E. M. Bounds
Chapter 3
PRAYER AND TRUSTING GOD
One evening I left my office in New York with a bitterly cold wind in my face. I had with me (as I thought) my thick, warm muffler, but when I proceeded to button up against the storm, I found that it was gone. I turned back, looked along the streets, searched my office, but in vain. I realized that I must have dropped it, and I prayed to God that I would find it; for such was the state of the weather that it would be running a great risk to proceed without it. I looked again up and down the surrounding streets, but without success. Suddenly, I saw a man on the opposite side of the road holding out something in his hand. I crossed over and asked him if that was my muffler. He handed it to me saying, “It was blown to me by the wind.” He who rides upon the storm had used the wind as a means of answering prayer. – William Horst
Prayer does not stand alone. It is not an isolated duty or an independent principle. It lives in fellowship with other Christian duties. It is married to other principles and is a partner with other graces. But prayer is firmly joined to faith. Faith gives it color and tone, shapes its character, and secures its results.
Trust is faith that has become absolute, approved, and accomplished. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full bloom. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware. According to the scriptural concept, it is the eye of the newborn soul and the ear of the renewed soul. It is the feeling of the soul — the spiritual sight, hearing, taste, and touch. all these have to do with trust. How bright, distinct, conscious, powerful, and scriptural such a trust is! How different, feeble, dry, and cold are many forms of modern beliefs in comparison! These modern beliefs do not bring awareness of their presence. They do not bring “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet 1:8) from their exercise. they are, for the most part, adventures in the doubts of the soul. There is no safe, sure trust in anything. The whole transaction takes place in the area of maybe and perhaps.
Trust, like life, is feeling, though much more. An unfelt life is a contradiction. An unfelt trust is a misnaming and a false belief. Trust is the most felt of all qualities. It is all feeling, and it only works by love. An unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust. The trust we are speaking about is a conviction. An unfelt conviction? How absurd!
Trust sees God doing things here and now. Yes, and more. It rises to a high place and looks into the invisible and the eternal. It realizes that God has done things and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into the history and happenings of time. It transforms hope into the reality of fulfillment and changes promise into present possession. We know when we trust, just as we know when we see. We are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, holds. Trust is its own witness.
Yet, quite often, faith is too weak to obtain God’s greatest good immediately. 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 areas of experience and time.
Up to this point, trust shapes all its forces. Here it holds. In the struggle, trust’s grasp becomes mightier, and it grasps for itself all that God has done for it in His eternal wisdom and fullness of grace.
In the matter of waiting in mighty prayer, faith rises to its highest level and becomes the gift of God. It becomes the blessed character and expression of the soul that is secured by a constant fellowship with and tireless request to God.
Jesus Christ clearly taught that faith was the condition on which prayer was answered. When our Lord cursed the fig tree, the disciples were very surprised that its withering had actually taken place. Their remarks indicated their unbelief. 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 cast thou into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:22-24)
There is no place where trust grows so readily and richly as in the prayer closet. Its unfolding and development are rapid and wholesome when they are kept regularly and well. When these appointments are sincere, full, and free, trust grows increasingly. The eye and presence of God give active life to trust, just like the eye and presence of the sun make fruit and flower grow and all things glad and bright with fuller life.
Faith and 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” (John 14:1) 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. Jesus sought to impress this great truth on Martha when her brother lay dead in their home at Bethany. Martha stated her belief in the resurrection of her brother: “Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 111:24).
Jesus lifted her trust 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 liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. (John 11:25-27)
Trust in a historical fact or a mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person strengthens the quality. It bears fruit and supplies it with love. The trust that supplies prayer centers in a Person.
Trust goes even further than this. The trust that inspires our prayer must not only be one in the person of God, and of Christ, but also in their ability and willingness to grant the thing prayed for. It is not only, “Trust in the LORD” (Ps 37:3), but also, “for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength” (Isa 26:4).
The trust that our Lord taught as a condition of effective prayer is not from the head but from the heart. It is trust that does not doubt. 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.
Do we believe without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe that we will receive the things we ask for, not on a future day, but then and there? This is the teaching of this inspiring Scripture. How we need to pray, “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke 17:5) until doubt is gone and absolute trust claims the promised blessing as its very own.
