But to Pray, to Really Pray, is the Source of Revenue

PRAYER is God’s business to which people can attend. Prayer is God’s necessary business, which people only can do, and that people must do. A person who belongs to God is obliged to pray. They are not obliged to grow rich, or to make money. They are not obliged to have large success in business. These are incidental, occasional, merely nominal, as far as integrity to Heaven and loyalty to God are concerned.

Material successes are immaterial to God. People are neither better nor worse with those things or without them. They are not sources of reputation or elements of character in the heavenly estimates. But to pray, to really pray, is the source of revenue, the basis of reputation, and the element of character in the estimation of God. People are obliged to pray as they are obliged to be religious. Prayer is loyalty to God. Non-praying is to reject Christ and to abandon Heaven. A life of prayer is the only life which Heaven counts.

God is very concerned that we should pray. We are improved by prayer, and the world is healthier by praying. God does His best work for the world through prayer. God’s greatest glory and our highest good are secured by prayer. Prayer forms the godliest person and makes the godliest world.

God’s promises lie down like giant corpses without life, only for decay and dust unless we take them for our use and bring them to life these promises by earnest and prevailing prayer.

Promise is like the unsown seed, the germ of life in it, but the soil and culture of prayer are necessary to germinate and culture the seed. Prayer is God’s life-giving breath. God’s purposes move along the pathway made by prayer to their glorious designs. God’s purposes are always moving to their high and gracious ends, but the movement is along the way marked by unceasing prayer. The breath of prayer in us is from God.

God has everything to do with prayer, as well as everything to do with the one who prays. To them that pray, and as we pray, the hour is sacred because it is God’s hour. The occasion is sacred because it is the occasion of the soul’s approach to God, and of dealing with God. No hour is more hallowed because it is the occasion of the soul’s mightiest approach to God, and of the fullest revelation from God. People are Godlike and we are blessed, just as the hour of prayer has the most of God in it. Prayer makes and measures the approach of God. A person knows not God who knows not how to pray. A person has never seen God whose eye has not been opened for God in the closet. God’s vision place is the closet. His dwelling place is in secret. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”