IV. Now, lest I should weary you, let me come to the closing part of my
discourse. And, O God, lend us thy strength now, that this duty may come
forcibly home to our conscience, and we may at once engage in this exercise!
Brethren, I have to EXHORT YOU TO PRAY FOR OTHERS. Before I do it, I will ask
you a personal question. Do you always pray for others? Guilty or not guilty,
here? Do you think you have taken the case of your children, your church,
your neighbourhood, and the ungodly world before God as you ought to have
done? If you have, I have not. For I stand here a chief culprit before the
Master to make confession of the sin; and while I shall exhort you to
practice what is undoubtedly a noble privilege, I shall be most of all
exhorting myself.
I begin thus, by saying, Brethren, how can you and I repay the debt we owe to
the Church unless we pray for others? How was it that you were converted? It
was because somebody else prayed for you. I, in tracing back my own
conversion, cannot fail to impute it, through God’s Spirit, to the prayers of
my mother. I believe that the Lord heard her earnest cries when I knew not
that her soul was exercised about me. There are many of you that were prayed
for when you were asleep in your cradles as unconscious infants. Your
mothers’ liquid prayers fell hot upon your infant brows, and gave you what
was a true christening while you were still but little ones. There are
husbands here who owe their conversion to their wives’ prayers; brothers who
must acknowledge that it was a sister’s pleading; children who must confess
that their sabbath-school teachers were wont to pray for them. Now, if by
others’ prayers you and I were brought to Christ, how can we repay this
Christian kindness, but by pleading for others? He who has not a man to pray
for him may write himself down a hopeless character. During one of the
revivals in America, a young man was going to see the minister, but he did
not, because the minister had avoided him with considerable coldness. A
remark was made to the minister upon what he had done, and he said, “Well, I
did not want to see him; I knew he had only come to mock and scoff; what
should I see him for; you do not know him as well as I do, or else you would
have done the same.” A day or two after there was a public meeting, where the
preaching of the Word was to be carried on in the hope that the revival might
be continued. A young man who had been lately converted through the prayers
of another young man was riding to the worship on his horse, and as he was
riding along he was overtaken by our young friend whom the minister thought
so godless. He said to him, “Where are you going today, William?” “Well, I am
going to the meeting, and I hear that you have been converted.” “I thank God
I have been brought to a knowledge of the truth,” he answered. “Oh!” said the
other, “I shall never be; I wish I might.” His friend was surprised to hear
him whom the minister thought to be so hard say that, and he said, “But why
cannot you be converted?” “Why?” said the other, “you know you were converted
through the prayers of Mr. K-.” “Yes, so I was.” “Ah,” said the other, “there
is nobody to pray for me; they have all given me up long ago.” “Why,” said
his friend, “it is very singular, but Mr. K-, who prayed for me, has been
praying for you too; we were together last night, and I heard him.” The other
threw himself back in his saddle, and seemed as if he would fall from his
horse with surprise. “Is that true?” said he. “Yes, it is.” “Then blessed be
God, there is hope for me now, and if he has prayed for me, that gives me a
reason why I should now pray believingly for myself.” And he did so, and that
meeting witnessed him confessing his faith in Christ. Now, let no man of your
acquaintance say that there is nobody to pray for him; but as you had
somebody to plead for you, let poor souls of your acquaintance find in you a
person to plead for them.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
