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THE KNEELING CHRISTIAN
by Unknown Christian

Verily, converts from heathendom put us to shame. In my journeyings I came to Rawal Pindi, in N.W. India. What do you think happened there? Some of Pandita Ramabai’s girls went there to camp. But a little while before this, Pandita Ramabai had said to her girls, “If there is any blessing in India, we may have it. Let us ask God to tell us what we must do in order to have the blessing.” As she read her Bible she paused over the verse, “Wait for the promise of the Father . . . ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” (Acts i. 4-8). “‘Wait’! Why, we have never done this,” she cried. “We have prayed, but we have never expected any greater blessing today than we had yesterday!” Oh, how they prayed! One prayer-meeting lasted six hours. And what a marvelous blessing God poured out in answer to their prayers.

Whilst some of these girls were at Rawal Pindi, a lady missionary, looking out of her tent towards midnight, was surprised to see a light burning in one of the girls’ tents — a thing quite contrary to rules. She went to expostulate, but found the youngest of those ten girls — a child of fifteen — kneeling in the farthest corner of the tent, holding a little tallow candle in one hand and a list of names for intercession in the other. She had 500 names on her list — 500 out of the 1,500 girls in Pandita Ramabai’s school. Hour after hour she was naming them before God. No wonder God’s blessing fell wherever those girls went, and upon whomsoever those girls prayed for.

Pastor Ding Li Mei, of China, has the names of 1,100 students on his prayer-list. Many hundreds have been won to Christ through his prayers. And so out-and-out are his converts that many scores of them have entered the Christian ministry.

It would be an easy matter to add to these amazing and inspiring stories of blessing through prayer. But there is no need to do so. I know that God wants me to pray. I know that God wants you to pray.

“If there is any blessing in England we may have it.” Nay, more — if there is any blessing in Christ we may have it. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. i. 3). God’s great storehouse is full of blessings. Only prayer can unlock that storehouse. Prayer is the key, and faith both turns the key and opens the door, and claims the blessing. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And to see Him is to pray aright.

Listen! We have come — you and I — once more to the parting of the ways. All our past failure, all our past inefficiency and insufficiency, all our past unfruitfulness in service, can be banished now, once and for all, if we will only give prayer its proper place. Do it today. Do not wait for a more convenient time.

Everything worth having depends upon the decision we make. Truly God is a wonderful God! And one of the most wonderful things about Him is that He puts His all at the disposal of the prayer of faith. Believing prayer from a wholly-cleansed heart never fails. God has given us His word for it. Yet vastly more wonderful is the amazing fact that Christian men and women should either not believe God’s word, or should fail to put it to the test.

When Christ is “all in all” — when He is Savior and Lord and King of our whole being, then it is really He Who prays our prayers. We can then truthfully alter one word of a well-known verse and say that the Lord Jesus ever liveth to make intercession in us. Oh, that we might make the Lord Jesus “marvel” not at our unbelief but at our faith! When our Lord shall again “marvel,” and say of us, “Verily . . . I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel” (Matt. viii. 10), then indeed shall “palsy” — paralysis — be transformed into power.

Has not our Lord come to “cast fire” upon us? Are we “already kindled”? Can He not use us as much as he used those mere children of Khedgaon? God is no respecter of persons. If we can humbly and truthfully say, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. i. 21), will He not manifest forth His mighty power in us?

Some of us have been reading about Praying Hyde. Truly, his intercession changed things. Men tell us that they were thrilled when John Hyde prayed. They were stirred to their inmost being when he just pleaded the name “Jesus! — Jesus! — Jesus!” and a baptism of love and power came upon them.

But it was not John Hyde, it was the Holy Spirit of God whom one consecrated man, filled with that Spirit, brought down upon all around him. May we not all become “Praying Hydes”? Do you say “No! He had a special gift of prayer”? Very well — how did he get it? He was once just an ordinary Christian man — just like any of us.

Have you noticed that, humanly speaking, he owed his prayer-life to the prayers of his father’s friend? Now get hold of this point. It is one of greatest importance, and one which may profoundly affect your whole life. Perhaps I may be allowed to tell the story fully, for so much depends upon it. Shall we quote John Hyde himself? He was on board a ship sailing for India, whither he was going as a missionary. He says, “My father had a friend who greatly desired to be a foreign missionary, but was not permitted to go. This friend wrote me a letter directed in care of the ship.

