Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part I

Tip! If we, God's people expect to carry out the works of Christ that will glorify our Father, then we must believe in Him for the very work's sake, and pray fervently in His Name.

PRAYER does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty or an independent principle. It lives in association with other Christian duties, prayer is married to other principles, and it is a partner with other graces. But to faith, prayer is unbreakably connected. Faith gives prayer its color and tone, shapes its character, and secures its results.

Trust is when our faith becomes unreserved, ratified and completed in our heart. There is, when all is said and done, a sort of serious and sincere effort in faith and its exercise. But trust is a firm belief; it is faith that grows into full flower. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware of. According to the Holy Scriptures this idea of trust is the eye of the new-born soul, and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul, the spiritual eye, the ear, the taste, the feeling -- all of these things have to do with trust.

How brilliant, how distinct, how conscious, how powerful, and more than all, how Scriptural is such a trust! How different from many forms of modern belief, so feeble, dry, and cold! These new phases of belief bring no consciousness of their presence, no "Joy unspeakable and full of glory" results from their exercise. They are, for the most part, adventures in the peradventures of the soul. There is no safe, sure trust in anything. The whole transaction takes place in the realm of "maybe and perhaps".

Trust like life, is a feeling, though much more than a feeling. An unfelt life is a contradiction; an unfelt trust is a misnomer, a delusion, a contradiction. Trust is the most felt of all attributes. It is all feeling, and it works only by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust of which we are now speaking is a conviction: An unfelt conviction? How absurd!

Tip! Seeking God's will for our life - This type of prayer requires us to really open up our spirit and seek to hear what God is saying to us. We need to come humbly before him, asking him to use us as a tool for his work - and praying for guidance and wisdom as we seek to follow where his is leading us.

Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yes, and more. It rises to a high distinction, and looking into the invisible and the eternal, realizes that God has done things, and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into the records and happenings of time, changes the substance of hope into the reality of completion, and transforms a promise into our present ownership. We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, and holds. Trust is its own witness.

Yet, quite often, our faith is too weak to obtain God's greatest good, immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, pressing obedience, until it grows in strength, and is able to bring down the eternal, into the realms of experience and time.

To this point, trust masses all its forces. Here it holds. And in the struggle, trust's grasp becomes mightier, and grasps, for itself, all that God has done for it in His eternal wisdom and abundance of grace.

In the matter of waiting in prayer, mightiest prayer, faith rises to its highest plane and becomes indeed the gift of God. It becomes the blessed nature and expression of our soul that is secured by a constant communication with, and continuing devotion to God.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part II

Tip! 'Intercession' is amplification in prayer; it is going out in broadness and fullness from ones self for others. Primarily, it does not center in praying for others, but refers to the freeness, boldness and childlike confidence in praying.

Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was answered. When our Lord had cursed the fig-tree, the disciples were very surprised that its withering had actually taken place, and their remarks indicated their inexperience. It was then that Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God."

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he said shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he said. Therefore, I say unto you, what things so ever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them."

Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer-room of your heart. It's unfolding and developments are rapid and wholesome when you are regularly and well kept. When these engagements are hearty and full and free, trust flourishes exceedingly. The eye and presence of God gives vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit and flowers grow, and all things glad and bright with fuller life.

"Have faith in God," "Trust in the Lord" form the keynote and foundation of prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of God, but rather trust in the Person of God. For trust in the Person of God must precede trust in the Word of God. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me," is the demand our Lord makes on the personal trust of His disciples. The person of Jesus Christ must be central, to the eye of trust. This great truth Jesus sought to impress on Martha, when her brother lay dead, in the home at Bethany. Martha asserted her belief in the fact of the resurrection of her brother:

"Martha said unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

Tip! God's people do not have authorization to demand the Savior's promise of, "...Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do," in order to gain something very special for themselves.

Jesus lifts her trust clear above the mere fact of the resurrection, to His own Person, by saying:

"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever lives and believeth in Me, shall never die. Believe thou this? She said unto Him, Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."

Trust, in an historical fact or in a mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, endorses it, and enlightens it with love. This trust that informs prayer then centers in on a Person (Jesus Christ).

Tip! 'Supplication' is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

Trust goes even further than this. The trust which inspires our prayer must be not only trust in the Person of God, and of Christ, but in their ability and willingness to grant the things we are prayed for. It is not only, "Trust, ye, in the Lord," but, also, "for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength."

The trust that our Lord taught as a condition of prevailing prayer is not from our head but from our heart. It is this trust that "doubts not in his heart." Such trust has the Divine assurance that it will be honored with large and satisfying answers. The strong promise of our Lord brings faith down to the present, and counts on a present answer.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part III

Tip! 'Supplication' is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

Do we believe, without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe, not that we will receive the things that we ask for on a future day, but that we will receive them, now? This is the teaching of the inspired Scripture. How we need to pray, "Lord, increase our faith," until doubt be gone, and total trust claims the promised blessings, as it's very own.

