Idols -- Thoughts on Prayer

“Go, consecrate the people. Tell them, ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow; for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: There are devoted things among you, Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.'”  Joshua 7:13

          An unsurrendered thing becomes an idol.  To halt anywhere or over anything shows that that is of more account than God and His will.  If God wants one to run into the neighbors’ house and invite them to meeting, or urge them to give their hearts to God, or receive holiness, and that one declines or refuses and puts the duty or privilege upon the preacher, or some other worker, that prayer for that neighbor is defeated because self-will has come up above the divine will, and has, really, become an idol.

          I read with interest an incident in a certain mission-field.  The resident missionary had repute as being graciously devout and had special power in prayer and specially for the recovery of the sick.

          A cultured heathen had a lovely daughter who was dangerously ill.  The story is that he waited upon the missionary, seeking to have him pray for the recovery of the child.  The missionary told him that he would do so upon one condition, and that was that the heathen should forsake his idols and turn to God.

          This the heathen, after a decided struggle, promised to do.

          The missionary went to prayer.  But the heavens were brass over him and the earth as iron beneath his feet.  Finally he called the heathen-man and said to him, “God hears me pray.  But not this time.  You have not done as you agreed – you have not destroyed your idols.”

After some painful hedging the heathen confessed that while he had put away the idols in general, there was one he had not destroyed.  This the missionary demanded should be done, and it was finally brought out and before his eyes broken to pieces.  Then, the prayer was offered that saved the child.

          This may be a mere story that has no reality in fact.  But, it might be true.  It illustrates the idea I am seeking to here enforce, that prayer that succeeds must have the whole man.  Short of this, it is not sincere.  It simply seeks to make a convenience of one who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and if we could we would not ask Him, since we have so little in common with Him.

--Rev. Charles Fowler, 1912