Cashing the Cheques

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. 2 CORINTHIANS 1:20

Corrie ten Boom had a favourite way of describing the promises of the Bible. They are cheques, she said, written out in our name, signed by Jesus, and drawn on the bank of heaven, whose account is never frozen. The trouble with most Christians is not that they lack promises. It is that they never cash them. They live like beggars, she liked to say, when they are the children of a King. This chapter gathers her teaching on prayer, which rests on that picture.

Promises for sinners

In The Greatest of These Is Love she makes a point that surprised her hearers. Some people, she said, think the promises of the Bible belong to especially good Christians — to the lady in the front row, the earnest young man, the mature believer. But the promises, she told them, are for sinners only. The moment a person is born into the family of God, all the promises are theirs. They do not have to wait until they are mature or learned. They may begin to cash the cheques at once.

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. JEREMIAH 33:3

This is a fine corrective to a common timidity. Many believers approach God as though they had to earn a hearing. Corrie approached Him as a child approaches a father who has already promised.

Praying with an open Bible

She liked to pray, she said in Power in Prayer, with an open Bible, putting her finger on a promise and telling God, in effect, You have said it; now please do it. God likes that, she said, because He means every promise He has made, and He is pleased when His children take Him at His word.

We have already seen, in the chapter on the Bible in the barracks, how freely she applied this — praying a verse from Jeremiah over a suitcase of Bibles at Moscow customs, and admitting cheerfully that it was not what Jeremiah meant. That candour is part of her teaching. She did not claim to be an exegete. She claimed only that God hears the prayer of a child who trusts His word, and does not demand perfect interpretation first.

There is a real truth here, and a real danger. The truth is that prayer grounded in Scripture is strong prayer, and that God delights to be trusted. The danger is the habit of seizing a verse out of its setting and treating it as a guarantee of whatever we want. Corrie was protected from that by her humility and by her obedience; she did not use promises to get her own way, but to do God’s work. Readers who pray her way should keep her spirit.

In the name of Jesus

In the same address she stresses praying in the name of Jesus. She tells of an African friend whose small son wanted to write his father a letter while he was away. The child could not write; his letter was scribbles. But his mother wrote on it that it was from their son, and when the father received it he was overjoyed. He showed it to his friends. His son had written to him. So it is, she said, with our prayers. They are never good enough for a holy God, however beautiful or halting. But when they come in the name of Jesus, the Father receives them with delight, because they come through His Son.

And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. JOHN 14:13–14

Praying for others

Much of Power in Prayer is about intercession. She urged her hearers to pray faithfully for missionaries, many of whom, she said, are prayed for eagerly when they leave and forgotten a few months later. She urged them to pray for rulers and governments.

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 1 TIMOTHY 2:1–2

And she urged them, again and again, to pray for the persecuted church. She quoted, in several addresses, a saying she attributed to Watchman Nee: that when his feet were whipped, his hands felt the pain. The body of Christ is one. Believers in freedom may not be indifferent to believers in chains.

Prayers kept in heaven

The heart of her teaching on prayer is perseverance. In Power in Prayer she tells a string of stories from one television interview late in her life. After it, she received letters from people she had prayed for decades before: news of a man who had lived in the street behind her childhood home, a woman from her school days, a man she had pleaded with in Canada who now wanted to receive Christ, a former resident of her home for ex-prisoners who had found the Lord. She counted the years: seventy-five, sixty-five, forty, twenty-five. Not one prayer, she concluded, is lost.

And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. REVELATION 8:4

She told her hearers that the devil would say to them, you have prayed long enough; stop. And she told them he was a liar. God’s answers go slowly, she said, but surely. Go on praying for that son, that husband, that neighbour.

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. LUKE 18:1

Betsie prays

She also told what prayer could do in the worst of places. In How to Forgive and Power in Prayer she recalls a fight breaking out among the hundreds of starving women packed into their barracks — a dangerous thing, because the guards punished such disorder. Betsie began to pray aloud, asking God to take away the spirit of quarrelling, and the room grew quiet, Corrie says, as though a storm had been stilled. A frail, starving woman had prayed, and the danger passed.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. JAMES 5:16

Corrie drew the lesson for her comfortable hearers. They too were called to pray in a dark world. If they did not know how, she said, they should go into training.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Choose one promise of Scripture that fits a need you have now. Open your Bible at it and pray it back to God.

2. Check that the promise you chose really means what you are asking. If not, find one that does.

3. Make a list of missionaries and persecuted believers you will pray for regularly, and put it where you will see it.

4. Think of the person you have prayed for longest without visible answer. Tell the devil he is a liar, and pray again.

5. Pray this week for your national leaders by name, whether or not you agree with them.

A PRAYER

Father, You have written promises in my name and signed them with the blood of Your Son. Forgive me for living like a beggar.

Teach me to pray with an open Bible, to take You at Your word, and to ask for what You have promised rather than for what I merely want.

Receive my poor prayers in the name of Jesus, and hear them for His sake.

Keep me praying for those I love, for those who suffer for Your name, and for those who rule, and do not let me faint. Amen.