Pray Once More

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. MATTHEW 7:7

Amanda Smith never tired of telling how she was converted, and she told it at length in the chapter of her Autobiography called Marriage and Conversion. It is not only her story. It is a small, exact picture of what she believed about how a soul comes to God: that the great obstacle is not the size of our sins but the stubbornness of our will, and that the whole thing turns, in the end, on a simple act of trust.

I will be converted in my own way

She had wanted to be a Christian as long as she could remember. As a girl she prayed in the fence corner when she went for the cows. As a young servant she went forward at a revival and felt real peace, but, as she said, she did not know how to exercise faith, and when the class meeting became a place of humiliation she let it all go.

Then, in 1855, she was desperately ill. She recovered, and she resolved to be converted, but quietly and on her own terms. She would never, she said, go forward to an altar. She had a strong will and was proud of it, and her pride held her. She reasoned that she was not so bad as some of the rough people in the town. She had always lived in first-class families.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? JEREMIAH 17:9

This is the first thing she teaches about conversion, and it is not comfortable. The chief hindrance is usually not ignorance but pride: the wish to be saved without being humbled, to come to God as a respectable person rather than as a sinner. She found herself, almost without knowing how, walking down the aisle of a Baptist church to the very altar she had sworn she would never kneel at. She threw herself down and cried for mercy until she was hoarse. A stillness came over her. But she did not yet have peace, because, as she said plainly, no one had taught her how to believe.

Tell Jesus I am a poor sinner

She was in service with a Quaker family near Columbia, in Pennsylvania. She prayed, fasted, read her Bible and prayed again. In her ignorance, she says, she prayed to the sun and moon and stars. She reasoned that her sin was disobedience, and that the sun, moon and wind had always obeyed God, so she asked them to carry a message for her: “O, Sun, you never sinned like me, you have always obeyed God, and kept your place in the heavens; tell Jesus I am a poor sinner.”

She put it down to ignorance. But it is also profound. She had grasped that she needed someone who had never sinned to stand between her and God. She simply did not yet see that such a One had come. The Obedient One she was looking for was the Saviour she was praying to.

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. ROMANS 5:19

In the middle of this struggle she gave up a new spring outfit she had been saving for, which kept rising before her as she prayed; the story belongs to a later chapter. It was not yet conversion, but it was the loosening of a grip.

Pray once more

On Tuesday, the seventeenth of March, 1856, she was sitting in the kitchen by her ironing table when the voice she afterwards knew to be the devil’s went over her case like a lawyer. She had prayed, been sincere, fasted and read her Bible; if God had meant to convert her He would have done it long ago. She agreed, and resolved to give up and submit to her fate.

Just then a voice whispered, “Pray once more.” Another said, “Don’t you do it.” And she said, “I will,” and felt the words go through her from the crown of her head. She set the table for the family’s tea, put everything on it but the bread and butter, and went down into the cellar to pray, determined to have salvation that afternoon or die.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. JEREMIAH 29:13

There in the dark she prayed her old prayers, and the accuser told her each time that she had said all that before. She came to the end of everything. And then she said something new. She looked up and said, “O, Lord, if Thou wilt help me I will believe Thee,” and then, she writes, “in the act of telling God I would, I did.”

That is the whole secret, and she spent the rest of her life explaining it. Faith is not a feeling to be worked up or a condition to be earned. It is the decision to take God at His word, and the decision is itself the believing. The burden rolled away. Light and joy flooded her. She ran up out of the cellar, looked at her hands, and said, “Why, I am new, I am new all over.” She even looked in the tall dining-room mirror to see whether her colour had changed, so wonderful was what had happened inside her.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

What she learned

Three lessons run through the rest of her teaching from that cellar. First, God is found by those who come to the end of themselves. She had tried every way of her own — quietness, respectability, good works, praying to the stars — and every one had to fail before she would simply trust.

Second, the struggle is not only with our own hearts. There is an enemy who argues that God will not hear, and she learned early to know his voice.

Third, saving faith is simple, but it must be clearly taught. She says more than once that if anyone had shown her how to believe, she might have found peace months earlier. It made her a patient guide to seekers, who told them not only to seek but how to trust.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. EPHESIANS 2:8

There is one thing to weigh with care. Her vow in the cellar — that she would have salvation that afternoon or die — was the vow of a desperate young woman, and God met her in it. But it is not a pattern to be pressed on everyone. Many come to Christ quietly, over time, without a single dramatic hour, and are no less truly His. What must be pressed on everyone is what lay beneath the drama: the end of self-reliance, and the simple trust that says, Lord, I will believe Thee.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there some way in which you have wanted to be saved, or to grow, on your own terms — quietly, respectably, without being humbled? Name it to God.

2. Her spring outfit had to go before peace came. Is there something you love that stands between you and a whole-hearted surrender? Tell Him you will let it go.

3. If you have never done so, say to God in so many words: Lord, I will believe You. Then, in the act of saying it, do it.

4. Learn to recognise the accuser’s arguments: that it is no use, that God will not hear, that you have tried before. Write down one Scripture to answer each.

5. Think of someone who is seeking God but has never been shown how to trust. Pray for a chance to explain it to them simply.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the Obedient One I could never be, and You have stood where I should have stood.

I have wanted to come to You in my own way and on my own terms. Forgive my pride, and bring me to the end of myself.

I will believe You. I do believe You. Make me new all over, and let it show.

And when others are seeking, give me the patience and the plain words to show them how to trust. Amen.