I would like to meditate this evening more particularly on the latter part of the verse—”men ought not to faint.” “Men ought always to pray.” The word “always” suggests that prayer is, above all, an attitude of soul, that it is not so much a matter of uttering petitions with the lips or even with the heart, but that it is an attitude of soul with relation to the Most High, for however spiritually minded a believer may be it is impossible for him or her to be always in the act of prayer. As the believer has to carry on the business of life and to concentrate on the work which comes to his hand from day to day it is impossible for him or her to be always in the act of prayer, to be praying with the lips or even silently with the heart. Such are the limitations of our human nature, and such is the nature of every day life as we know it in this world that such is impossible, but through the grace of God it is possible that we should have such an attitude of soul as will be regarded by God as prayer. You heard of the man who went to the godly weaver of Edderton asking what was the meaning of the exhortation—”pray without ceasing,” and he found him delving in his garden, and he said to the godly man—”You are well exercised today.” “If you would say that praying and delving, and delving and praying is a profitable exercise, then I am,” and so he had his answer to his question before he had asked it.
Prayer is an attitude of soul, but without saying much more on that, there are three essential elements in true prayer as an attitude of soul in relation to the Most High. The first is a sense of need and of guilt, and without that it is impossible to pray unto God. A sense of need and a sense of guilt will be felt more at times than at others but must always be there, and it is true of God’s children that there is always a sense of deep and real need and always a sense of guilt—loathsome, defiling guilt and condemning guilt. The second element I would mention is a sense of the fullness that is in Christ Jesus. Now, prayer is not true prayer without that. However indistinct, however vague the sense may be, yet we must know that God in Christ has an infinite fullness which is able to meet our case, and there must always be that before our minds together with this sense of need, the sense of the fullness that is in Christ Jesus, and the conviction that there is in Christ that which can fully satisfy our deepest and most awful needs. The third element in true prayer which I would mention is the desire that these two which we have already mentioned should meet—that the need and the guilt of the sinner should meet with the fullness of the merit which is in the Saviour, and that the need and the guilt of the sinner should be completely met and completely swallowed up in the infinite fullness of the merit and in the boundless efficacy which flows out from God to man through the Lord Jesus Christ as the eternal God man.
Now, there is a very special privilege in prayer—a privilege which we cannot value sufficiently. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it.” Now, He set no bounds or limits to that. Again He said to His disciples, and so to all who trust in His name to the end of time—”All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” There is no limit there. There is limitless access, so that on the one hand we have the poor sinner on earth with nothing but guilt which will bring him lower than the grave—not even a rag of righteousness to cover him; and on the other hand all the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ behind the promise—”And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Behind it is the full wealth of the eternal Saviour—all the wealth of the merit which is stored up in Him, not for Himself but for poor sinners. What a privilege it is then even to be the least in the Father’s House! What a privilege it is to be able to bring to Christ all the perplexities and trials and troubles of this life itself. Many a poor child of God would have been crushed, sunk down in despair, and perhaps unhinged mentally, if this privilege were not vouchsafed to him in the gospel—the privilege of carrying the most intimate troubles and worries and anxieties which he could not unbosom to his dearest friend on earth, to God in Christ, and pouring them out before Him with the assurance that it will not be as water spilt on the ground which can never be gathered up again, but that each groan and sigh is recorded in God’s Book and each tear kept in God’s Bottle. He alone can befriend us in our hour of need, and not only is it possible to bring the worries of this life but also the committing of our souls to Him in view of death for we must all die. We may be living in this world as if this were our eternal home, but it is appointed unto all men once to die, and a soul with any sense of eternal things must stand in awe of that King of terrors. Can you look death in the face, and not quake unless your moral sensibility is completely blunted? And then there is the prospect of eternity beyond death, and who can think with complacency of the Great White Throne, and of Him upon the Throne before whose face the heaven and earth shall pass away? Only those who are enabled to roll the burden of their eternal destiny on the Lamb who shall sit on that Throne as judge of the quick and dead. That is a privilege of the child of God. It is a privilege which the world has not got and it is a privilege which they deny themselves. What an awful loss for you and me if we neglect prayer, if we do not strive diligently to enter in at the straight gate, and if we do not make it our chief concern in life to be in Christ—to be found in Him, not having our own righteousness. What an awful loss even in this world! When we are crushed down with grief in this world to whom can we carry our grief if we are at war with God, and God at war with us? When we have been looking upon our friends in this world and depending upon them entirely, and then they fail us, to whom can we turn? We have to face the swellings of Jordan and eternity and go down into the river of death, and what an awful prospect that will be if we cannot take our fears with regard to the swellings of Jordan to Him who has conquered death! What a lonely passage we shall have across that river, which is so deep and so wide! What a lonely journey for those who have not the privilege of pouring out their hearts to the Most High in prayer. What an awful eternity to be lost, to be cut off from God, and let us beware, each one of us, that we are not going through this world in our own strength, determined to carry on through this world and live in our own strength without any knowledge of the Most High God. If so, we must also go through death and eternity in our own strength.
