Samuel, in his address to Israel at a critical time in the war with the Philistines, says: Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. I Samuel 12:23. Sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for people? Yes! Why would it be a sin against the Lord for Samuel not to pray for Israel? “Far be it from me that I should cease this prayer and sin against the Lord.”
Samuel probably understood the nature of prayer as much as any man who appeared in the Old Testament. Read the writings of Samuel and you will become very aware of his prayers, and aware, too, that he was very careful about what he prayed. It resulted in some mighty men of prayer coming forth under his ministry. It is my opinion that he taught David, the great psalmist, to pray; that he taught many of the men of God who came forth in that day (which was one of the golden ages of Israel, though a troubled time), a day of great conquest. Within the time of Samuel, David rose up and began to enter into a kingdom that was to reach to the River Euphrates, and down through the desert regions. David conquered much of the known world at that time.
Samuel did something that loosed a nation. His prayers, and the prayers of his schools of prophets, came forth mighty in the land to move the people of God. Not that he was looking for any credit for it, for there was something very humble about Samuel and the way that he sought after God. No matter what came to him, he walked very simply in the ways of the Lord. He utterly abandoned any desire for this world’s goods. There was no coveting, no seeking after worldly wealth. He was completely absorbed with the value of prayer.
There was a reason why he would say, “God forbid that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” Prayer, to him, was not an optional thing; it was an obligation, because there was no other way that God had committed Himself to loose His wisdom and power among men but by prayer. Since God had held before man the unlimited power through prayer, it means that correspondingly, He had voluntarily limited Himself to move through that channel. So, God was saying literally to people, “Unless you believe in My omnipotence to bless you through prayer, you will find that in all your wishes and all of your striving, My hands are tied behind My back to help you.”
Why should God do that? Because God is the God of order and of law. He created many laws and when He finally finished and looked upon man, He said, “I’ll make one thing the highest law, the highest principle to be in operation in the whole universe: by prayer, man can lay hold of My strength; by prayer, he can find My wisdom when he needs it; I’ll be with him.” In order for God to meet the people when they would cry unto Him, it meant that the law had to be greater. If that law was on any lesser plane, there could be some kind of circumstance in the physical or spiritual realm that could overwhelm him and God would not meet his need. So, He had to make prayer the greatest thing of all, or the situation would occur at some time or other that God could not meet.
The scientist says that there are laws of nature which are fixed; they cannot be violated. Yes, they can; by one means! For if God had not put prayer as a superior priority principle above everything else, some situation would come, when a man would call upon the name of the Lord, and he would perish because the answer to prayer did not operate in the realm of his need. That is why Jesus laid it out: “All things are possible to him that believeth.” (Mark 9:23).
If you believe in your heart, you can move a mountain. You can defy gravity. You can upset anything, because there is not any law of nature, there is no law of the spirit realm that comes up to the realm of prayer. When Paul talks about the spirit world, about taking the whole armor of God and fighting and battling, he concludes; “This is what makes it effective: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit for all saints” (Ephesians 6:18). Prayer is the thing that keeps it operating. That is the barrage you throw over. The devils cannot equal it. They have no artillery, no device, no witchcraft, nothing that operates on a principle equal to prayer.
Are you thinking, “It won’t work”? It will work! Look in the Scriptures. You have to believe the Word of God. A person can fluff up a lion’s mane and sleep all night long, if he knows how to pray. Daniel did—three times a day. What could a king do to him? Throw him in a lions’ den? Other people thrown in the lions’ den were torn to pieces before they ever hit the ground, the Scripture says. That shows you how ferocious they were, yet Daniel slept with them all night and they purred like kittens!
Through prayer and the integrity of prayer the three Hebrews said, “We will not bow down to this image.” “O.K., we’ll throw you in a fiery furnace.” “That’s all right; go ahead,” and they walked through the fiery furnace, through the flames. That is a great principle that God comes and walks with His people. That gives it a priority. Through faith, the waters of the Red Sea piled up. Those Israelites must not have lingered very long! “Look at that water piling up!” Water does not pile up, does it? Glaciers pile up water, but let the temperature rise and you have a problem; yet here water piled up in the springtime, when the Jordan overflowed its banks. The Red Sea parted and they all hastened through and the Lord turned the water loose again.
We do not know yet what is possible through prayer. We do not know what God could do. Through prayer and faith people received their dead alive again. They were healed of diseases that would be terminal in nature. They were lifted up to so believe God for things that Abraham and a handful of men could go out and defeat five of the greatest armies ever to come out of the East at any time. Does that impress you? It impresses me. Old Father Abraham, with three hundred and some men servants he had trained, wiped out the whole Jordan valley. That is winning. We never think of Abraham as a general, but as a man of faith—and that is all it took.
Why did Joshua win all those battles? Was he such a great military genius? No, he was a careful man about the will of God. He abode in the tabernacle and departed not out. When the glory was there he was willing to go in vigorously with such faith that God couldn’t do anything else but answer him. If he ran into trouble, he could command the sun to stand still to give him an extra day in which he could finish the job.
Again, why did Samuel say, “God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in failing to pray for you”? If he failed to pray for Israel in the hour of its need, he was shutting off the only way by which God could meet it.
Why does God say, “Love your enemies and pray for those that despitefully use you”? Because you can become as guilty as an enemy that is conniving for your death, if you are the only one in the plan of God who can pray and open the door for that person’s salvation. If you shut up your heart and say, “I won’t pray for him,” you are worse than the enemy. He has no hope unless you pray—if that is the channel by which God has chosen to meet him. That is why He tells us that we are to love, we are to pray. We are sinning against the Lord and tying His hands if we do not.
God says, “I want to move through you, I want you to be linked to My omnipotence.” If you cease to function, it automatically limits God because He has limited Himself to move through us. That is to help us in our limitation and in our need. And still it is so easy to forget to pray, to forget to give yourself to the Word, thinking that it does not matter. Prayer is not a luxury; prayer is a necessity. There is an obligation to pray because it is God’s chosen channel to move through. The prayer of faith availeth much.
Instead of thinking, “Oh, I pray and pray and pray and it doesn’t do any good,” start believing, for we are turning on the faucet through which the flood of blessing will come. Turn it on. Begin to pray. Let it flow. Pray without ceasing.
Why should prayer be so important that we would have to pray without ceasing? If God has provided all of these things and all of Christ’s provisions would automatically happen to us, then prayer would be just kind of a little frill, a nice exercise to keep us out of mischief. No, we pray without ceasing because that is the channel through which God is going to move and therefore all of His provision for us is automatically released (or released in part) when we begin to pray and bring it down.