Scripture: "Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and will shew thee great things, and difficult, which thou knowest not." — JER. i- 3. R. V."I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it. For this more¬over will I be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." EZEK. xxxvi. 36, 37.
The fulfilment of the great promises of the new covenant is made dependent on prayer. In answer to the prayer of Jeremiah, God had said : "I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me." And to Ezekiel He had spoken : "I will cause them to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments." To us in our unbelief, and our judging of the meaning of God's Word according to human thought and experience, there is no expectation of these promises being truly fulfilled. We do not believe that God means them to be literally true. We have not the faith in the mighty power of God that is waiting to make His promise true in our experience.
And God has said that without such faith our experience will be but very partial and very limited. He has graciously pointed out the way in which such faith can be found. It is in the path of much prayer. "Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great things, and difficult, which thou knowest not." "Moreover, I will be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them." It is when individual men and women turn to God with their whole heart to plead these promises that He will fulfil them. It is in the exercise of intense persevering prayer that faith will be strengthened to take hold of God and surrender itself to His omnipotent working. And then as one and another can testify of what God has done and will do, believers will help each other and take their place as the Church of the living God ; pleading for and firmly expecting that His promises will be fulfilled in larger measure, as a new endue-ment for the great work of preaching Christ in the fulness of His redemption to perishing men.
The state of the Church, the state of our ministers and members, our own state calls for unceasing prayer. We need to pray intensely and persistently, that the need of the power of the Holy Spirit may be deeply felt, and that a strong faith may be roused in the hearts of many to claim and to expect His mighty working.
