The Fervency of Prayer

Fervency in prayer is warmth of devotion, the ardor of a loving heart. To avail with God, prayer must be fervent. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”* (James 5:16) It is said that when Elijah prayed for rain, he prayed fervently (R.V.). The apostle Paul exhorts Christians to be “fervent in spirit.”* (Romans 12:11) By Conybeare and Howson, this passage is rendered, “Let your Spirit glow with zeal.” The same translation renders Ephesians 6:18 in these impressive words: “Continue to pray at every season with all earnestness of supplication in the Spirit.”

I greatly fear, that with many dear saints, a serious lack is fervency in prayer. It is in the sweat of our face that we are to earn bread for the body, and it is in labor that we are to gather manna for the soul. Epaphras labored fervently in his prayer (Colossians 4:12). His was no easy, sleepy praying; it was labor. The literal rendering would be “striving as in the agony of a conflict.” Jacob wrestled with the Lord, yes, wrestled all night. He desired a blessing, for he was going to meet an offended brother. He laid hold upon the Lord, saying, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me.”* (Genesis 32:26) Though the odds were against him, his thigh being out of place, yet he wrestled on even in this agony. He was decided to prevail, however great the cost. He did prevail at the ascending of the morning and stood a crowned prince on the field of prayer. God will not give where there is no desire. Where there is a great desire, there will be great earnestness. I would that every reader fully comprehended the importance of earnestness in prayer and had the indefatigable industry to work it out. Alas, those indolent prayers! There is not enough earnestness in them either to please the Lord or to alarm the devil.

Some have become listless in prayer because they fear an over anxiety. But we should not fear. We should pray in confidence, not in fear and anxiety. Truly, the more confidence we have in God the more earnest we are in prayer. He who desires to accomplish a certain feat will labor hard if he is confident he can eventually succeed. Many a prayer goes unanswered because it is not fervent enough. Wrestle until you get the answer. Too many come away from the place of prayer not knowing anything. They do not know whether God answers or not. It is our privilege to know something, and we can if we wrestle long enough. Be an Israel. Stay on the field until God tells you something. If your child comes to you in very great earnestness, you will tell him that you will grant him his petition or you will not or that you will give him an answer at a later time. You will give him an answer of some kind if he is really in earnest and presses the question eagerly. But alas! too many come to God in a half-hearted way and make their request, but never hear from that prayer again. They go to the telephone and call, but they never so much as place the receiver to their ear. I read once in a book of a Daniel Quorm, who went to visit a friend. At the family altar, Daniel heard his friend pray that the Lord would that day give him a Christlike spirit, meek and quiet; but soon the visitor heard his host speak words most un-Christlike. Thereupon Daniel said: “You are expecting a present today?”

“A present? Why, no.”

“I heard you say so this morning.”

“You must be crazy, Daniel.”

“I was hoping it might come while I was here.”

“Whatever do you mean, Daniel?”

“Why, friend, did you not pray that you might have a meek and Christlike spirit today?”

“Oh, is that all you meant?”

This illustrates how little earnestness and expectation some people have when they pray. It is the Christian’s privilege to get an answer to his prayers. He need never go away unanswered. He may have to pray fervently at times, sometimes wrestle unto the breaking of the day; but if he is earnest enough, God will tell him something. God will grant him the petition or tell him he will not grant it or tell him to wait and He will answer later. To go to God with a petition and come away and know nothing is to show indolence. Prayer is a mental effort. We are to pray in the Spirit, certainly, but we cannot pray without taking thought. We can pray with the mind and not pray from the heart; but it is certain we cannot pray from the heart without praying with the mind. The schoolboy sometimes meets with a puzzling problem in his mathematics, one that requires him to put forth great mental effort. This mental exertion strengthens his mind and enables him to grasp other and more difficult problems. God sometimes brings us face to face with difficult problems, problems that can be solved only by earnest effort. This must needs be, in order that we may be able to grasp the deeper things of God. It is true we can become habituated to prayer, as the pianist to playing, so that but little mental effort will be required. But we must be very constant in prayer and keep a truly devotional spirit, or the mind will wander and we shall have to pay the penalty of mental toil to get our thoughts back in the right channel again.

