Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: April 15th

" Men ought always to pray and not to faint." ― Luke 18:1.

The context informs us what that prayer is in which we ought not to allow ourselves to faint. The prayer is that God would be pleased to judge between his people and the world. The world denies the claim of the righteous to be considered the children of God. The one great need of the Church is, that God should bear testimony unto the word of his grace, and rebuke the nations with a voice they, can but hear, saying, ’ Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm." The Lord Jesus taught us what to ask for, when he said to the Father, " That the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved my disciples as thou hast loved me." The revelation of God in his relation to believers, by their sanctification, by the perfection of his image in them, by the gifts and graces of his Holy Spirit, by his providence, and by unprecedented methods reserved to be the special glory of the latter days ― is what we ask. Is this a thing to stop asking? Does the sick man give over seeking for health, because his sickness is protracted? Or does the hungry man desist from his search for food, when it is not soon found? No, for he well knows that if he fail of obtaining food, he fails of all. This benefit with drawn, all others are withdrawn. Well therefore may we continue in prayer, for what we ask is indispensable.

This continuing in prayer is a singularly profitable exercise. When we cry to God and receive no answer, and still continue in supplication, not wavering, we find our minds running with a surprising vigilance through the pages of Scripture, snatching up a word of help here and another there. We become most rapidly intelligent of its precious contents. Our views of God expand; his character, his government, his purposes, present themselves to us with a definiteness that they never had before in our perceptions. Our knowledge of ourselves in like manner advances in an equally accelerated ratio. And all this tends to the increase of faith. The very discovery of our own unworthinesses tends, at such a time, to make us rest more confidently on the righteous Advocate. We get a hundred preparatory blessings, and then at last we get the blessing sought. Meantime our conceptions of that blessing have been greatly elevated. If at first it ranked in our estimation as a thousand, it now ranks as millions. We have looked at it in the future, and seen it undergo many transfigurations. We were consoled in the hour of our disappointed faith, by seeing the prize put on superior beauty, and show itself more worth pursuing than we had previously believed. Imagine a vase with your name upon it, fast by the throne of God. As you prayed, your heavenly Father dropped ever and anon a gift brighter than your best conception into that vessel. Meanwhile he sought among the hours of your future life for one in which the bestowal of this accumulating wealth would be largest in results; and marked that hour also on the vase. And while you thought yourself poor, angels looked with admiration on your treasure in heaven.

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