But to pass on, we are told that men ought always to pray. Now, we recognise that men ought always to pray, and there is probably none of us here but recognises that there is a certain duty, a certain obligation with regard to prayer. There is probably none of us who would go to bed at night without bending his or her knee in some form of prayer to the Most High. We ought to pray, and God’s people would have a sense of guilt if in the course of any one day they had failed to send forth their petitions, and express their desires and to crave God’s help, but we do not recognise so readily that we ought not to faint. Even God’s children are not so disposed to feel that as to feel and accept the command that men ought always to pray. Oh no, when God seems not to answer our prayers, when we pray and pray week after week, and year after year, and God does not seem to be answering, how ready we are to faint, and how ready we are to excuse ourselves for fainting! How ready we are to blame God and pity ourselves, and to be sorry for ourselves when God does not grant us what we ask. “Men ought not to faint.” The same obligation rests upon us, and to the same degree, “to pray and not to faint.” It is as wrong for us to faint in prayer as it is for us to neglect prayer altogether. When we look at the Great Head of the Church, how ashamed we should be that we do so faint in prayer. When we look upon Him who came into this world to seek and to save that which was lost, and who underwent the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, who went through the awful agonies of Gethsemane, when His sweat was as great drops of blood, and when He cried—”Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me,” when He was left alone in the hands of cruel, rough and brutal men, when all His disciples forsook Him and fled. When He had to face the howling mob which were like lions roaring around His soul, and the Jews cried—”Away with Him, crucify Him,” what cause there was there for fainting! When He was crucified on Calvary and the vials of His Father’s wrath were poured upon His loving and holy soul, and when the enmity of His murderers surged forth, oh what cause there was for fainting! What reason for fainting, and yet He did not faint. We read that He set His face as a flint and that He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, and that He hid not His face from shame and spitting. He was doing all this for the glory of the Triune God, and for sinners who did not appreciate it in the least, but many of them joined heartily in His condemnation and His crucifixion, yet He did not faint, but He set His heart upon glorifying God and on the eternal salvation of His people. “He received gifts for men, for such as did rebel.” When He was sounding the very depths of His Father’s wrath He was purchasing gifts for men in order that God the Lord might dwell among them. One of these great gifts which He purchased was that God the Lord might dwell among them in prayer,—for God dwells among rebels—through prayer rebels can experience the presence of God in Christ at the throne of grace. He did not faint, and why should we faint in applying for what He has already purchased by His own blood? It is little enough that we have to do. What suffering, sorrow and anguish fell upon Him and all the honour and glory rebounds to Him. All we have to do is to ask in His name what He has already purchased. Truly, we ought not to faint when we look upon Him who is the Great Head of the Church, but none the less, the fact remains that we do faint.
