Lessons on Prayer

Shame does not cause us to mend our ways much. To say of a person that he is a kind, good neighbor, always ready to do a favor, is the highest encomium that can be given to him.

4. Importunity.—No one can be importunate unless he is in earnest, and feels the need of what he asks. To make our prayers importunate, we must feel and acknowledge our own helplessness, our great need, and the power and willingness of God to help and bless us.

5. Ask and it shall be given unto you. No more precious promises than these could be given unto man. You are invited to go to him for everything. Of course, food, and raiment, and other temporal blessings come to men who never acknowledge God's providence in these things; yet those, who carry all these requests to him in prayer, enjoy these common, everyday blessings with tenfold more intensity. The child that receives its food and clothing from the hands of loving parents, enjoys these things more than the one whose soup comes from the public soup house, and to whom clothing is furnished by overseers of the poor. In both cases life is supported and the body kept warm, but love and parental blessings sweeten the life of one, while the other knows nothing of these comforting relations.

6. A Stone for Bread.—Of course no sane parent would think of giving a child a stone instead of bread, nor a poisonous serpent instead of a sweet, nourishing fish; nor a scorpion instead of an egg. Yet thousands of well meaning parents in our land are doing worse by their children than these things. When you use profane language before your children, you are giving them a serpent; when you use intoxicating liquors, and go into their presence with the fumes of the bar room on you, then you give them the poisonous scorpion. You may be above this, and be pretty good sort of people, rather exemplary in your Christian life, yet if you do not make home attractive, and furnish the children with suitable reading, and show a decided interest in their work, and play and studies, you then are trying to nourish them with a stone instead of bread. Children are the greatest responsibility that can be placed on parents. Let every parent that studies this lesson make a note of the suggestions here made, and endeavor to meet the responsibility placed on him more like a Christian than he has ever done before.

7. The Heavenly Father's Gifts.—Men may often make mistakes in providing for their children, because human wisdom is limited; but God never does make a mistake. Go to him with all your complaints, and cares, and requests. He is always ready to listen. With him there is no midnight. It never troubles him for one in need to go for three loaves, nor three hundred either, for that matter. With all his other gifts, he will give his Holy Spirit. Then let us boldly approach the throne of grace, feeling assured that the blessings will be received.