in faith and trust Him to slam the door if we are going the wrong way? What about asking for signs?
There are several views about asking for signs. It is a biblical procedure, of course, for Gideon did it and God was very patient with him about his hesitations. But many people feel that in Gideon's case it was an accommodation to immaturity. It is all right for the young Christian, it is said, but out of place for the man of faith. Perhaps...
I early came to certain agreements with the Lord in regard to asking for signs and still find it necessary, now and then, to covenant with Him in this way. I believe we may find, individually, some particular sign which the Lord will graciously agree to but which may not be appropriate for others. My own personal arrangement arose without any special design and has limitations; but the Lord is pleased to meet my need for guidance through it, though only when I make it a matter of deliberate prayer since, by its very nature, it could be misleading.
If some situation arises where I am not certain whether I should go ahead and make contact with or come to some agreement with or seek help or advice from a particular individual, in a way which can naturally be done by telephone, I first of all ask the Lord to give me a busy signal or no answer at all if I am not to follow through. Then I give the Lord time to arrange for the phone to be "busied." I make my call, and if there is no answer or there is a busy signal, I try again. If contact is still not made, I try once more. If for these three calls I get either a busy signal or no response, I have learned to accept this as the Lord's way of saying, "This is not the way to go."
Of course, all kinds of questions can be raised: What if the party later calls you about it, even though you were unable to contact them? My answer is that I would then normally proceed, trusting that some circumstance has changed and that what was improper before is now approved of God. The really important point is, to my mind, that God will agree to some such personal arrangement if we are serious, knowing as He does how difficult it is for us to sort out our own motives. If, in self-will, we abandon the agreement upon occasion because the circumstances did not work out as we wanted them to, then I am certain that God will not speak to us or continue to direct our actions through our personal cue. In short, we have to play the game. We cannot use the arrangement when things turn out as we want and ignore it under other circumstances.
I have frequently had three busy signals when I certainly did not expect or want to have them, and I have then assumed I should not phone again until the situation has changed in some significant way. Conversely, I have sometimes had three busy signals and was very thankful at the time that I did not have to proceed. Needless to say, one must be fair and not phone three times within as many minutes. And though one never knows in some cases what might otherwise have transpired, it is better to keep one's part of the bargain--even when reason suggests an explanation for the busy signals which might be some justification for phoning once more. I should say also that I don't use this agreement with the Lord frequently. But it is there, and I am convinced that the Lord accepts it.
Now, this particular "fleece" may have no relevance to anyone else. But I believe that any covenanted sign at all is acceptable to God if we will only abide by it without fail or if we confess the sinfulness of failure when we do. Dreams will serve quite as well if God once finds that we will listen and act upon them. I know that God gave dreams to pagan kings as a means of communication when He knew the dreamer would take his dream seriously (Gen. 20:1-18). The basic principle is always the same: as soon as the Lord finds that you will act upon what you believe to be a private communication from Himself to you, He will thereafter use that private channel until you begin to break your side of the bargain.
People feel that such means are wrong because we ought to be able to be guided without "crutches" of any kind. But I think sometimes that such people who speak in this way are a little afraid that through some unequivocal sign God might make some demand on them and they would simply have to act! This has been true in my own life. I have refrained from asking for a clear sign for fear it should be given, because I did not want to be forced to decide. In a sense, I had therefore already decided.
So, in my judgment, while it is an admission of weakness and perhaps immaturity to ask the Lord for a sign as Gideon did, it is an acceptable way with God, who will respond as long as we obey the sign He gives whichever way it goes. If the sign is given to go ahead, then one should go ahead boldly. After all, the Lord is more concerned than we are that we fulfill His will. He will rule the circumstances or overrule them to His own glory and our joy.
I suppose guidance for future action looms very large indeed in all our prayers, especially when we are young. Now and then I have asked the Lord for a verse to guide me. I don't do it often--twice, in fact, in forty years. But I've done it when I was very low or very bewildered. Let me tell you about these two cases, for they have long since been proven in the course of my life.
