A Call to Prayer - Part VIII

There is no excuse
Let me speak a parting word to those who do not pray. I dare not suppose that all who read these pages are praying people. If you are a prayerless person, suffer me to speak to you this day on God’s behalf.

Prayerless reader, I can only warn you, but I do warn you most solemnly. I warn you that you are in a position of fearful danger. If you die in your present state, you are a lost soul. You will only rise again to be eternally miserable. I warn you that of all professing Christians you are most utterly without excuse. There is not a single good reason that you can show for living without prayer.

It is useless to say you know not how to pray. Prayer is the simplest act in all religion. It is simply speaking to God. It needs neither learning nor wisdom nor book knowledge to begin it. It needs nothing but heart and will. The weakest infant can cry when he is hungry. The poorest beggar can hold out his hand for alms, and does not wait to find fine words. The most ignorant man will find something to say to God, if he has only a mind.

It is useless to say you have no convenient place to pray in. Any man can find a place private enough, if he is disposed. Our Lord prayed on a mountain; Peter on the housetop; Isaac in the field; Nathaniel under the fig tree; Jonah in the whale’s belly. Any place may become a closet, an oratory, and a Bethel, and be to us the presence of God.

It is useless to say you have no time. There is plenty of time, if men will employ it. Time may be short, but time is always long enough for prayer. Daniel had the affairs of a kingdom on his hands, and yet he prayed three times a day. David was ruler over a mighty nation, and yet he says, "Evening and morning and at noon will I pray" (Ps. 55:17). When time is really wanted, time can always be found.

It is useless to say you cannot pray till you have faith and a new heart, and that you must sit still and wait for them. This is to add sin to sin. It is bad enough to be unconverted and going to hell. It is even worse to say, “I know it, but will not cry for mercy.” This is a kind of argument for which there is no warrant in Scripture. “Call ye upon the Lord,” saith Isaiah, "while he is near" (Isa. 55:6). "Take with you words, and turn unto the Lord," says Hosea (Hos. 14:1). "Repent and pray," says Peter to Simon Magus (Acts 8:22). If you want faith and a new heart, go and cry to the Lord for them. The very attempt to pray has often been the quickening of a dead soul.

Oh, prayerless reader, who and what are you that you will not ask anything of God? Have you made a covenant with death and hell? Are you at peace with the worm and the fire? Have you no sins to be pardoned? Have you no fear of eternal torment? Have you no desire after heaven? Oh that you would awake from your present folly. Oh that you would consider your latter end. Oh that you would arise and call upon God. Alas, there is a day coming when many shall pray loudly, "Lord, Lord, open to us," but all too late; when many shall cry to the rocks to fall on them and the hills to cover them, who would never cry to God. In all affection, I warn you, beware lest this be the end of your soul. Salvation is very near you. Do not lose heaven for want of asking.

Do you desire salvation?
Let me speak to those who have real desires for salvation, but know not what steps to take, or where to begin. I cannot but hope that some readers may be in this state of mind, and if there be but one such I must offer him affectionate counsel.

In every journey there must be a first step. There must be a change from sitting still to moving forward. The journeyings of Israel from Egypt to Canaan were long and wearisome. Forty years pass away before they crossed Jordan. Yet there was some one who moved first when they marched from Ramah to Succoth. When does a man really take his first step in coming out from sin and the world? He does it in the day when he first prays with his heart.

In every building the first stone must be laid, and the first blow must be struck. The ark was one hundred and twenty years in building. Yet there was a day when Noah laid his axe to the first tree he cut down to form it. The temple of Solomon was a glorious building. But there was a day when the first huge stone was laid deep in mount Moriah. When does the building of the Spirit really begin to appear in a man’s heart? It begins, so far as we can judge, when he first pours out his heart to God in prayer.

What to do
If you desire salvation, and want to know what to do, I advise you to go this very day to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the first private place you can find, and earnestly and heartily entreat him in prayer to save your soul.

Tell him that you have heard that he receives sinners, and has said, "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out."

