Faith Accompanies Prayer at Every Step

Tip! In (Phil. 4:6) we have these words about prayer: 'Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'

It was claimed for Augustus Caesar that he found Rome a city of wood, and left it a city of marble. The pastor, who succeeds in changing his people from a prayer-less to a prayerful people, has done a greater work than did Augustus in changing a city from wood to marble. And after all, this is the primary work of the preacher. First and foremost, he is dealing with prayer-less people -- with people of whom it is said, "God is not in all their thoughts." This type of person he meets everywhere, and all the time.

The pastor's main business is to turn us from being forgetful of God and from being devoid of faith, from being prayer-less, so that we become people who habitually pray, who believe in God and remember Him and do His will. The preacher is not sent to merely persuade people to join the Church, nor merely to get them to do better. It is to get them to pray, to trust God and to keep God always before our eyes that we may not sin against Him.

The work of the ministry is to change unbelieving sinners into praying and believing saints. The call goes out by Divine authority, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved." We catch a glimpse of the tremendous importance of faith and of the great value God has set on it, when we remember that He has made it the one indispensable condition of being saved.

"By grace are ye saved, through faith" Thus, when we contemplate the great importance of prayer, we find faith standing immediately by its side. By faith are we saved, and by faith we stay saved. Prayer introduces us to a life of faith. Paul declared that the life he lived, he lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him - so that he could walk by faith and not by sight.

Prayer is absolutely dependent upon faith. Virtually, it has no existence apart from it, and accomplishes nothing unless it is its inseparable companion. Faith makes prayer effectual, and in a certain important sense, must precede it.

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

"For he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."

Before prayer ever starts toward God; before its petition is preferred, before its requests are made known -- faith must have gone on ahead; must have asserted its belief in the existence of God; must have given its assent to the gracious truth that "God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek His face." This is the primary step in praying.

In this regard, while faith does not bring the blessing, yet it puts prayer in a position to ask for it, and leads to another step toward realization, by aiding us to believe that God is able and willing to bless.

Faith starts prayer to work -- clears the way to the mercy-seat. It gives us the assurance, first of all, that there is a mercy-seat and that there is a High Priest who waits for us and our prayers. Faith opens the way for prayer to approach God.

But faith does more. It accompanies prayer at every step she takes. It is her inseparable companion and when requests are made unto God, it is faith that turns the asking into obtaining. And faith follows prayer, since the spiritual life into which a believer is led by prayer, is a life of faith. The one prominent characteristic of the experience into which we as believers are brought through prayer, is not a life of works, but of faith.