- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
‘Do you pray?’
By J.C.Ryle.
I ask whether you pray, because diligence in prayer is the secret of holiness.
Without doubt there is a vast difference among true Christians. There is an immense interval between the foremost and the rearmost in the army of God.
They are all fighting the same good fight but how much more valiantly some fight than others. They are all doing the Lord’s work but how much more some do than others. They are all running the same race but how much faster some get on than others. They all love the same Lord and Saviour but how much more some love him than others. Are not these things so?
There are some of the Lord’s people who seem never able to get on from the time of their conversion. They are born again but they remain babes all their lives. You see in them the same lack of spiritual appetite, the same lack of interest in any thing beyond their own little circle. They are pilgrims, indeed, but pilgrims like the Gibeonites of old; their bread is always dry and moldy, their shoes always old and their garments always rent and torn. I say this with sorrow and grief but l ask again, is it not true?
There are others of the Lord’s people who seem to be always advancing. They grow like the grass after rain, they increase like Israel in Egypt, they press on like Gideon though sometimes faint, yet always pursuing. They are ever adding grace to grace, faith to faith and strength to strength. Every year they appear to see more, know more, believe more and feel more in their faith. They not only have good works to prove the reality of their faith but they are zealous of them. They not only do well but they are unwearied in well-doing. They attempt great things and they do great things. When they fail they try again and when they fall they are soon up again. And all this time they think themselves poor, unprofitable servants and fancy they do nothing at all. These are those who make their faith lovely and beautiful in the eyes of all. It does one good to see, to be with and to hear them. When you meet them you could believe that like Moses they had just come out from the presence of God.
Now how can we account for the difference which I have just described? What is the reason that some believers are so much brighter than others? I believe the difference arises from different habits about private prayer. l believe that those who are not eminently holy pray little, and those who are eminently holy pray much.
I dare say this opinion will startle some readers but I have little doubt that many look on holiness as a kind of special gift which none but a few can aim at. They admire it at a distance in books, they think it beautiful when they see an example near them, but as to its being a thing within the reach of any but a very few, such a notion never seems to enter their minds.
Now I believe that this is a most dangerous mistake. l believe that spiritual as well as natural greatness depends in a high degree on the faithful use of means within everybody’s reach. Of course I do not say we have a right to expect a miraculous grant of intellectual gifts, but this I do say, that when a man is once converted to God his progress in holiness will be much in accordance with his own diligence in the use of God’s appointed means. l assert confidently that the principal means by which most believers have become great in the church of Christ is the habit of diligent private prayer.
Look through the lives of the brightest and best of God’s servants, whether in the Bible or not. See what is written of Moses and David, Daniel and Paul. Mark what is recorded of Luther and other reformers. Observe what is related of the private devotions of Whitefield and Cecil, Bickersteth and M‘Cheyne. Tell me of one of all the goodly fellowship of saints and martyrs who has not had this mark most prominently, he was a man of prayer. Depend upon it, prayer is power.
Prayer obtains fresh and continued outpourings of the Spirit. He alone begins the work of grace in our hearts. He alone can carry it forward and make it prosper, but the good Spirit loves to be entreated. And those who ask most will have most of his influence. Prayer is the surest remedy against the devil and besetting sins. That sin will never stand firm which is heartily prayed against. But then we must spread out all our case before our heavenly Physician if He is to give us daily relief.
Do you wish to grow in grace and be a devoted Christian? Be very sure, if you wish it you could not have a more important question than this, Do you pray?
I ask whether you pray because neglect of prayer is one great cause of backsliding.
There is such a thing as going back in faith and trust after making a good profession. We may run well for a season, like the Galatians and then turn aside after false teachers. We may profess loudly while our feelings are warm, as Peter did, and then in the hour of trial deny our Lord. We may lose our first love as the Ephesians did. We may cool down in our zeal to do good like Mark, the companion of Paul. We may follow an apostle for a season and like Demas go back to the world. All these things we may do.
It is a miserable thing to be a backslider. Of all unhappy things that can befall us, l suppose it is the worst. A stranded ship, a broken-winged eagle, a garden overrun with weeds, a harp without strings, a church in ruins, all these are sad sights, but a backslider is a sadder sight still. A wounded conscience, a mind sick of itself, a memory full of self-reproach, a heart pierced through with the Lord’s arrows, a spirit broken with a load of inward accusation, all this is a taste of hell.
Now what is the cause of most backsliding? I believe one of the chief causes is neglect of private prayer. I can only give my opinion as a minister of Christ and a student of the heart, but that opinion is that backsliding generally first begins with neglect of private prayer.
Bibles read without prayer, sermons heard without prayer, marriages contracted without prayer, journeys undertaken without prayer, residences chosen without prayer, friendships formed without prayer, the daily act of private prayer itself hurried over or gone through without heart, these are the kind of downward steps by which many a Christian descends to a condition of spiritual palsy or reaches the point where God allows him to have a tremendous fall.
This is the process which forms the lingering Lots, the unstable Samsons, the wife-idolizing Solomons, the inconsistent Asas, the pliable Jehoshaphats, the over-careful Marthas, of whom so many are to be found in the church of Christ. Often the simple history of such cases is this, they became careless about private prayer.
You may be very sure men fall in private long before they fall in public. They are backsliders on their knees long before they backslide openly in the eyes of the world. Like Peter, they first disregard the Lord’s warning to watch and pray and then, like Peter, their strength is gone and in the hour of temptation they deny their Lord.
If you are a Christian I trust you will never be a backslider, but if you do not wish to be a backsliding Christian remember the question I ask you, Do you pray?
From ‘A Call to Pray’.
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