ESSENTIAL POINTS IN PRAYER – Charles Spurgeon
ESSENTIAL POINTS IN PRAYER
“The Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared unto him at Gibeon. And the Lord said unto him, I have heard your prayer and your supplication, that you have made before Me: I have hallowed this house, which you have built, to put My name there forever. And My eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually.” 1 Kings 9:2, 3.
Introduction
BELOVED Friends, it was an exceedingly encouraging thing to Solomon that the Lord should appear to him before the beginning of his great work of building the temple. See in the third chapter of this First Book of the Kings, at the fifth verse, “In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give you.” Some of us remember how the Lord was with us at the beginning of our life-work—when we started as young men and women newly converted, full of zeal and earnestness—determined to do something for the Lord. How we sought His face! With what simplicity, with what tenderness of heart, with what dependence upon Him and diffidence as to ourselves! We remember, as HE remembers, the love of our espousals—those early days. I cannot forget when the Lord appeared unto me in Gibeon at the first. Truly there are things about the lives of Christian men that would not have been possible if God had not appeared to them at the beginning. If He had not strengthened and tutored them and given them wisdom beyond what they possess in themselves. If He had not inspirited them. If He had not infused life into them, they had not done what they have already done. It is a priceless blessing to begin with God and not to lay a stone of the temple of our life-work till the Lord has appeared unto us.
I do not know, however, but that it is an equal, perhaps a superior blessing, for the Lord to appear to us after a certain work is done. Even as in this case—“The Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared unto him in Gibeon.” Solomon had now finished the temple and he needed another visit from on high. There is great joy in completing a work. And yet there is, to some minds, a great letdown, when the once engrossing service ceases to keep the mind upon the stretch. You run up hill and you have gained the summit—there is no more climbing for the present—and then you almost wish that you had to struggle again. A work like that of Solomon lasting for seven years must have become a delight to him—to see the house growing and to mark all the stages of its beauty. And so it is with any special and notable work which we are called to do early in life. We get wedded to it, we are glad to see it grow under our hand. And when at last that particular portion of our service is finished, we feel a kind of loss. We have grown used to the pull upon the collar—we have almost leaned upon it and we feel a difference when we are at the top of the hill.
Personally, I never feel exhilaration at a success but a certain sinking of heart when the tug of war was over. We see the same in the story of God’s greater servants. We note it specially in Elijah when he had performed his mighty work on Carmel and slain the prophets of Baal—he felt an exultation in his spirit for a while and he ran before the chariot of the king in the joy of his soul. But there came a reaction afterward of a very painful kind. The case of Solomon is not parallel. And yet I should think that it might have been and probably was so with Solomon that he was in a condition of special need when the temple was finished. He may have been in peril of pride, if not of depression—in either case, it was a remarkable season and its need must have been remarkable, also—“and so the Lord appeared unto Solomon the second time, as He had appeared unto him in Gibeon.”
Renewed Appearances of God in Prayer
Brethren, we need renewed appearances, fresh manifestations, new visitations from on High. And I commend to those of you who are getting on in life—that while you thank God for the past and look back with joy to His visits to you in your early days—you now seek and ask for a second visitation of the Most High. Not that I do not think that you have visitations from God full often and walk in the light of His countenance. But still, though the ocean is often at flood twice every day—yet it has its spring tides. The sun shines whether we see it or not, right through our winter’s fog, and yet it has its summer brightness. If we walk with God constantly, there are still seasons when He opens to us the very secret of His heart and manifests Himself to us not only as He does not unto the world but as He does not at all times to His own favored ones. All days in a palace are not days of banqueting, and all days with God are not so clear and glorious as certain special Sabbaths of the soul in which the Lord unveils His glory. Happy are we if we have once beheld His face. But happier still if He again comes to us in fullness of favor.
I think that we should be seeking those second appearances—we should be crying to God most pleadingly that He would speak to us a second time. We do not want a re-conversion, as some assert. I hope that we do not. If the Lord has kept us, as we should be, steadfast in His fear, we are already possessors of what some call “the higher life.” This have many of us enjoyed from the very first hour of our spiritual life. We do not need to be converted again. But we do wish that again, over our heads, the windows of Heaven should be opened—that again, a Pentecost should be given, and that we should renew our youth like the eagles to run without weariness and walk without fainting. May the Lord fulfill to every one of His people tonight His blessing upon Solomon! “The Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared unto him at Gibeon.”