I received it a few hours out of New York harbor. The words were not many, but the purport of them was this: ‘I shall not cease praying for you, dear John, until you are filled with the Holy Spirit.’ When I had read the letter I crumpled it up in anger and threw it on the deck. Did this friend think I had not received the baptism of the Spirit, or that I would think of going to India without this equipment? I was angry. But by and by better judgment prevailed, and I picked up the letter, and read it again. Possibly I did need something which I had not yet received. I paced up and down the deck, a battle raging within. I felt uncomfortable: I loved the writer; I knew the holy life he lived, and down in my heart there was a conviction that he was right, and that I was not fit to be a missionary. . . . This went on for two, or three days, until I felt perfectly miserable. . . . At last, in a kind of despair, I asked the Lord to fill me with the Holy Spirit; and the moment I did this . . . I began to see myself, and what a selfish ambition I had.”

But he did not yet receive the blessing sought. He landed in India and went with a fellow-missionary to an open-air service. “The missionary spoke,” said John Hyde, “and I was told that he was speaking about Jesus Christ as the real Savior from sin. When he had finished his address, a respectable-looking man, speaking good English, asked the missionary whether he himself had been thus saved? The question went home to my heart; for if it had been asked me, I would have had to confess that Christ had not fully saved me, because I knew there was a sin in my life which had not been taken away. I realized what a dishonor it would be on the name of Christ to have to confess that I was preaching a Christ that had not delivered me from sin, though I was proclaiming to others that He was a perfect Savior. I went back to my room and shut myself in, and told the Lord that it must be one of two things: either He must give me victory over all my sins, and especially over the sin that so easily beset me, or I must return to America and seek there for some other work.

I said I could not stand up to preach the Gospel until I could testify of its power in my own life. I . . . realized how reasonable this was, and the Lord assured me that He was able and willing to deliver me from all sin. He did deliver me, and I have not had a doubt of this since.”

It was then, and then only, that John Hyde became Praying Hyde. And it is only by such a full surrender and such a definite claiming to be delivered from the power of sin in our lives that you and I can be men of prevailing prayer. The point we wish to emphasize, however, is the one already mentioned. A comparatively unknown man prays for John Hyde, who was then unknown to the world, and by his prayers brings down such a blessing upon him that everyone knows of him now as “Praying Hyde.” Did you say in your heart, dear reader, a little while ago, that you could not hope to be a Praying Hyde? Of course we cannot all give so much time to prayer. For physical or other reasons we may be hindered from long-continued praying. But we may all have his spirit of prayer. And may we not all do for others what the unnamed friend did for John Hyde?

Can we not pray the blessing down upon others — upon your vicar or pastor? Upon your friend? Upon your family? What a ministry is ours, if we will but enter it! But to do so, we must make the full surrender which John Hyde made. Have we done it? Failure in prayer is due to fault in the heart. Only the “pure in heart” can see God. And only those who “call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (II Tim. ii. 22) can confidently claim answers to their prayers.

What a revival would break out, what a mighty blessing would come down if only everyone who read these words would claim the fullness of the Holy Spirit now!

Do you not see why it is that God wants us to pray? Do you now see why everything worth having depends upon prayer? There are several reasons, but one stands out very clearly and vividly before us after reading this chapter. It is just this: if we ask and God does not give, then the fault is with us. Every unanswered prayer is a clarion call to search the heart to see what is wrong there; for the promise is unmistakable in its clearness: “If ye shall ask anything in My name, that will I do” (John xiv. 14).

Truly he who prays puts, not God, but his own spiritual life to the test!

Let me come closer to Thee, Jesus,
Oh, closer every day;
Let me lean harder on Thee, Jesus,
Yes, harder all the way.

CHAPTER 4: ASKING FOR SIGNS

“DOES God indeed answer prayer?” is a question often on the lips of people, and oftener still in their inmost hearts. “Is prayer of any real use?” Somehow or other we cannot help praying; but then even pagan savages cry out to someone or something to aid them in times of danger and disaster and distress.

And those of us who really do believe in prayer are soon faced with another question: “Is it right to put God to the test?” Moreover, a further thought flashes into our minds: “Dare we put God to the test?” For there is little doubt failure in the prayer-life is often — always? — due to failure in the spiritual life. So many people harbor much unbelief in the heart regarding the value and effectiveness of prayer; and without faith, prayer is vain.

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