This is no easy condition. It is only reached after many failures, much praying, many wailing, and much trial of faith. May our faith increase until we realize and receive all the fullness that there is in the name of Jesus, which guarantees to do so much.
Our Lord puts forth trust as the very foundation of praying. The background of prayer is trust. The whole purpose of Christ’s ministry and work was dependent on absolute trust in His Father. The center of trust is God. Mountains of difficulties and all other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and its strong follower, faith.
When trust is perfect and there is no 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 or 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, what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.
The disciples’ unfortunate lack of trust and resulting failure to do what they were sent out to do is seen in the case of the lunatic son. His father brought him to nine of them while their Master was on the Mount of Transfiguration. The boy, sadly tormented, was brought to these men to be cured of his sickness. They had been commissioned to do this very kind of work. This was part of their mission. They tried to cast the demon from the boy but noticeably failed. The demon was too much for them. They were humiliated at their failure while their enemies were victorious.
During the incident, Jesus drew near. He was informed of the circumstances and conditions connected with it. Here is the account of what followed:
There 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. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? … Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. (Matt 17:17-19, 21)
Where was the difficulty of these men? They had been careless in cultivating their faith by prayer, and, as a results, their trust utterly failed. They did not trust God, Christ, or the authenticity of His mission or their own. It has been the same since, in many a crisis in the church of God. Failure has resulted from a lack of trust, a weakness of faith, and a lack of prayerfulness. Many failure in revival efforts have been traceable to the same cause. Faith has not been nurtured and made powerful by prayer. Neglect of the inner chamber is the solution of most spiritual failure. This is also true of our personal struggles with Satan when we attempt to cast out demons. Being on our knees in private fellowship with God is our only assurance that we will have Him with us in our personal struggles or in our efforts to convert sinners.
When people came to Him, our Lord put their trust in Him and the divinity of His mission in the forefront. He did not give a definition of trust. He did not furnish a theological discussion or analysis of it. He knew that men would see what faith was by what faith did. They would see from its free exercise that trust grew up, automatically, in His presence. It was the product of His work, His power, and His person. These furnished and created a favorable atmosphere for its exercise and development. Trust is altogether too simple for verbal definition. It is too sincere and spontaneous for theological terms. The very simplicity of trust is what staggers many people. They look 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” (Rom 10:8).
When the sad news of his daughter’s death was brought to Jarius, our Lord interrupted saying, “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole” (Luke 8:50). To the woman with the issue of blood, who stood trembling before Him, He said, “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace” (v 48).
As the two blind men followed Him, pressing their way into the house, He said, “According to your faith be in it unto you. And their eyes were opened” (Matt 9:29-30). When the paralytic was let down by four of his friends through the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching and placed before Him, it is recorded: “And Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee” (Matt 9:2).
When Jesus dismissed the centurion whose servant was seriously ill, He did it in a particular manner. The centurion had come to Jesus with the prayer that He speak the healing word without even going to his house. Jesus did the following: “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 self-same hour” (Matt 8:13). When the poor leper fell at Jesus’ feet and cried out for relief saying, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean” (v 2). Jesus immediately granted his request, and the man glorified Him with a loud voice.
The Syrophenician woman came to Jesus about her troubled daughter, Making the case her own, she prayed, “Lord, help me” (Matt 15:25). Jesus honored 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” (v 28).
After the disciples had utterly failed to cast the demon out of the epileptic boy, the father of the boy came to Jesus with a sad, despairing cry, “If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us” (Mark 9:22). But Jesus replied, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes” (v 23).
Blind Bartimaeus, sitting by the wayside, heard out Lord as He passed by and cried out pitifully, “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me” (Mark 10:47). The keen ears of our Lord immediately caught the sound of prayer. He said to the beggar, “Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way” (v 52).
Jesus spoke cheerful, soul-comforting words to the weeping, penitent woman who washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair: “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” (Luke 7:50).
One day Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, in answer to their united prayer, “Jesus, Master, have merecy on us” (Luke 17:13). He told them to go and show themselves to the priests. “And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed” (v 14).
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