Now, let me run over one or two causes why we do faint in prayer, because although we ought not to faint, yet we do faint. The first cause I would mention is the carnal mind. Prayer implies a perception of spiritual things. In order to pray, we must have a vision of the spiritual world in which the great landmarks are sin and salvation. Prayer implies a perception of those things. Whenever the believer seeks to pray the carnal mind rises up in opposition. There is within the believer that principle which is warring with the spirit of Christ—the carnal mind, and the effect of the carnal mind is to blur the vision of God’s people so that they cannot see the Saviour. When the carnal mind brings its strength to bear upon your soul, eternal and spiritual things become indistinct, and, further, it has the effect of breaking you away from spiritual things altogether, and of wrapping up your soul in that which is carnal and material. The carnal mind is enmity against God, and this is one of the great causes of fainting in prayer, that when the believer seeks access to God in prayer the carnal mind within himself or herself seems to drown any spiritual life there may be. Like a giant it comes along and takes up a position opposite to grace in the soul and seeks to strangle the life out of it, and immediately the believer says, like David,—“But yet mine enemies lively are and strong are they beside.” Looking upon his soul in the presence of His Maker, the child of God sees the enemies of God to be very, very numerous and how few in the town of Mansoul seem to be following the Prince. The believer faints away on that account.
Then in addition to the carnal mind, there is an ally. The carnal mind has an ally in the world. It ensures supplies to the carnal mind. The spiritual mind within the believer may seem to be thriving at times and then existing and no more, but the carnal mind is always lively and vigorous because it is always well fed. There is always abundance of provision for the carnal mind in order that it may be strong and ready for the battle, and ready to crush the child of grace altogether. You know that yourself if you have any concern for your soul. When you go out to the Church on Sabbath, how many are the things you see and meet to influence and draw you away from Christ and prayer. Perhaps you might not meet one in the course of a whole day whose influence is to draw you to Christ, but on the other hand how many there are whose influence and words and conversation have the effect of distracting you from spiritual things—feeding the carnal mind within you—and of dealing a blow to the spiritual life of the soul, but “men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”
Then there is also the devil himself. The devil comes along and draws you away to the things of the world. How difficult it is to cultivate a spiritual frame, but how easily a look, smile or a nod from sin will bring on a worldly spirit which will remain with you for hours, days and perhaps months. The devil says, “You might as well give up the struggle and come out and show yourself in your true colours. You do not belong to Christ whom you profess to follow, but to the world—be a man and be honest.” That is the devil, and the poor believer or poor seeker after Christ to whom he comes with such suggestions as these is ready to faint altogether. But he is a liar, and was a liar from the beginning, and the carnal mind will be the carnal mind right to the end, even in the case of God’s children, right until they give their last sigh and draw their last breath. In fact, the carnal mind will just remain the carnal mind. You can take it to Mount Sinai and let it hear the terrors of the law—take it to the threatenings of the law and it remains the carnal mind still. You may extend to it the invitations of the gospel but it remains still the carnal mind. You may bring it to the foot of Calvary—right to the foot of the cross of shame where God in human nature died on behalf of poor sinners to redeem them from a lost eternity, and the carnal mind remains hard and unaffected by it. It will never change. Its nature will always be the same because of its workings within. Now, that is on the side of the sinner himself, but there are also causes of fainting from God’s side. One cause is that God does not seem to hear prayer at all. You remember the woman of Canaan who came beseeching Christ to come and heal her daughter who was sore vexed with a devil. She cried—”Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me,” and the Lord Himself appeared not to listen to her—”He answered her not a word,” but there was an echo to her cry in His heart and from His lips at length came these words—”O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” What an answer! Could that answer have been given if Christ had answered her when she first came to him?” Oh no, it was in order to strengthen her faith that He seemed not to hear. God may not appear to answer our prayer—little did that woman expect that she would hear Jesus say to her—”Woman, great is thy faith.” A second cause of fainting is that God delays His answer to prayer. Look at Joseph praying in prison for over two years, and still it seemed quite hopeless—God was delaying His answer until the wheels of His providence should so revolve in Egypt that an answer would be given him far greater and richer than ever Joseph asked for. Joseph wanted deliverance from prison, but God wished that not only he should be released from prison but that he should be the greatest in Egypt, and that in that position of glory and honour he should glorify the Lord who delivered Him in a way that he could not have done if the Lord had taken him out of prison when first he asked. We ask little things of God, and when we do not get an answer at once we despond and say—”Surely, God should grant that to me,” but with regard to His own children God does not deal in little things at all, and if He is delaying an answer, it may well be that it is in order to give a blessing of such a nature that you never dreamt of, and, truly, His resources are boundless and deeper than the ocean.