This is no easy condition. It is reached only after many failures, after much praying, after many long hours or even days of waiting, and after much trial of our faith. Could our faith so increase until we realize and receive all the fullness there is in that Name that guarantees to do so much!

Our Lord puts trust as the very foundation of praying. The background of prayer is trust. The whole issuance of Christ's ministry and work was dependent on implicit trust in His Father. The centre of trust is God. Mountains of difficulties and all other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and his virile henchman, faith. When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand, ready to receive.

Trust perfected, is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for -- and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.

The regrettable lack of trust and following failure of the disciples to do what they were sent out to do is seen in the case of the possessed son, who was brought by his father to nine of them while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. A boy, sadly afflicted, was brought to these men to be cured of his dilemma. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. This was a part of their mission. They attempted to cast out the devil from the boy, but had signal handedly failed. The devil was too much for them. They were embarrassed at their failure, and filled with shame, while their enemies were in triumph. Amid the confusion Jesus arrives on the scene. He is informed of the circumstances, and told of the conditions connected to the problem. Here is the succeeding account:

Tip! What really determines' the effectiveness of our labor for Christ is the measure of our faith and the fervency of our prayers. If our faith is poor and our praying is indifferent; how can we expect to achieve much for Him?

"Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. And when He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, "Why could not we cast him out?" And He said unto them, "This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting."

Can you see why these men were having trouble? They had been lax in growing their faith by prayer and, as a consequence, their trust utterly failed them. They trusted not God, nor Christ, nor the ability of His mission, or their own for that matter. So has it been many times since then, in many a crisis in our own lives. Failure has resulted from a lack of trust, or from a weakness of faith, and this, in turn, from a lack of prayerfulness.

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

Many a failure in revival efforts has been traceable to this same cause. Faith had not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Our neglect of the inner chamber or secret prayer time with our Father, this is the cause of most spiritual failure. And this is as true with our personal struggles with the devil as was the case when we went out to attempt to cast out devils in our own lives. The only way to change this is we must be on our knees in private communion with God. This is the only guarantee that we will have Him with us either in our personal struggles, or in our efforts to convert sinners.

Everywhere in God's Word we see that when people approached Him, our Lord put trust in Him, and the divinity of His mission, in the forefront. He gave no definition of trust, and He furnishes no theological discussion of or analysis of it; for He knew that people would see what faith was by what faith did; and from its free exercise trust grew up, spontaneously, in His presence. It was the product of His work, His power and His Person. These furnished and created an atmosphere most favorable for its exercise and development.

Trust Sees God doing Things Here and Now when We Pray! Part IV

Tip! Seeking God's will for our life - This type of prayer requires us to really open up our spirit and seek to hear what God is saying to us. We need to come humbly before him, asking him to use us as a tool for his work - and praying for guidance and wisdom as we seek to follow where his is leading us.

Trust is altogether too splendidly simple for verbal definition; too hearty and spontaneous for theological terminology. The very simplicity of trust is that which staggers many people. They look away for some great thing to come to pass, while all the time "the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart."

When the saddening news of his daughter's death was brought to Jairus our Lord interposed: "Be not afraid," He said calmly, "only believe." To the woman with the issue of blood, who stood tremblingly before Him, He said:

"Daughter, thy faith hath made you whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague."

As the two blind men followed Him, pressing their way into the house, He said:

"According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened."

When the paralytic was let down through the roof of the house, where Jesus was teaching, and placed before Him by four of his friends, it is recorded after this fashion:

"And Jesus seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee."

When Jesus dismissed the centurion whose servant was seriously ill, and who had come to Jesus with the prayer that He speak the healing word, without even going to his house, He did it in the manner following:

Tip! So when we ask Christ to carry out His works in our hearts we are fervently praying that our Father may be glorified in His Son.

"And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour."

When the poor leper fell at the feet of Jesus and cried out for relief, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," Jesus immediately granted his request, and the man glorified Him with a loud voice. Then Jesus said unto him, "Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole."

The Syrophenician woman came to Jesus with the case of her afflicted daughter, making the case her own, with the prayer, "Lord, help me," making a fearful and heroic struggle. Jesus honors' her faith and prayer, saying:

"O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour."

After the disciples had utterly failed to cast the devil out of the epileptic boy, the father of the stricken lad came to Jesus with the plaintive and almost despairing cry, "If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us." But Jesus replied, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."

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.

Blind Bartimaeus sitting by the wayside, hears our Lord as He passes by, and cries out pitifully and almost despairingly, "Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me." The keen ears of our Lord immediately catch the sound of prayer, and He says to the beggar:

"Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way."

To the weeping, penitent woman, washing His feet with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head, Jesus speaks cheering, soul-comforting words: "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace."

One day Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, in answer to their united prayer, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us," and He told them to go and show themselves to the priests. "And it came to pass as they went, they were cleansed."