When the Great Depression was about at its worst, it seemed to me at one point that I could not hope to survive decently in Canada, having none of my relatives here from whom to gain encouragement and support (they were all in England, my native land) and having no professional nor technical qualifications at the time. It seemed to me that I ought seriously to consider returning to the Old Country, where I was sure that family connections would guarantee me some employment. But my family in Canada would naturally be involved with me, and I had already been over here for six or seven years and largely lost contact with old friends overseas. Altogether it seemed a gamble, as well as involving an outlay of money for fares which I did not have and would be forced to borrow. I was most unhappy and disturbed and prayed a great deal about the situation without any real assurance in any direction. Finally, almost in despair, I went down on my knees and opened my Bible at random, and the verse which seemed to spring out of the page before my eyes was Isaiah 37:3: "Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed."
The words were almost spoken to me and not merely read from the page, and I rose from my knees with a marvelous sense of assurance. The promise has been fulfilled most abundantly. When I still dream at times, thirty-five years later, of going back to England to live--now that I am retired--this verse comes back to me with a kind of gentle insistence and says, "No, stay in the land." And I believe this is really what I must do.
The second instance was some twenty-five years later. We had begun the rather large task of producing the Doorway Papers. It has been a giant undertaking for us--some 21/2 million words--and there have been not a few very low periods when it hardly seemed worth carrying on. For weeks on end no orders came in. Some months our total sales might be five dollars or ten dollars and no more. And all the while we watched others having their efforts to publish rewarded in all kinds of ways with large circulation and reviews in all the important places: or so it seemed to us. We were simply being ignored, save for the occasional letter of commendation which encouraged us immeasurably.
But this was a particularly low low! We scarcely felt it worth looking into the mailbox at all. In fact, we actually didn't, at times. One night, quite late, I lay on my bed wondering and complaining to the Lord about it all. As I lay there I reached out to a bookshelf for that wonderful little collection of verses called Daily Light, which at that time I was not reading faithfully as I do now. I opened it quite at random, and my eye was captured by a portion of God's Word which had been chosen as a heading for a morning reading. This is what it said: "Take this child and nurse it for Me and I will give thee thy wages" (Exod. 2:9).
It seemed an extraordinary verse to apply in such a situation! Yet it came to me so very personally and with wonderful freshness The Doorway Papers were indeed my "child" by now, and it seemed to assure me that if I nourished them and brought them up for Him, He would give me my wages. I was not to faint. I went to sleep with a sense of peace about it all. We would press on...and we have done so. Only one paper remains to be written when the present one is finished.
Yet, on this occasion, in the cold light of morning I found my spirits again depressed. I wondered whether such an interpretation of a passage like this could possibly be justified--or whether perhaps I was simply boosting my own morale by a somewhat wild interpretation. So I wrote to a very dear friend of mine whom I had known almost since I came to Canada, a very wise and experienced man of God. I asked him whether he thought I was kidding myself, imagining things, distorting the plain sense of a verse which had a very pragmatic context. He wrote back at once, very simply: "The Word of God is not bound." How wonderful it is! Praise God! It is true.
So I believe the Lord does accommodate Himself to our needs even when we are acting in a less than mature way. If prayer goes unanswered or if prayer seems to go unanswered--which is much more likely--it is not because the Lord is chiding us for a childlike faith: there is usually some other reason. And this brings me to a second question, Why is prayer sometimes unanswered?
I believe this is the way we usually ask ourselves this question, yet I doubt really if it is ever true, except that prayer may sometimes be unheard (Isa. 59:2) and therefore answered by silence. But though this surely does happen, I think it is a comparatively rare thing, since the very act of prayer clearly indicates some real need for God's help and in itself is a token of godly desire.
We do find sometimes, however, that the heavens are as brass and our requests seem to be denied or at least interminably delayed. Some of mine have been and still are, even in matters which seem to me so obviously important to the Lord and do not appear to be based on any self-seeking. But No is an answer: and so is Wait. Sometimes we have not obeyed in some prior step which must first be taken in faith, and sometimes we are not really serious. And then again, we may pray to our own hurt and contrary to the Lord's will.
To "wait patiently" is very difficult for me! Because of the need for discipline here, the Lord sometimes practices what I would like to call--not irreverently--"divine brinksmanship." I think the Lord delights to do things at the last minute, as though to save us out of rather then from a predicament. I don't know why, except perhaps that it strengthens or is intended to strengthen our faith.