Tell him that you are a poor vile sinner, and that you come to him on the faith of his own invitation. Tell him you put yourself wholly and entirely in his hands; that you feel vile and helpless, and hopeless in yourself: and that except he saves you, you have no hope of being saved at all. Beseech him to deliver you from the guilt, the power, and the consequences of sin. Beseech him to pardon you, and wash you in his own blood. Beseech him to give you a new heart, and plant the Holy Spirit in your soul. Beseech him to give you grace and faith and will and power to be his disciple and servant from this day for ever. Oh, reader, go this very day, and tell these things to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you really are sincere about your soul.

Tell him in your own way, and your own words. If a doctor came to see you when sick you could tell him where you felt pain. If your soul feels its disease indeed, you can surely find something to tell Christ.

Doubt not
Doubt not his willingness to save you, because you are a sinner. It is Christ’s office to save sinners. He says himself, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32).

Wait not because you feel unworthy. Wait for nothing. Wait for nobody. Waiting comes from the devil. Just as you are, go to Christ. The worse you are, the more need you have to apply to him. You will never mend yourself by staying away. Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you. Just as a mother understands the first lispings of her infant, so does the blessed Savior understand sinners. He can read a sigh, and see a meaning in a groan.

Despair not because you do not get an answer immediately. While you are speaking, Jesus is listening. If he delays an answer, it is only for wise reasons, and to try if you are in earnest. The answer will surely come. Though it tarry, wait for it. It will surely come.

Oh, reader, if you have any desire to be saved, remember the advice I have given you this day. Act upon it honestly and heartily, and you shall be saved.

My Testimony of Salvation:
My mother was a Catholic who baptized all her children as babies, and sent me and my brother and sister to "First Communion" classes at the church she attended in Montpelier, Vermont. This was where I first heard about how loving Jesus is, but there was no Power in any of this for me personally. In fact, my mother was "excommunicated" from the Catholic church for remarrying after my father abandoned her when I was only 3 years old. My father has been married and divorced FOUR times, and my mother married and divorced TWICE. (I myself am on my THIRD divorce: O God deliver my family from this curse!)

Neither of my parents taught me The Word, although when I was a teenager my mother received true Salvation in Jesus Christ and began speaking in tongues. Of course this was ridiculous to me and my siblings, who did not know the Spirit or the Power of God. I was a very rebellious teenager and remained so through my twenties; relations between myself and both my parents were completely cut off for a time. My first sexual experience was drugged and drunken date-rape at the age of 16; that same year I was raped again at gunpoint having been picked up hitchhiking in a miniskirt. I aborted my first child at the age of 19; two years later my second baby was removed with the fallopian tube he or she was trapped in (because of the scar tissue of the first abortion, perhaps) at 10 weeks gestation to save my life; the combination of these two events, coupled with an intervening operation to remove an ovarian cyst and the ovary it was attached to, left me barren.

It wasn't until I was 29 years old that I was delivered from the way of darkness. I was in my own second marriage, my first husband having shown himself to be a practicing homosexual. My second husband was a violent alcoholic and I was his "party girl." I was into the occult - Tarot cards, horoscopes, (American) Indian spiritism, drinking and drugs and complete selfishness. I knew there was a 'god' "up there somewhere" and could even see the hand of a creator in all of nature for which I was thankful, but I was otherwise completely blind and deaf to the truth, and counted it unthinkable to "know God personally."

One night in the fall of my 29th year my second husband and I went out drinking and doing drugs. We ended up in the darkest, dirtiest bar in town at closing time, 2am. We were both exceedingly intoxicated and he had a severe and sure tendency to get angry and violent when he was that drunk. He became very jealous as I spoke with two other men in the bar and he left suddenly; when I looked for him he was gone. He had met me in town (I worked as a bartender) and both of us had our cars there. I went out to the parking lot and looked for him; seeing him gone I started driving home.

As I got on the road my angry husband came screeching around the corner, chasing me. It is a miracle of God that we made it home alive at all in our drunken state. Getting out of our cars in the driveway he started fighting with me immediately, yelling and cursing and threatening. I became very afraid and ran to the house to try to call my dad - the only one I could think to call at that hour of the morning: he was also a heavy drinker and stayed up very late at night. (Thank you, Father, that my dad has since quit drinking entirely!)

