Prayer

I received this in my e-mail yesterday:

I called him but he did not answer.

- Songs of Songs 5:6

Once the Lord has given us great faith, He has been known to test it with long delays.

He has allowed His servants' voices to echo in their ears, as if their prayers were re-bounding from a contemptuous sky. Believers have knocked at the heavenly gate, but it has remained immovable, as though its hinges had rusted. And like Jeremiah, they have cried, "You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through"

- Lam. 3:44

True saints of God have endured lengthy times of patient waiting with no reply, not
because their prayers were prayed without intensity, nor because God did not accept
their pleas. They were required to wait because it pleased Him who is sovereign and
who gives "according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:13). And if it pleases Him to cause our patience to be exercised, should He not do as He desires with His own?

No prayer is ever lost, or any prayer ever breathed in vain. There is no such thing as prayer unanswered or unnoticed by God, and some things we see as refusals or de-
nials are simply delays.

- Horatius Bonar

Christ sometimes delays His help so He may test our faith and energize our prayers.
Our boat may be tossed by the waves while He continues to sleep, but He will awake
before it sinks. He sleeps but He never oversleeps, for He is never too late.

- Alexander Maclaren

Be still, sad soul! lift up no passionate cry,
But spread the desert of your being bare
To the full searching of the All-seeing eye;
Wait! and through dark misgiving, deep despair,
God will come down in pity, and fill the dry
Dead place with light, and life, and springlike air.

- John Campbell Shairp