I had the privilege of giving a series of twenty-five lectures on "The Christian Faith" to a large denominationally mixed audience in a church in Brockville, Ontario. As we prepared for it, the minister of the church--whose idea it really was--was rather anxious that the lectures be given in the sanctuary rather than in the church hall; I think his feeling was that a certain atmosphere of devotion and worship would be maintained which would not be felt in the hall. Personally I was not altogether of the same mind in this, though in all else we were entirely agreed. But since it was he who had the vision to see the possibility of such a series and the courage to initiate it, I was convinced of the need to accept his position.
I still felt uncomfortable about it. I felt I could never lecture with the same freedom, that blackboard facilities would create problems, that the distance between the pulpit and the pews would reduce the sense of contact with the audience which was important to me, that freedom of discussion would be inhibited, and that we might end up with a tiny group of people lost in a large church. My faith was too small to visualize such a church filled, and I foresaw the tiny flock of "backbenchers" and the great void between us! It really troubled me. Naturally I prayed about it as I prepared myself and finally was resigned to this arrangement, for it did not seem that the Lord was going to act to change the situation.
But at the very last moment, the Lord did intervene and graciously removed the lectures from the sanctuary to the hall. The circumstances transpired on the day when the lectures were to begin. We still don't know exactly what happened, but here is the way the Lord worked.
The mid-September Tuesday of the first lecture was quite cool, and the minister went into the church early in the forenoon to check the temperature. To his surprise, the heating system was not operating. He and his assistant and the caretaker all tried to find out why heat was going into the hall but not into the sanctuary, and it was soon apparent that the sanctuary blower system was not functioning. Every effort to get it going proved ineffective, and finally a heating man was called in. Though he, too, worked much of the afternoon, he had no success in finding out what was wrong. Indeed, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it whatever.
The minister called me on the phone and we settled for the Sunday school hall. I was honestly very thankful to the Lord, but it troubled me that there should be this heating problem, since this could indicate a need for major renovation of some kind. Anyway, that evening we had our first lecture and were greatly encouraged by the turnout and the interest shown.
Next morning, the minister's assistant phoned me and said: "Do you know what, Art? The heating system is okay: nothing the matter with it! Just the main switch to the sanctuary blowers had been turned off..."
Sometime later, after I had recorded this incident, I checked with the minister's assistant to learn whether it was ever found out how the switch had been turned off. He said: "To this day we never found out, nor can we figure out now why not one of us checked it at the time--except we had no reason to suspect it."
If only we could trust the Lord for all those things which concern us personally, how much more energy we would have to share the burdens of others who ask us to pray for them. Only, perhaps if we didn't worry a little bit about our own troubles, we would not experience the wonderful sense of relief and thankfulness that comes to us when the Lord steps in.
There are just three little matters in connection with prayer that I want to comment on briefly. The first is when to pray and when not to pray; the second is where to pray; and the third is what form to use in public prayer.
Considering first, the When.
It is all too easy to be trapped in a habit that begins as an appropriate exercise but can all too quickly degenerate into a chore. It seems to be a normal practice for almost everyone who lectures or gives any kind of address to "open with a word of prayer." I am persuaded that sometimes this is a mere formality and a source of some embarrassment to non-Christians in the audience. If one has thoroughly prepared oneself, such preparation must necessarily be prayerfully undertaken and there shouldn't really be any need on the speaker's part to again publicly ask the Lord to bless. We seem to have accepted an "opening prayer" in the same kind of way we accept the "chairman's remarks." There will be justification under certain conditions, but I think we often open with prayer merely out of habit and because we have not thought out a sometimes more appropriate way to begin our presentation.
There are times when public prayer is indeed proper, and I think such prayer requires as much prayerful preparation as the giving of any address. But, alas, all too often we don't prepare, we don't adequately prepare either ourselves or our words. I don't think it is enough to assure ourselves that the Holy Spirit will tell us what to say when the time comes unless we are going into a situation for which we cannot, in the nature of the case, prepare our words adequately. In such a case I still believe that we must prepare ourselves, even though we cannot prepare our words.