My husband ripped the entire phone out of the wall and threw it across the room. Then I was really, really scared! You must remember how incredibly drunk we were, and that both of us were completely overcome by the spirit of drink and not thinking clearly at all. We had a small collection of guns for hunting and target shooting on the wall and I went for my .30 carbine. We stored them with the ammunition separate from them, and I was so drunk that I could not load the cartridges (in the clip) into the carbine's magazine. This was the grace of God, for I believe in my drunken fear I would have shot my husband.

He wrestled the gun from my grip along with the ammunition and I thought, 'He is going to kill me with my own gun!' I was terrified and ran from the house; he was chasing me with the gun in his hands! I was so drunk that I stumbled and fell to my knees on the lawn. There was no time to get up, no time to think! I bent with my face to the ground, my hands over my face, sobbing and shaking. I started screaming words that only afterward made sense to me:

"Daddy, Daddy! Save me!
Make him stop! Make him go away!
Make it all better! Daddy, help me!"

Of course in my drunken state I was thinking of my earthly daddy, and how I had tried to call on him for help. But my Heavenly Daddy was there and it was His Spirit that caused me to cry out to Him with just those words!

To my utter amazement, my husband did stop, and turned around, and went back into the house! I was delivered! I ran to my vehicle and found to my surprise that my keys were still in it! I drove away to a secret place and slept in the car that night, very scared and cold and confused. I awoke safe and hung-over, wobbly and still afraid. I did not know what to do but knew I had to get to work that day and must go home. I was hoping my husband would have already left by the time I got there.

He met me in the driveway. He said he would be moving out and would be back over the next couple of days for his things. He left.

It was over that next three or four days that I came to terms with the Lord of my Salvation. I was ready to commit suicide: All my plans and all my ways had failed utterly and I knew there was nothing I could do to change myself or my circumstances. As I contemplated death, taking my own life and "putting myself out of this misery" I pictured hell for the first time as a real place, and knew (by the conviction of the Holy Spirit alone) that if I killed myself then and there I would go to hell and I would deserve it.

That was when I spoke aloud to the Lord God Almighty, He Who Hears in Secret, for the first time from my heart, with a very small faith. I didn't know what I was doing was called "repenting" until much later. I said,

"God, I don't know if You are there, or if You can hear me, but I sure need You. If what I have heard about Jesus is true, and if You are really there, I need You to save me, and to show me that You have heard me. I've messed it all up, and I can't fix it. If You will bring my husband back I will know that You have heard me, and I will read Your Book and I will tell everyone what You have done for me."

When I finished that prayer I was able to stand up, and to go on about the business of life, even with the pain of not knowing - it was the beginnings in my heart of "the peace that passes all understanding."

God did bring my husband back (though it was not His will that he remain), and He graciously sent people to my door to teach me how to read His Word. (How many of you have ever welcomed Jehovah's Witnesses to your house by saying, "I'm so glad you are here! God sent you to teach me how to read the Bible!"? (; I am not and never have been a member of that group, however.)

Because I didn't know all the Christian terms for being "born again of the Spirit" and "repentance" and "regeneration" and "prayer in the Spirit, " because I had no education in the Word or the Ways of God, I did not keep track of dates or specific events as they transpired. I only know this, that I was truly saved in the fall of '94, and within a year had begun reading God's Word, beginning with the Gospel of John, had found a good pastor and a Bible-believing church, had sincerely repented of my sins, asking forgiveness through the sufficient atonement of Jesus Christ God's Son, believed on Him Alone for Salvation, Justification, and Glorification, and had asked Jesus to become my Lord and Savior and take up residence in my heart! I was baptized in a local pond with tears of joy, all captured on video! I am in Awe of Him!

I was delivered from many, many evil ways and have a new life, walk in a righteousness not my own but His, and grow in wisdom and knowledge and faith as Jesus the Word and Spirit brings me through this process of sanctification until His Coming for me. I have believed His Promises.

