Private and personal prayer.
It should be noticed that Hezekiah was a man who so believed in prayer as to immediately resort to it in every new emergency of life. It was his first way of relief. He sought God at once. In a time of great national distress, he went into the house of the Lord, and spread the insulting letter of his enemies before the Lord. In a time of personal peril, when disease was gaining ground and vitality was failing, and it was made evident that he must die, he sought privacy that he might pray, wrestling with God, if so be he could win restoring mercies. Too ill to go to the sanctuary, he could make a secret place of the corner of the room where his royal couch was laid, turn his face to the wall, and pray to the "Father who seeth in secret, and rewardeth openly." Only certain points of so large a subject as "private prayer" can be dealt with in one discourse. The points suggested by this action of Hezekiah are—
I. WHAT ARE ITS APPROPRIATE CONDITIONS? Absolutely necessary are privacy, the sense of privacy, quiet-mindedness, and continuance in the prayer-exercise. It is the most serious evil affecting modern religious life, that household arrangements and business claims make privacy, quietness, and continuance for personal devotions so nearly impossible. The only hopeful revival will begin with the home place of prayer. Christian parents, by example and skilful management of family life, must make private prayer possible for all members of the family. They cannot make others prayerful; hut they can make suitable prayer-conditions. Christ says we must "shut to the door."
III. WHAT SHOULD IT CONCERN? Everything, small or great, that is of direct personal interest, whether it concerns body, mind, or soul. Efforts are made to limit the spheres of prayer to matters of religious life and feeling. The godly man cannot be so limited. Fathers care for children's bodies and minds and relations, as well as for their characters. And our heavenly Father surely concerns himself about our sicknesses, our anxieties, our material circumstances. We may pray for life, restored bodily life and health; then we may pray for everything less than that, but included in it.
III. WHAT SHOULD BE ITS SPIRIT? We may specially dwell on:
1. Openness; frankness; removal of reserve; tone that convinces of sincerity. Most grieving to God is our "keeping back anything." Worthy parents gladly listen to both the bad and the good in their children's requests.
2. Trustfulness; the spirit of confidence in God as Hearer and Answerer.
3. Importunity; the sign of really earnest desire. Parents often delay answering children's requests because they have asked half-heartedly, as if answering did not much matter.
IV. WHAT WILL BE THE RESPONSE? Something always. No sincere cry ever rose to God unheeded or unanswered. The answer may be:
1. Refusal.
2. The call to wait.
3. The gift of what is asked.
4. The gift of something better.
5. The quieting down of our desire for the thing.—R.T.