A Treasury Of Prayer: The Best Of E.M. BoundsShembull

Purpose in Prayer

The possibilities and necessity of prayer, its power and results, are manifested in arresting and changing the purposes of God and in relieving the stroke of His power. Pharaoh himself was a firm believer in the possibilities and its ability to relieve. When staggering under the woeful curses of God, he pleaded with Moses to intercede for him. “Entreat the Lord for me,” was his pathetic appeal four times repeated when the plagues were scourging Egypt. Four times were these urgent appeals made to Moses, and four times did prayer lift the dread curse from the hard king and his doomed land.

The blasphemy and idolatry of Israel in making the golden calf and declaring their devotions to it was a fearful crime. The anger of God waxed hot, and He declared that He would destroy the offending people.

The Lord was very wroth with Aaron also, and to Moses He said, “Let me alone that I may destroy them.” But Moses prayed and kept on praying; day and night he prayed, forty days. He makes the record of his prayer struggle. “I fell down,” he says, “before the Lord at the first forty days and nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water because of your sins which … provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure wherewith the Lord was hot against you to destroy you. But the Lord hearkened to me at this time also. And the Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him, and I prayed for him also at the same time.” Men like Moses knew how to pray and to prevail in prayer. Their faith in prayer was no passing attitude that changed with the wind or with their own feelings and circumstances; it was a fact that God heard and answered, and that the power to do what was asked of Him was commensurate with His willingness. And thus these men, strong in faith and in prayer, “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

Everything then, as now, was possible to the men and women who knew how to pray.