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Divine Efficacy of Prayer
pliant and his own supply; and again, because intercession not only concerns others, but largely implies the need of direct Divine interposition. There are many prayers that, in their answer, allow our co-operation and imply our activity. When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we go to work to earn the bread for which we pray. That is God’s law. When we ask God to deliver us from the evil one, we expect to be sober and vigilant, and resist the adversary. This is right; but our activity in many other matters hinders the full display of God’s power, and hence also our impression of His working. The deepest convictions of God's prayer- answering are therefore wrought in cases where, in the nature of things, we are precluded from all activity in promoting the result. The Word of God teaches us that intercession with God is most necessary in cases where man is most powerless. Elijah is held before us as a great intercessor, and the one example given is his prayer for rain. Yet in this case he could only pray; there was nothing else he could do to un lock the heavens after three years and a half of drought. And is there not a touch of Divine poetry in the form in which the answer came? The rising cloud took the shape of a man’s h a n d as though to assure the prophet how God saw and heeded the suppliant hand raised to Him in prayer! Daniel was powerless to move the king or reverse his decree, all he could do was to “desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret;” and it was because he could do noth ing else, could not even guess at the interpretation, inasmuch as he knew not even the dream—that it became absolutely sure, when both the dream and its meaning were made known, that God had interposed, and so even the heathen king himself saw, felt and confessed. All through history certain crises have arisen when the help of man was utterly vain. To the formal Christian, the
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