Submission and Faith
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short of perfect obedience, the great and precious promises are afar off
and they cannot reach the fulfillment.
All that can be done in praying for the sick is to earnestly importune
God in their behalf, and in perfect confidence rest the matter in His
hands. If we regard iniquity in our hearts the Lord will not hear us.
He can do what He will with His own. He will glorify Himself by
working in and through them who wholly follow Him so that it shall
be known that it is the Lord, and that their works are wrought in God.
Faith and Obedience
Said Christ, “If any man serve Me, him will My Father honor.”
When we come to Him we should pray that we might enter into and
accomplish His purpose, and that our desires and interests might be
lost in His. We should acknowledge our acceptance of His will, not
praying Him to concede to ours. It is better for us that God does not
always answer our prayers just when we desire and in just the manner
we wish. He will do more and better for us than to accomplish all our
wishes; for our wisdom is folly.
We have united in earnest prayer around the sickbed of men,
women, and children, and have felt that they were given back to us
from the dead in answer to our earnest prayers. In these prayers we
thought we must be positive, and if we exercised faith, that we must
ask for nothing less than life. We dared not say, “If it will glorify
God,“ fearing it would admit a semblance of doubt. We have anx-
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iously watched those who have been given back, as it were, from the
dead. We have seen some of these, especially youth, raised to health,
and they have forgotten God, become dissolute in life, causing sorrow
and anguish to parents and friends, and have become a shame to those
who feared to pray. They lived not to honor and glorify God, but to
curse Him with their lives of vice.
We no longer mark out a way, nor seek to bring the Lord to our
wishes. If the life of the sick can glorify Him, we pray that they may
live, nevertheless, not as we will but as He will. Our faith can be just
as firm, and more reliable, by committing the desire to the all-wise
God and, without feverish anxiety, in perfect confidence trusting all
to Him. We have the promise. We know that He hears us if we ask
according to His will.