I have been His friend for 11 years now, and love him with my whole heart. I love His Word and read the Bible daily. I memorize whole Psalms, whole chapters of the New Testament, and love to sing His praises! I pray on my knees every day, often three times a day, and pray with "all-prayer" in the Spirit all day long, fellowshipping with Him Who Is My Hope and Strength and Stay and Rock and Vine of Life, and delighting in our union through the Holy Spirit. I delight in the fellowship of the Saints. I love my enemies and pray for them. I preach the Good News of Salvation in Christ, sent to live and die and rise again by the God Who Loves Us. He has made me what I am today, and continues to make me into His image. He is my Redeemer, transforming not only me, but all my former works into a testimony to His Goodness and Deliverance Transforming Power! Amen!

I must say, that I'm a bit at a loss for words. You may have posted this before, but I have not seen it until this morning.

An incredible witness, and I have always been curious why you chose .30carbine as your handle ... and have been under a false assumption.

My mother once said to me if abortion had been legal in 1963, I wouldn't be here. One could argue such words from a Mom (and, sad to say, though she no longer wears the hippie beads, she's still 'hip' as ever), would pose a harsh challenge to a boy's heart; such an argument would be valid. But I testify something else she said that was much worse.

She is trained as a scientist. She teaches science to other aspiring scientists. And during one conversation long ago about 'what happened before the Big Bang', she said something along the lines that "the hallmark of the stupid is spending time on those ideas that are not testable."

Those words, from a Mom, were far more wounding ... for they encouraged that most dangerous of activities within me: prayerlessness. For prayer, paradoxically, is what God actually encourages us to do to, indeed, test him, in the human scientific sense.

For without Praying, at what other point can one actually test God? The one Bible verse I know of that speaks directly to 'testing' God in the approving sense is in the O.T., and involves tithing. But even that in context, means don't even think about tithing without attaching a prayer.

Reading your testimony, at first, was a bit loopy for me. But then I read the chapter 8 discussion above, and looked again at your testimony, and quietly the light went on, *click*.

"Daddy".

I get it - and I offer my prayers for others who may read it, and wonder 'what on earth??'......

And as for delivering you from the 'curse', let me offer this: it seems quite clear to me that though you may not 'feel' as fully delivered as you'd like, you certainly write about Christ in a such as a way as to indicate to me you are not under any curse at all.

Perhaps getting out from under a curse is a completely different task than getting under a 'blessing', in the sense the pathway for one is unlike the pathway for the other....

Being on my second marriage, of 11 yeears, I'm not a full expert. I can definitely report this: marriage is like golf. A LOT. A million ways exist to do it wrong, very few methods will work to actually make the ball go straight, provided you can actually get the club head on the ball.

Being out from under the curse of bad golf habits, I believe, requires just one step: that step of actually going to the golf course. And then, once you have hit a wall, and you want to quit, then do what I did. Find a teacher. The one I found did not ask me what fault I needed to fix.

He asked me, "What do you want?", and thus saved me from giving up on the game.

Have you ever noticed that in reality, the first words of our Lord, in the book of John, out of ALL the words he could have spoken in that first chapter, that those first words, in reality, are so unexpected? (If he had some engagement rings in his robe that the two disciples had known about, it would make a bit more sense I think).

The second words of our Lord indicate, for the first time directly what kind of Lord he is: a Revealer.

The third set of words from our Lord indicate something else about what kind of Lord he is: a Re-Namer.

A bridegroom names. A bride doesn't 'take' his name, if she is aware of what is going on. She submits to being named .... and then prays.

I really wish I understood all this when I was younger. But noooooooo. I had to deal with a Mom, who, funny, absolutely hated the idea of being named by any Man. Talk about confusing!

Your testimony was wonderful.

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Lesson 8 Advice to the Unsaved

A Call to Prayer
Chapter 8

Lesson 8 Advice to the Unsaved

A Call to Prayer Chapter 8

A Call to Prayer
Chapter 8