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Perseverance counts much with God as well as with man. If Elijah had ceased at his first petition the heavens would have scarcely yielded their rain to his feeble praying. If Jacob had quit praying at decent bedtime he would scarcely have survived the next day’s meeting with Esau. If the Syrophenician woman had allowed her faith to faint by silence, humiliation, repulse, or stop mid-way its struggles, her grief-stricken home would never have been brightened by the healing of her daughter.
Pray and never faint, is the motto Christ gives us for praying. It is the test of our faith, and the severer the trial and the longer the waiting, the more glorious the results.
Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.
God loves the importunate pleader, and sends him answers that would never have been granted but for the persistency that refuses to let go until the petition craved for is granted.
This truth that God is looking after personal purity is swallowed up when the Church has a greed for numbers. “Not numbers, but personal purity is our aim,” said the fathers of Methodism. The parading of Church statistics is mightily against the grain of spiritual religion. Eyeing numbers greatly hinders the looking after personal purity. The increase of quantity is generally at a loss of quality. Bulk abates preciousness.
The age of Church organisation and Church machinery is not an age noted for elevated and strong personal piety.
By dint of machinery, new organisations, and spiritual weakness, results are vainly expected to be secured which can only be secured by faith, prayer, and waiting on God.
The experience of all good men shows that without constant prayer and watchfulness the life of God in the soul stagnates.
Whether I am more or less learned signifies not. Whether even I execute the work which I deem useful is comparatively unimportant. But beware my soul of lukewarmness.”
One of Satan’s wiliest tricks is to destroy the best by the good.
Courageous faith is made stronger and purer by mastering difficulties.
A repentance which does not produce a change in conduct is a
sham.
God cannot tolerate a divided heart in the love He requires of men, neither can He bear with a divided man in praying.
