If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Signature Collection)

by Oswald Chambers

Only when we are in great difficulty and cannot understand things do we really pray. Prayer is not part of the natural life. By “natural” I mean the ordinary, sensible, healthy, worldly minded life. Some say that we will suffer in this life if we do not pray. I question that. Prayer is an interruption of personal ambition, and no person who is busy has time to pray.

If we do not pray,

what will suffer is the life of God in us, which is nourished not b...

Prayer develops the life of God in us. When we are born from above, the life of the Son of God begins in us, and we can either starve that life or nourish it.

Prayer nourishes the life of God. Our Lord nourished the life of God in Him by prayer. He was continually in contact with His Father. We generally look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical idea of prayer is that God’s holiness, purpose, and wise order may be brought about. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament.

Prayer to Him is not a way to get things from God, but so that we may get to know God. Prayer is not to be used as the privilege of a spoiled child seeking ideal conditions to indulge his spiritual propensities. The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God, equally present at all times and in every condition.

In His teaching about prayer our Lord never once referred to unanswered prayer. He said God always answers prayer. If our prayers are in the name of Jesus or in accord with His nature, the answers will not be in accord with our nature but with His. We are apt to forget this and to say, without thinking, that God does not always answer prayer. He does every time, and when we are in close communion with Him we realize that we have not been misled. “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Luke 11:9).

It is not cowardly to pray when we are at our wits’ end. It is the only way to get in touch with reality. As long as we are self-sufficient and complacent, we don’t need to ask God for anything. We don’t want Him. It is only when we know we are powerless that we are prepared to listen to Jesus Christ and to do what He says.

Be honest before God and present your problems—the things you have come to your wits’ end about. Ask what you will, and Jesus Christ says your prayers will be answered. We can always tell whether our will is in what we ask by the way we live when we are not praying.

The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge that God is my Father, He loves me, and I shall never think of anything He will forget. With this knowledge, worry becomes an impossibility.

It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes us, and then we change things.

Prayer is not altering things externally, but working wonders within our disposition. When we pray, things remain the same but we begin to be different.

Let us never forget that our prayers are heard not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered.

If we accept the Lord Jesus Christ and

the domination of His lordship, we also accept that nothing happens by chance because we know that God orders and engineers circumstances.

Prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray. It cost God so much that a little child can pray. It cost God Almighty so much that anyone can pray.

We talk about the difficulty of living a holy life, but there is the absolute simple ease of Almighty God in living a holy life because it cost Him so much to make it possible. Beware of placing the emphasis on what prayer costs us.

Wherever the saint goes there is the shedding of the benediction of the blessing of God, or there is the coming of the conviction of the Spirit of God.

I want you to beware of a mistake I have made over and over again—of trying to interpret God’s plan for other lives according to the way He has led me. Never do this! Keep open-eyed in wonder.

God wants us to stop understanding in the way we have understood and get into the place He wants us to get into. That is, He wants us to know how to rely on Him.

The manifestation of the answer in place and time is a mere matter of God’s sovereignty. Be earnest and eager in praying.

Remember that Jesus Christ’s silences are always signs that He knows we can stand a bigger revelation than we think we can. If He gives us the exact answer, He cannot trust us yet. “If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). That is stated for people who are not spiritual. Our Lord’s revelations about prayer in Luke 11 and 18 are for those who are spiritual, who remain in confidence in prayer.

God will give us the blessings we want; but if we would go further, His silence is the sign that He is bringing us into an even greater and more marvelous understanding of himself.

Then why ask? The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God. The “asking and receiving” prayer is elementary; it is the part of prayer we can understand. But it is not necessarily praying in the Holy Spirit. Those who are not born again must ask and receive; but when we have received and have become rightly related to God, we must maintain this simplicity of belief in Him while we pray.

“Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” Then why pray? To get to know our Father. It is not sufficient for us to say, “Oh yes, God is love.” We have to know He is love. We have to struggle through until we see that He is love and justice. Then our prayer is answered.

Prayerlessness with God is the same thing. We are shy with God not because we are unworthy, but because we think God has not given enough consideration to our case. We have some peculiar elements He must be pleased to consider.

There is a real danger of worshiping prayer instead of praying because we worship. It is easy to do if we lose sight of our Lord and put the emphasis not on His command but on the thing that He commands.

Yet it is that kind of intercession on which the New Testament places the most emphasis, even without immediate results. In earthly terms, it seems stupid to think that we can pray and people will be changed, but remember to whom we pray. We pray to a God who understands the unconscious depths of personality about which we know nothing, and He has told us to pray.

Not prayer because we are helpless, but prayer because God is almighty.

“Therefore pray.” Prayer is labor, not agony. But labor on the ground of our Lord’s redemption in simple confidence in Him. Prayer is simple to us because it cost Him so much to make it possible. God grant that we may work His victories for Him by taking His way about it.

But if we rely on the Holy Spirit, we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate, and when they are inarticulate, reverence grows deeper and deeper, and undue familiarity has the effect of a sudden blow on the face.

The point to remember is that all our circumstances are in the hand of God.

Remember, your intercessions can never be mine, and my intercessions can never be yours; but the Holy Spirit makes intercession for both of us, without which intercession someone will be impoverished. Let us remember the depth and height and solemnity of our calling as saints.