Men Ought Always to Pray

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

MacDonald wrote two sermons on a single verse, the one that introduces the parable of the unjust judge and the widow who would not stop asking. The first, The Word of Jesus on Prayer, takes the first half of the verse: men ought always to pray. The second, Man’s Difficulty Concerning Prayer, takes the second: and not to faint. Together they are among the most practical things he wrote, and he began the first with a warning to his readers not to treat them as theory: “if prayer be anything at all, it is a thing to be done: what matter whether you agree with me or not, if you do not pray?”

The parable

MacDonald read the parable as an argument from the lesser to the greater. If an unrighteous judge, who cared nothing for the widow and feared neither God nor man, would give her justice at last simply to be rid of her, how much more will God, who loves His children and has made them to call upon Him, hear them when they cry? Jesus told the story, MacDonald noticed, because He knew how prayer often looks to those who pray. It looks as though God is not listening. The parable does not deny the appearance; it tells us not to go by it. MacDonald put its message in a run of short sentences: “It looks as if he did not hear you: never mind; he does; it must be that he does; go on as the woman did; you too will be heard.”

And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? LUKE 18:7

He was moved by the sigh at the end of the parable, when Jesus asks whether the Son of Man, when He comes, will find faith on the earth. He took it to mean that the Lord knew how slow His children would be to trust their Father, and how long the Father would have to wait for them to believe that He was hearing them all along.

Why ask at all?

The obvious objection, MacDonald knew, is this: if God is as good as Christians say, and knows all that we need better than we do, why should we need to ask Him for anything? His answer is the centre of his teaching on prayer, and it is worth reading in his own words. “What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of himself?”

Our smaller needs, he argued, are there partly to drive us to God. A runaway child may be driven home by hunger, and when he gets there he may or may not be fed at once, but what he needs most is not his dinner but his mother. So it is with us. “Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer.” God gives us many good things in answer to prayer, but the greatest answer is Himself.

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

He drew a striking conclusion from Paul’s thorn in the flesh, which God did not remove but promised grace to bear. The answer Paul received was better than the one he asked for. “Verily, if we have God, we can do without the answer to any prayer.”

Can prayer change anything?

The second sermon turns to a harder question. How can the plans of an all-wise God be altered by the prayers of His creatures? Surely His purposes are fixed, and the world runs by law. MacDonald answered with characteristic boldness. He said that the objection rests on a poor idea of God, as though God had plans for the world that had nothing to do with His children. The whole system of things, MacDonald argued, exists for the education of God’s children, and its first aim is to bring them to the point where they will pray. Would God then build the world so rigidly that He could not answer the prayers it was made to produce?

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

He did not think the laws of nature were a cage around God. “Law is the slave of Life.” God is not like steam in an engine, driven by valves and pistons; He is a living Father, free to act within the order He has made, and that order exists to serve His purposes of love. MacDonald was careful not to make prayer into a lever by which we control God. Often, he said, the prayer is itself more God’s purpose than the thing prayed for, because what God wants above all is that His child should come to Him. But he insisted that prayer is real, that it is heard, and that it makes a difference.

Not to faint

The second half of the verse is the practical one. MacDonald knew how easily people stop praying, and why. Prayer seems not to be answered; the heart grows cold; doubts creep in; and other things crowd it out. His counsel was simple: keep going. Bring everything to God — the large and the small, the worthy and the unworthy, even the things one is not sure one ought to ask for. He thought it a lack of childlikeness to stop asking for something for fear that God might give it when it was not good. A child does not weigh every request before he makes it. He asks, and trusts his father to answer well.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHILIPPIANS 4:6

Weighing it

These two sermons are among the soundest MacDonald wrote, and most of what they say can be received gladly. Their insistence that prayer is a thing to be done rather than discussed, their account of communion with God as the deepest purpose of prayer, their confidence that God hears and acts, and their pastoral encouragement to keep praying when prayer seems unanswered are all deeply scriptural.

If anything is to be added, it is the ground on which a sinner may come to God at all. MacDonald wrote of prayer as the child coming to the Father, and that is true; but the New Testament adds that we come through a High Priest who has offered Himself for our sins and who ever lives to make intercession for us. Our boldness at the throne of grace rests not only on God’s Fatherhood but on Christ’s blood.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us. HEBREWS 10:19–20

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. MacDonald said prayer is a thing to be done. Set a time and a place for prayer each day this week, and keep it.

2. Think of a prayer that seems unanswered. Read Luke 18:1–8 and keep asking.

3. What need is driving you to God at the moment? Thank Him for it, and ask Him for Himself as well as for the thing you need.

4. Read 2 Corinthians 12:7–10. Has God ever given you grace instead of the answer you asked for?

5. Read Hebrews 4:14–16 and 10:19–22, and come to the throne of grace with boldness, through Christ.

A PRAYER

Father, Your Son taught us that we ought always to pray and not to faint. I confess that I have often fainted.

Thank You that You hear me even when You seem silent, and that You are working when I cannot see it.

Above every other thing I ask for, give me Yourself.

Keep me praying, through Jesus Christ my High Priest, by whose blood I come to You. Amen.