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Job 30:20:
20I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.
A real prayer calls for an answer, for an answer from above, an answer from the side of God.
By no means every kind of prayer; the difference is very great between a purely formal muttering and an earnest outpouring of the soul in supplication.
You make a grave mistake, when you say that formal prayer is devoid of all merit. In formal prayer there is a prayer-preserving power. And this goes on until suddenly a spark from above enters this lifeless prayer, and at once true prayer bursts into flame from it.
But though it is altogether untrue, to say that he who prays in this purely formal way had better not pray at all, it must be maintained with equal emphasis that a lifeless prayer is an infected prayer, with respect to which the man of ardent prayer will presently invoke the cleansing power of the Atonement.
If you would examine the true character of prayer, you must first of all dismiss all thought of formal prayer; and center your attention solely and alone upon true supplication of the soul; and to all such supplication applies the fixed rule that he who prays awaits an answer; such as in olden time was given in a revelation, in a word spoken in the soul, through a vision, or by the appearance of an angel; or as is common now, through a direct answer to our prayer, through a meeting with some one, which comes as a glad surprise, or through an impression in the soul, which the Holy Spirit produces in us.
But it is always he who prays in a godly manner, who awaits an answer.
An answer, not only when in his prayer he asks for something, but also when he offers worship, ascribes praise or returns thanks. For he, too, who worships and offers praise or thanksgivings, by no means intends by these words merely to glorify the Name and Majesty of God, but desires very earnestly that his God, Whom he worships will accept this worship and thanksgiving from his lips and from his soul. Also this adoration, praise and worship are called offerings in Scripture. In Hosea (14:2) they are called: "the calves of the lips," and in Isaiah (57:19) "the fruit of the lips," in order to indicate the plain significance of an offering which such worship implies. And the historic record of the first fratricide tells us that there is an offering which God accepts, but also an offering which He rejects; and nowhere is it shown more clearly than in Cain's anger and wrath that, with every offering, the human heart awaits an answer from God.
But this answer does not always come. Sometimes it is deferred. And amid the sorrow of the heart and the distress of the soul, nothing is so painful nor yet so grievously hard to bear as that delay of an answer from the Lord.
See it in the complaint of Job (30:20): "I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me; I stand up, and thou regardest me not." This is yet more strikingly evident in the twenty-second Psalm, where the Messiah complains: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me! O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou answerest me not, and in the night season also I take no rest." Or as it reads in Micah 3:7, "Then shall the seers be ashamed ... for there is no answer of God."
The failure of obtaining an answer from God is, therefore, by no means always the fault of him who prays. With the Messiah, at least, this is unthinkable. Every one knows from his own prayer-life, that sometimes he has obtained an answer even with an accusing conscience, and that, on the other hand, not infrequently there came no answer from God, when his prayer had been most earnest and real.
In many instances no answer comes from God, because our prayer was sin in our lips. Giving no answer on the part of God certainly finds its cause and occasion, many times, in the sinful disposition of the heart of the worshiper during prayer.
But it is not true, that sin on the part of him who prays should be the only reason why God withholds His answer to prayer.
The most devout saints in Israel complained again and again that God did not answer their prayer, and this was ever a source of deep grief to their hearts; and this very grief was proof that their prayers had been earnest and sincere.
The Lama Sabachthani on the Cross shows the highest point which this sorrow of the human soul can reach; and on Golgotha it was more strikingly evident than it could be in any other case that withholding an answer on the part of God can be intentional.
On mount Carmel the question in dispute was an answer from Above.
Elijah and the priests of Baal both acknowledged that if God lives and man prays unto Him, a sign of life must proceed from the side of God as an answer to prayer.
The priests sought this answer with their Baal, and Elijah sought it with Jehovah. And all day long the cry went forth from a thousand mouths: "O Baal, answer us, answer us!" and they cut themselves with knives and lancets, because no answer came. Then Elijah prayed, and God answered by fire.
The question here at stake was, whether the God who was invoked could answer. A God who is not, and has no life, cannot answer. Jehovah, Who lives in glory, could answer, and the dreadful answer came down from heaven by fire.
But ability to answer is not enough. God must also be willing to answer; and the Sabachthani is the very highest expression of the awful truth, that at times God is intentionally unwilling, and then not by chance or mistake, but, in accordance with His counsel and plan, He withholds His answer.
He withholds it even when His child continues to cry; withholds it even when the most earnest worshiper pours out his soul before Him; withholds it even when His own dear Son cries unto Him from the Cross.
And, therefore, in that very cry from the Cross, every soul that cries and gets no answer finds comfort. Otherwise the silence of God might readily bring the soul to despair. But when, as now, it appears, that even the prayer of God's own Son remained unanswered, why should a sinful suppliant complain or be driven to despair, when he too is numbered with the Son of God?
Is, then, this non-compliance arbitrariness on the part of God?
Far from it. Such an idea is altogether unthinkable in regard to God. This withholding on the part of God from answering our prayer is an outflow of the love-life wherewith God encompasses the soul of His child.
The danger lies at hand, that in our prayer-life we seek the gifts of God and not God Himself. Our prayer is almost always the invocation of God's help, of His assistance, of His saving and blessing power; and our prayer so seldom reaches that stage where, entirely looking away from ourselves, from our own interest and from our own condition of need, we aim first of all at having dealings with God Himself.
The Our Father gives us instruction in this. It teaches us to pray first for the hallowing of God's Name, for the coming of His Kingdom, for the doing of His will, and then only it goes on to the prayer for our daily bread, for the forgiveness of our sins and for our deliverance from evil.
But this is the misery of our soul's estate, that even in our prayer, we so seldom stand at the sacred height of the Our Father.
This impairs the tender love-life between God and our soul.
Prayer for help in time of need is truly natural, but yet it always springs from the love which we bear to ourselves. In that case it is God Who must help us, assist us, save us, and so it comes to appear at times as though God merely exists for our sakes, for our benefit, to deliver us from trouble.
Love is different.
Love for God in prayer is that, first and most of all, we are concerned with that which glorifies God's Name, God's honor and God's Almighty Power.
If it be true, that love alone maketh rich and exalteth the soul, it is grace and nothing but seeking grace, when God the Lord by withholding for a time an answer to our prayer, initiates us more deeply into the life of love, represses our egoism in prayer, and comes to quicken love also in our life of prayer.
And therefore let not your soul become faint, when answer to your prayer tarries. Apart from the fact that the answer does not need to come at once, and that so often it has appeared later on, that in His own time God did send His answer, there is yet no single reason why, when God does not answer you, you should be discouraged.
Why should you be spared what overtook the saints of God in both the Old and New Testament times; yea, what your Savior suffered in the dark hour of His death upon the Cross?
This very withholding of an answer on the part of your God when your soul cries out to Him, may be the token that your God loves your soul better than you love it yourself. A token that He wants to raise the life of your soul and the life of your prayer to a higher vantage ground, that He wills to initiate you into the deeper ways of love, and that, by not answering your prayer, He prepares a more glorious future for you in which you shall pray better, supplicate more earnestly, and then receive a far more glorious answer.
Even among us you frequently see that a temporal withdrawal on the part of one who loves you is the means to quicken tenderer love.
And how much the more, then, is this true of Him Who Himself is Love, and Who by this very act of causing a cloud to draw between you and His Majesty, leads you up to higher and richer enjoyments of love.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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