Power in PrayerSýnishorn

Childlike Reverence

Next to this is another essential to victorious prayer: childlike reverence. Notice the next sentence: We receive what we ask “because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”

We do not allow children to question the propriety or wisdom of their father’s command; obedience ends where questioning begins. A child’s standard of its duty must not become the measure of the father’s right to command. The weightiest reason for a loving child’s action is that it would please his parents, and the strongest thing that can be said to hold back a gracious child is that such a course of action would displease his parents. It is precisely so with us toward God, who is a perfect parent, and therefore we may without fear of mistake always make His pleasure the rule of right, while the rule of wrong may safely remain that which would displease Him.

Suppose any of us should be self-willed and say, “I shall not do what pleases God; I shall do what pleases myself.” Then what would be the nature of our prayers? Our prayers might then be summed up in the request, “Let me have my own way.” And can we expect God to consent to that? Would you have the Almighty resign the throne to place a proud mortal there? If you have a child in your house who has no respect for his father but who says, “I want to have my own way in all things,” will you stoop to him? Will you allow him to dictate to you? God’s house is not ordered so: He will not listen to His self-willed children, except to hear them in anger and answer them in wrath.

Remember how He heard the prayer of Israel for meat, and when the meat was in their mouths, it became a curse to them (see Num. 11). Many persons are chastened by obtaining their own desires. We must have a childlike reverence of God so that we feel, “Lord, if what I ask for does not please You, neither would it please me. My desires are put into Your hands to be corrected. Strike the pen through every petition I offer that is not right, and put in whatever I have omitted. Good Lord, if I ought to have desired it, hear me as if I had desired it. ‘Not as I will, but as You will.’”

This yielding spirit is essential to continual prevalence with God in prayer; the reverse is a sure bar to eminence in supplication. The Lord will be reverenced by those who are near Him. They must have an eye to His pleasure in all that they do and all that they ask, or He will not look upon them with favor.