Our Proper Place in Prayer
Now, what the Lord spoke upon in the commencement of His interview with Solomon concerned his prayer. And as the Lord answered that prayer, and here, in this second appearance, recapitulated the points of it, we may be sure that there was much about that prayer which would make it a model for us. We shall do well to pray after the manner which successful pleaders have followed. In this case, we will follow the Lord’s own description of an accepted prayer.
First, OUR PROPER PLACE IN PRAYER. The Lord said, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication, that you have made before Me.” There is the place to pray—“before Me”—that is to say, before the Lord. Let us talk a little about this matter—“Whenever we seek HIM He is found, And every place is hallowed ground.” But we should take care that the place is hallowed by our prayer being deliberately and reverently presented before God.
This place is not always found. The Pharisee went up to the temple to pray but evidently he did not pray “before God,” so that even in the most holy courts he did not find the place desired. In his own esteem, he prayed—but in his going home to his house without justification—there was evidence that he either had not prayed at all or that he had not prayed before God. It is not because you pass these portals and come into these pews that you are before God. No, and if you were to seek the shrines which have been most eminently regarded in the Church—if you stood by the site of Jerusalem, if you sought out that little skull-like hill called “Calvary,” and prayed there—or if you went to Olivet and bowed your knee in Gethsemane, you might not therefore be before God.
The nearer the Church—sometimes the farther from God. And in the very center of it, in the midst of the assembly where prayer is likely to be made, you may not be “before God” at all. Praying before God is a more spiritual business than is to be performed by turning to the east or to the west, or bowing the knee, or entering within walls hallowed for ages. Alas, it is easy enough to pray and not to pray before God! And it is not so easy—it is indeed a thing not to be done except by the power of the Spirit—to “enter into that which is within the veil,” and to stand before the Mercy Seat, all blood-besprinkled, consciously and really in the presence of the Invisible, to fulfill that precept, “You people, pour out your hearts before Him.” “Before Him” is the place for the soul’s outpouring, and blessed, are they that know it and find it!
This blessed place “before God” can be found in public prayer. Solomon’s prayer before God was offered in the midst of a great multitude. The priests stood in their places and the Levites kept their due order. The people were gathered together and all the armies of the tribes of Israel stood in the streets of the holy city when Solomon bowed his knee and cried mightily unto his God.
It is evident that he was enabled, that day, not to pray to please the people—that they might note his eloquent language and be gratified with the appropriate performance—he was inspired to pray before the Lord. Ah, Brethren, those of us who have to conduct your devotions strive hard that we may be seen of God in secret when heard of men in public. And I am sure that we never pray so rightly or so usefully for you as when we only remember you in a very inferior sense but seem to be surrounded as with a cloud, enclosed within the secret place of the Most High, even when we stand supplicating aloud for you in the public assembly of God’s people.
The same is true of each of you—it is wrong for you, in a Prayer Meeting, to pray with a view to an individual of importance, or with the remembrance of those present whose respect you would like to obtain. The Mercy Seat is no place for the exhibition of your abilities. It is even more evil to take the opportunity of making personal remarks about others. I have heard of oblique hints having been given in prayer. I am sorry to say that I have even heard of remarks which have been so directly critical and offensive that one knew what the Brother was saying and lamented it. Such a proceeding is altogether objectionable and irreverent. We do not pray in Prayer Meetings to correct doctrinal errors, nor to teach a body of divinity, nor to make remarks upon the errors of certain Brethren, nor to impeach them before the Most High. These things should be earnest matters of supplication but not of a sort of indirect preaching and scolding in prayer. It is conduct worthy of the Accuser of the Brethren to turn a prayer into an opportunity of finding fault with others.
Conclusion
Our prayer must be “before God,” or else it is not an acceptable prayer. And if eyes and memory, and thought can be shut to the presence of everybody else, except in that minor sense in which we must remember them in sympathy, then it is in the Presence of God that we truly pray.
