WONDERFUL PRAYERS

Part I

It is according to the infallible Word of God, that God Himself must teach us to pray in spirit and in truth. We see that in the life of those, whom God has quickened from death. We read in 2 Chron. 33:12–13 of Manasseh: “And when he was afflicted, he earnestly besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his father, and prayed unto Him: and He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and He brought him back again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.” We also have such a clear example of that in the life of Saul of Tarsus, who had also lived as a Pharisee, pious and self-righteous in his own eyes, but who was struck down to the ground by God Himself on the way to Damascus.

The Lord Himself testified that of Saul to Ananias: “For, behold, he prayeth.” Saul had done many prayers with his lips, perhaps also had the gift of prayer, but he never had any knowledge of the grace of prayer. But then for the first time in his life he called upon God in truth. And it is also the promise which God gave to His people in Zach. 12:10: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication”. In the fall of Adam we have torn ourselves away from God. So that by virtue of His Holy and unimpeachable justice God can no longer have communion with us, and with our heart we can never draw nigh unto God anymore. The second Adam through His passive and active obedience has healed the rift, and restored the breach, so that upon the prayer of Christ the Spirit is again granted in the hearts of God’s elect. And now those people may pour out their soul again before God with weeping and supplication. Such praying is the breath of the quickened soul. And what a pleasant work that is!

God teaches his people to pray. And what is the result of that, do they learn to pray better and better? Oh, no, friends, that is altogether different. The same apostle Paul, who had been taught of God, came to the humble, but also frank and sincere confession: “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Rom. 8:26. Sometimes those people are on the way already for years, before they can understand a little of what the disciples asked the Lord Jesus: “Lord, teach us to pray.” If they had been able to pray they would not have come with such a question. Oh, it comes to such great depths with us, that there can come times and moments, that we say: “Lord do teach me how to pray, and for what I must pray.” When we think about this with our natural understanding, then we would have to say, sin becomes continually greater, there is no beginning nor end to it, and still there come times that we know not how to express it in words anymore. Really, it comes so far that we no longer know it. It also came that far with Paul. Hear what he says in Rom. 8:26. “For we know not, what we should pray for as we ought.”

But what a privilege, that with full consciousness of faith he might immediately add: “But the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” And in such a way that precious Spirit also glorifies Christ in the heart of the elect. Oh what a privilege it is for such prayerless prayers, that Christ always lives to make intercessions for His people. His intercessions never stop, but always continue. And besides that He had the assurance of being heard, “Father, I know Thou hearest me always”, thus testified the Mediator in John 11:42.

If it may be true with us, then we are always begging, as we read in the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16. Of ourselves we can never come with anything else, than with guilt, deficiency, condemnation, confession of our unworthiness, and that we have lost all claims and rights. Christ appears before His Father with His blood and righteousness, and those are the grounds upon which He is heard. Christ’s prayer is a demand upon the basis of His mediatorial work. And that is also the only ground for God’s people to plead upon; so that they may sometimes say with David out of Ps. 66:10: “Who has not turned my prayer from Him, nor yet His grace from me.” Man falls completely outside. Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; from our side it remains: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” But now that perfect mediatorial work of Christ through the Father, is imputed to those people, and upon these grounds those people are heard, blessed, benefited, and if faith may be in exercise they may say: “Amen: It shall truly and certainly be: for my prayer is more assuredly heard of God, than I feel in my heart that I desire those things of Him.”

But now back to what I wrote above this. How incomprehensible then is the life of God’s people here upon earth, to those who stand outside. But not only for those “who stand outside”, for the strangers of the life of God, but also for those people themselves, God’s paths lead through ways that they knew not, and ways they have never known. Neither can they understand it themselves. It is already years ago, but sometimes it still rings in my ears, what an exercised child of God once said: “We must talk and pray differently.” How blind man is in heaven’s ways, and in this life it is made manifest that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, Ps. 25:14. Many people, for the sake of clearness, let me call them church-people, want to grasp and conceive with their understanding all that God has declared in His Word. But that is impossible. The Lord says so clearly and plainly in His Word that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. Yes, Christ Himself has said that it is hid for the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes, Matt. 11:25. God’s children may experience and understand a little of this.

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