Then, there is also another cause of fainting—God does not answer in the way that we expect. You may be praying for holiness, for purity of heart and to be made righteous, but instead of a sense of that you have an increased sense of sin—getting worse and worse instead of getting better and better. He shows you the filth and awfulness of sin. That is often His answer to such a prayer.
Now, let me point out some encouragements we have why we should not faint. First, there is the account in this chapter of the character of God as contrasted with the unjust judge—he had no interest in this poor widow, but yet, simply because she continued beseeching him, the judge decided it would be to his own advantage to give her what she wanted and get rid of her, and Christ says—“Shall not God avenge His own elect who cry unto Him night and day. I tell you He will avenge them speedily.” Now, this unjust judge had no love or sympathy for this poor woman, yet he granted her request. Over against that, we have the eternal God, eternally faithful and eternally loving towards His own flock. He has pledged Himself in His Word to hear the prayer of the poor and needy. “The prayer of the destitute he surely will regard, their prayer will he not despise, by him it shall be heard.” Again He has said in His own Word—“I have never said to the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain.” There is a definite assurance with regard to these promises—every one of them are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. They are guaranteed in Him and by Him, and if one of these promises failed Christ Himself would lose all His glory. His glory is bound up in the fulfilment of these promises. We have not to deal with an unjust judge, or with an unscrupulous character, but One who has pledged His eternal faithfulness to the fulfilment of His promise—“Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law until all be fulfilled.” His Word is full of assurances that those who seek shall find—“Ye shall seek me and find me when he shall search for me with all your heart. Oh, all ye that do seek the Lord your heart shall ever live.”
Then, there is also the Saviour’s name, which is another ground for encouragement or reason why we should not faint—that God has put into the hands of sinners the name of His own Son, and He says to them—Plead for what you require in that name, come to the market of free grace using that name as the currency of Heaven and you will not be refused—“His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” It is a name that fills the very Heaven of heavens with its fragrance, and a name which even to the Church on earth is as ointment poured forth. How much more glorious was that name in Heaven when He went up with shouts—“Thou hast, oh Lord, most glorious ascended up on high”—“ye gates lift up your hearts and ye doors that last for aye.” That was the attitude of the Father towards the Son as the God-man returned to the mansions of eternal glory after He had wrought out eternal salvation for His people. That was the attitude of the Father, and that was an indication of how precious the name of Christ is to the Father. God takes that name which is just filled with the merit of the blood of God. He puts that name into the hand of the sinner.—Take that name to Him, and you have God’s assurance that what you ask for in that name will not be denied you.
Then, there is also the intercession of Christ which is ground for encouragement. He was once of no reputation—”But as for me a worm I am and as no man am prized.” But now God has exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” That King of Glory pleads at this very hour on behalf of poor sinners like yourself and myself. What condescension and love! the King of Glory praying for the believer on earth! He is pleading the merits of His own blood. He has entered Heaven itself with His own blood, and God the Father is looking upon that blood when the intercession of the Son goes forth to Him. It is towards the blood the Father looks in relation to His people so that when sin-sick sinners come to Jesus Christ pleading the merits of the blood of Jesus Christ it is through the blood of Jesus Christ God the Father is looking upon them.
There is not one in the history of the Church from Genesis to Revelation who can say God did not answer prayer. From the blood of Abel onward we have an abundant testimony to the fact. A further encouragement is the testimony of the Church of God that God does hear and answer prayer.
Also, within your own heart there is a conviction that God has answered, and does answer prayer. That is why God’s people cannot give up praying, and if you are seeking the Lord, or would like to have Christ, you cannot give up praying because the Spirit testifies within you that God does hear prayer. God does hear prayer, and so, friends, let us avail ourselves of the great privilege of taking ourselves, our friends, all our concerns spiritual and temporal to the Lord Himself who can hear and give us an answer in peace. Prayer is a hand that reaches out to the eternal—”My hands to thee I stretch, my soul thirsts as dry land for thee.”
Oh friend, to miss grasping Christ will mean hell, but to grasp even the hem of His garment will mean heaven.
Let us pray.
He is no fool who parts with that which he cannot keep, when he is sure to be recompensed with that which he cannot lose.—Phillip Henry, Life and Times p. 99.