One of the constant spiritual activities of the living and exercised believer is prayer in as much as it is the very breath of vital godliness in the soul, along with all the other graces of the Spirit implanted therein, in the day of regeneration. Each day, all the varied needs of the soul, every providence, and recurring spiritual and gospel privileges, and many other matters, provide many reasons for prayer and call the Christian continually to the Throne of Grace. And so with God, the needy and exercised believer has much spiritual business through Jesus Christ, as the Redeemer says: “Men ought always to pray and not to faint.” And there are times when the Lord’s people in His Church, together recognise in some particular circumstance a definite and clear summons to concerted prayer; such as when the Synod of our Church last May, again appointed a Day of Prayer in the month of October, to be observed throughout the Church because of the low state of religion and morals throughout our Nation.
Such a day was clearly called for by the continued and increasing open and flagrant ungodliness, and the persistent indifference to the true religion of the Bible and the gospel of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. No one with their eyes open can deny that the vast majority in Britain today live without true regard to God, His Word and the Ten Commandments. Many are regulating their lives no better than pagans and heathen, with all the economic and cultural advantages of these times. And it is God alone who can deliver the people from this deplorable and dangerous state of affairs.
Now, the Lord’s people, as far as men are concerned, are the best friends of the Nation and have its highest good at heart. They are vexed and grieved primarily as to how greatly the Most High is being dishonoured; and also as to how multitudes are ruining themselves and exposing the Nation as a whole to the divine displeasure. And so it is the duty and privilege of those who fear the Lord to plead earnestly with Him, in the name of the Mediator, Jesus Christ, and by the aid of the Spirit of grace, to shine forth, to stir up His strength, and to come and save us by turning us again to Himself (see Psalm, lxxx). “Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to
shine, and we shall be saved” (Ps. 89, v. 3). It was on account of the “remnant” that Israel in Isaiah’s day were not as Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Most High is the hearer of prayer, and many proofs there are of this recorded in the pages of Holy Scripture. David, the man of God, and the man of prayer, testifies of God in psalm 65, ver. 2, “O thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.” And in this divine capacity and wonderful mode of manifesting His favour to His people, the Lord has not changed. He is free from all changes and therefore His ears are still open to the cries of the righteous, albeit how He answers and when, are subservient to the divine will and purpose. Nevertheless it is good for believers to draw near to God in fellowship one with another, in behalf of a backsliding Nation.
Whatever the Most High will do with regard to the prayers of His people on and after a stated day of prayer, they may humbly use the language in the book of Joel: “Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him” (ch. 2, v. 14). Indeed our need of the blessing of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit is greater and deeper than we can know, but God sees and knows all from His dwelling place. And it shall be to the praise His glory if and when He pleases to heal our backslidings in recognition of the cries and sighs of His remnant in the midst of the land.
But in addition to prayer, the Church of God must continue to witness against sin and National evils, and to warn their fellow men that the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience, not forgetting to remind them that God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, in that He hath appointed a day wherein He will judge the World in righteousness, by that man whom He hath ordained. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah, chap. 1 ver. 18).