I am trying to underscore the fact that prayer needs preparation just as much as preaching. I think, too, that it is a mistake to be too personal when leading in public prayer involving people who are strangers to oneself and probably strangers to the Lord also. I know a minister, whom I admire greatly, who is cautious about praying with people, even in a hospital situation, unless he is quite sure that the context of the visit makes it an appropriate exercise. The principle is that prayer which is an embarrassment to others is not likely to be helpful to them, even though we may feel we are fulfilling a role expected of us.
This brings us to the question of Where to pray.
I'm thinking now of private prayer, not public prayer. There is no question that we may turn to the Lord at any time and in any place: but I think it is still true that there are some places where we can collect our thoughts more readily, where just the fact of being in that place predisposes our hearts toward a prayerful spirit. Many people find they pray more easily kneeling down, but not everyone, by any means. I know people who have one chair where they sit down to pray and find it more difficult to pray with equal concentration in any other part of the house. No doubt one could discipline oneself to pray anywhere at all, but we seem to be so constituted that the environment has an influence on us in this matter. This being the case, it seems to me sensible to form habits that are conducive and not place an unnecessary challenge to our spirit by expending energy in overcoming hindrances on the assumption that all spiritual exercises ought to be difficult. On the other hand, we may place ourselves in a situation which proves so restful that we find ourselves falling asleep in prayer. If this doesn't happen too frequently, I doubt whether it matters very much. To adopt a policy of accepting discomfort as a means of self-discipline may be heroic, but one can end up being more conscious of the aching joints than of the presence of the Lord. One answer to restlessness which I have found helpful is to walk around while praying. In the country in daytime or indoors at night, it is surprisingly easy to speak to the Lord while thus exercising.
Finally, a word about the Form of public prayer.
Many earnest Christians find it difficult to accept the idea of written prayers, chiefly on the grounds that they become repetitive and meaningless. The danger is there, undoubtedly. Yet observation shows that if a single individual leads in public prayer very frequently, his prayers will not only tend to be remarkably repetitive in form but equally repetitive in content. One of the great advantages of a liturgical form of service (the Anglican service is such) is that a minister is in a position to lead the congregation in a prayer which is not only good English but far more comprehensive in subject matter. And surely, in speaking with the Lord, one's language ought not to be sloppy.
Moreover, prayers which are entirely extemporaneous are apt to reflect the fluctuations in the spiritual life of the one who leads, and those who are led are thereby affected for good or ill as the situation changes in a way that is less likely to occur when prayers are written down beforehand. Some people find it difficult to make this kind of preparation and equally difficult to reproduce their own text with sincerity. Perhaps practice is needed.
However, I'm sure there is no bondage to be imposed here. Some will find themselves bound and some will find themselves freed by the use of written prayers; it is worth a try, though it requires a surprising amount of extra effort to do it successfully.
May I summarize something of what I have found in my own experience about this matter of prayer.
First of all, I believe it is very important to look for and identify the answers we may have--and having done so, to give thanks. One of the best ways to do this is to keep a record. But I think that anyone who does so may well discover in time that specific answers to prayer become less frequent as one grows older in the faith, not because the Lord is less willing to respond but because our needs become more diffuse. What were formerly written down as details will tend now to be set forth almost as a psalm of praise and sometimes as a comment on a particular passage of Scripture that has experimentally come to life.
Secondly, I do not think anything is too small to be made a subject of prayer, nor too mundane. I believe we must accept No and Wait as legitimate answers: and we need to examine ourselves to see whether delay may not be due to a failure to do our part.
Thirdly, I believe that the Lord is very patient and will meet our indecision and our desire for some guiding sign in any given emergency by accepting whatever proposals we may make. But He will do it only so long as we demonstrate that we really will be obedient whichever way the sign points. I think that the number of different kinds of "fleeces" which the Lord is willing to use is probably infinite in variety. The really critical element in this kind of transaction with the Lord is that we must obey.
Finally, I think we must always guard against the danger of making the Lord's special dealings with us a source of subtle pride, by giving our testimony with an inappropriate emphasis upon our own faith rather than upon the Lord's graciousness, for even the heart of the child of God is still desperately wicked when the old nature has the upper hand (Jer. 17:9).
Do start keeping a journal. Who knows how someone may be helped by it
in time to come--even yourself!
Corrections, August 21, 1997.
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