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Our prayers often fail of success —

I. BECAUSE OF WANT OF FAITH. There are a multitude of prayers offered to God with something like this feeling: "Well, perhaps God will hear and answer; perhaps not. At any rate, I may as well pray; and if the answer comes, well: if not, I at least have done my duty." Now, such a feeling as this, though it be not positive infidelity, is so near to it as to be most offensive to God, and can only bring forth His severe displeasure. The matter of prayer is one thing, the manner of prayer is another. If the manner of presenting our prayer is right, and the matter wrong, then, of course, will it miscarry. If the matter is right and the manner wrong, the prayer is likewise fruitless of good.

II. BECAUSE WE EVINCE A PRACTICAL UNBELIEF IN GOD'S ABILITY TO GRANT US OUR REQUESTS. We act as if probabilities affected God as they do us: we measure His ability by our own. We do not remember that "with God nothing is impossible."

III. THE INDULGENCE OF SOME ONE OR MORE KNOWN SINS. Do we not read, "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me." To pray, and yet to commit wilful sin, or still to pursue a course of secret or open iniquity, is not only mocking God with lip service, but is also acting with hypocrisy, professing one thing but doing another. A praying spirit and a sinning heart cannot dwell together.

IV. REMISSNESS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF OUR CHRISTIAN DUTY. This tendency in the minds of many to divorce prayer from all the instrumentalities which God has connected with its being answered is one fruitful source of evil, and a cause why so many prayers are uttered in vain. To illustrate this: suppose that you are threatened with shipwreck — the storm rages fearfully, the vessel is dashed upon the rocks and is broken up, every hope of escape seems gone, and in the extremity of your distress you cry unto God to save you from this threatened death! But how do you expect He will save you? — by a miracle? — by bearing you through the air and landing you safely on the shore? Or do you not rather look for an answer to your prayer by means of human agency, and by physical and natural instrumentality? — by a lifeboat, by a cable fastened to the rock, by the buoying up of some part of the wreck until it is washed upon the beach. And suppose that, having prayed to God for succour, you yet refuse to use the instrumentality which, in answer to your prayer, He has furnished for your safety. You decline to get into the lifeboat, or object to be drawn ashore by a rope, or will not commit yourself to some means provided for your escape: can you be saved? God answered your prayer, not by giving you instantaneously the end desired, but by giving you means adequate to secure that end; and if you refused the means you could not expect the end. So with spiritual blessings. God answers us through the instrumentality of duties; and we find the end we desire when we use the means He has enjoined. Another reason why our prayers are not answered is —

V. BECAUSE WE DO NOT PERSEVERE IN PRAYER. One other way in which we ask and receive not, because we ask amiss, is —

VI. BY ASKING THINGS WHICH DO NOT ACCORD WITH GOD'S PURPOSES OF DISCIPLINE OR MERCY. We must not forget the great truth, that God uses this world as a school of discipline, to fit us for a holier state above. In this state trials, disappointments, etc., are the necessary instruments whereby our souls are purged and fitted for heaven. Yet we often pray that God would relieve us from this trial, that He would exempt us from this threatened affliction; but in His infinite wisdom He knows that to grant these requests would be productive of evil rather than good, as it is "in the furnace of affliction" that God often chooses His saints, and "through much tribulation that they enter into the kingdom of heaven."

(Bishop Stevens.)

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KJV: O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

WEB: My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don't answer; in the night season, and am not silent.