There are times when the Christian finds it easy to pray. The Spirit seems to have touched the mind and unsealed the fountain of thought, so that the thoughts flow out so spontaneously that the mind is not conscious of any effort. Then how blessed it is to pray! But is it always so? It is well for us that it is not. It is not usually the learner that makes the mistakes or meets with the accident, but the adept. It is when but little mental effort is required that the performer becomes careless and neglectful. But however skilled we may become in the art of prayer, God will bring us face to face betimes, so that He might save us from neglect with difficulties and will hide His face from us, resulting from a lack of anything upon which to exercise the mind and heart. If we become indolent and will not strive in prayer, then we shall become very feeble in prayer. This will be especially in secret prayer.

The apostle says, “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.”* (Romans 15:30) “Agonize together with me” (Rotherham). This earnestness, this agonizing was for Jesus’ sake and the love of the Spirit. We are not on unscriptural grounds when we exhort to fervency and labor in prayer. Listen to the prophet’s lament: “There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.”* (Isaiah 64:7) It is by faith that we behold God, yet the clearer the intellect, the more vivid will be our conceptions of Him. There can be no profound feeling in our soul without vividness of thought in beholding the beauty of the Lord. The apostle to the Gentiles, after recounting a number of the hardships of his Christian warfare, said, “Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.”* (2 Corinthians 11:28) From the language used and the order it is in, we naturally conclude that the care of the churches, concerned him more than all his perils, persecutions, and hardships. If he had such care for the churches, what must have been his prayers for them? In his Colossian letter, he tells us something of his conflict and agony in prayer. “Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”* (Colossians 1:29-2:1) I wish you would read the above quotations over again carefully, and from them picture to your mind something of the earnestness of his prayer. It was no drowsy, droning prayer. In the Greek, the labor and striving here is the same as in chapter 4:12, where Epaphras is spoken of as “laboring fervently.” It is the same also in Luke 22:44—“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” We have the same in the Greek again in Luke 13:24: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” The thought here is “a struggle for the mastery—forcing one’s way in.” “Many will seek” in their half-hearted, slothful way and “not be able,” for none but “this violence” will ever take the kingdom of God.

Fervency in prayer is a good preventive of thought-wandering. Many persons are seriously troubled by the wandering of their thoughts. This very often is because of mental indolence and lack of earnest mental discipline. Be earnest and fervent in your prayers. Gird up the loins of your mind and center your thoughts on God.

Importunity is not only reiteration of the petition but also earnestness in the petition. In importuning the throne of grace each coming should be more pressing and earnest. Fervency and perseverance make us conquerors over that which is otherwise unconquerable. In the parable of the widow and unjust judge, Jesus teaches us the value and the necessity of importunity. Do we get the full import of His teaching in this parable? The widow kept coming (Luke 18:5). She would not be denied. Wearied by her continual coming, the judge granted her request. If an unrighteous judge can be wearied into granting the request of a widow who was an object of contempt, can not the righteous Lord, whose name is Love, be persuaded to hear the prayers of those who cry unto Him day and night? He can. See to it that you cry— “strong crying and tears”* (Hebrews 5:7) —and not sigh, a mere wish; and let the crying unto God be day and night. Though your prayer be seemingly rejected, do not cease your crying. Pray on until you get a definite answer. Jesus did not give the Syrophenician woman a positive refusal. He only said, “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.”* (Mark 7:27) There was yet some hope for her. “There may be,” she thought, “a crumb left after the children have been filled.” She was not denied this. Be willing to take the answer in the most humiliating way. Your unwillingness to do so may be why He is seemingly deaf to your cry. Perhaps He wants you to become more humble and earnest. Be willing for Him to answer in His way. But pray on. The very fact that He has not positively denied you is some hope that He will hear you. Only get more earnest and humble. The apostle Paul prayed three times before he received a definite answer. I think that he would have prayed many times more if it had been necessary.

The Spirit gives us heavenly visions. The vision may be the meekness, patience. tenderness, sympathy, or love of Jesus. Desire springs up in our hearts to possess that meekness or whatever it may be. Give vent to that desire; ask, seek, knock, strive, and wrestle for that excellence, and He will surely give it. But He will not bestow His graces where they are not longed for and eagerly sought.

“Longing is God’s fresh, heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living.
But would we learn that heart’s full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.”1

In closing this chapter, I will relate a story I read about an ant. A warrior was once forced to take shelter from his enemies in a ruined building, where he sat alone for many hours. To divert his mind from his hopeless condition, he fixed his observation upon an ant that was carrying a grain of corn larger than itself up a wall. He numbered the efforts it made to accomplish this object. The grain fell sixty-nine times to the ground, but the insect persevered, and the seventieth time it reached the top of the wall. May the Lord help His saints to be fervent and persevering in prayer. Pray until you get an answer.