And that, I say, may be done in public, if Divine Grace is given. For this, we have need to pray, “O Lord, open my lips. And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.” But prayer before God can just as well—perhaps more readily—be offered in private, though I am not sure that it is not easily missed, even there. You are in your room where you are accustomed to pray. Do you not find yourself upon your knees repeating goodly words, while your heart is wandering? May you not confess that often the prayer which has been a matter of habit, has been said as much before the walls of your room, or before the bedpost, as before God? You have not realized His Presence—you have not spoken distinctly and directly to Him.
Although you have observed the Savior’s canon and have shut the door and nobody else has been there so that you have not prayed in the presence of others—you have mainly prayed in your own presence and God has to your inmost soul been far away. It is poor work merely to talk piously to yourself. There is not much that comes of pouring your heart into your heart, praying your soul into your own soul—it is neither an emptying of self, nor a filling with God—it does but stir up what had been quite as well left as dregs at the bottom.
Better far is the course prescribed in that hallowed precept, “You people, pour out your heart before Him”—turn them bottom upwards, let all run out before God and so let room be left for something better and more Divine. Pouring out your soul within yourself does not come to much. And yet often that is about what our prayer amounts to—a recapitulation of wants without a grasp of Divine supplies. A bemoaning of weakness without a reception of strength. A consciousness of nothingness but not a plunging into all-sufficiency.
Brothers and Sisters, the main point of supplication is neither to pray in the presence of others, nor yet, first of all, in your own presence but to present your prayer “before God.”
The Great Desire in Prayer
What we desire in prayer is really to be heard. If I pray, I pray not to the winds, nor to the waves—but to God. And if He does not hear me, I have lost my breath. The first thing the soul desires in prayer is an audience with God. If the Lord does not hear us, we have gained nothing. And what an honor it is, if you come to think of it, to have audience with God! The frail, feeble, undeserving creature is permitted to stand in the august Presence of the God of the whole earth and the Lord regards that poor creature as if there were nothing else for Him to observe and bends His ear and His heart to listen to that creature’s cry! It is necessary to a living prayer to feel that we are speaking to God and that God is hearing us.
Our Assurance in Prayer
Can we have an assurance that God has heard and answered prayer? Solomon had it. The Lord said unto him, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication, that you have made before Me.” Does the Lord ever say that to us? I think so. Let us consider how He does so. I think that He says it to us very often in our usual faith. I hope that I speak for many of you when I say that we constantly pray believingly. It is habitual with me to expect God to answer me. I go to Him very simply and ask for what I want. And if I did not have that which I humbly sought for, I should be greatly surprised. When I do get it, I reckon it as a matter of course—for the Lord has promised to answer prayer and it is certain that He will keep His promise.
Special Application of Prayer
Let me speak of OUR SPECIAL APPLICATION OF PRAYER. In the case of Solomon, prayer turned in one direction and in that direction I want to turn now. You learn what Solomon’s prayer was when you hear how God fulfilled it. God said to him, “I have hallowed this house which you have built and put My name there forever and My eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually.”
Our prayer is again that the Lord Himself would hallow this house which we have built. We ask this in no superstitious way. Bricks and mortar and iron and stone are nothing to us. The qualities of holiness do not adhere to material substances but to hearts and to souls and acts. Yet we ask our Lord to hallow this Tabernacle with His Presence still more and more. If that were gone, Ichabod would be our bitter cry! The glory would indeed have departed.
The Lord bless His people in this House of Prayer in the breaking of bread, in the ordinance of Baptism, in the proclamation of the Gospel, and in all their gatherings together. O Lord, we pray You hallow this house. We pray it from our inmost souls. We that have found our services to be hallowed to You in days that are past, cannot bear the idea of failure and famine in the future. May the Lord say to us tonight, “I have hallowed this house which you have built.”
May the name of our Covenant God be set here forever and no other name. And then, Solomon prayed also and God heard him, that the eyes of the Lord might be there. That was Solomon’s prayer and God greatly improved upon it, for He said that His eyes and His heart should be there perpetually. Oh, that the eyes of the Lord might be upon this house and upon this Church, to watch over it, to keep it from all harm! But may His heart also be with us to fill us with His Divine life and love and to make us know His inner self! Oh for the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit! May we know that God’s feelings of affection and delight are towards us! This shall be our joy unspeakable.
Conclusion
The Lord bless you, dear Friends, for Christ’s sake! Amen.