February 7

Secret prayer

“I have prayed for thee” (Luke 22:32).
“Daniel . . . prayed” (Dan. 6:10).
“Elisha . . . prayed” (2 Kings 4:32-33).

The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer, or those who say they believe in prayer, or yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean these people who take time and pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important, very important, and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer. There are people that put prayer first, and group the other items in life’s schedule around and after prayer.
These are the people today who are doing the most for God: in winning souls; in solving problems; in awakening churches; in supplying both men and money for mission posts; in keeping fresh and strong these lives far off in sacrificial service on the foreign field where the thickest fighting is going on; in keeping the old earth sweet a while longer.

It is wholly a secret service. We do not know who these people are, though sometimes shrewd guesses may be made. I often think that sometimes we pass some plain-looking woman quietly slipping out of church—gown been turned two or three times; bonnet fixed over more than once; hands that have not known much of the softening of gloves; and we hardly give her a passing thought, and do not know, nor guess, that perhaps she is the one who is doing far more for her church and for the world, and for God than a hundred who would claim more attention and thought, because she prays, truly prays as the Spirit of God inspires and guides.
Let me put it this way: God will do as a result of the praying of the humblest one here what otherwise He would not do.
—S. D. Gordon.

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