Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) was both an evangelist and a Bible scholar.  
Long associated with D. L. Moody, he became most prominent during world 
preaching tours in 1902 and 1921.  His preaching in Wales in 1902 has been 
noted as one cause for the Welsh revivals of the early 1900s.  He was the 
first superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute and wrote numerous 
devotional and theological books.

Spiritual awakening followed R. A. Torrey throughout his career as an 
evangelist.  In revivals with the popular gospel singer Charles W. Alexander, 
Dr. Torrey filled meeting halls with his magnetic presence, passion, and 
earnestness.

To help the reading of this classic work, the original Scripture references 
have been replaced by the language of our time--the NIV.  Also, obviously 
archaic terminology and passages obscured by expressions not totally familiar 
in our day have been revised.  However, neither Torrey's meaning nor intent 
have been tampered with.

All Scripture references are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL 
VERSION (C) 1978 by the New York Bible Society, used by permission of 
Zondervan Bible Publishers.
                                                    Tony Capoccia
        
        
                             The Prayer of Faith
                                     by
                                R. A. Torrey
                                 (1856-1928)

        "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we 
        ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know 
        that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have what we 
        asked of him."
                                                    1 John 5:14, 15
 

Please notice carefully exactly what God tells us in this passage.  Here we 
are told that there is a way in which certain people can pray so as not only 
to get the very thing that they ask, but also to know before they actually 
get it, that God has heard their prayer and that therefore the thing which 
they have asked of Him He has granted to them.  Listen again to these 
wonderful words that the Holy Spirit inspired John to write: "This is the 
confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to 
his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we
know that we have what we asked of him."  Certainly that is an astonishing 
statement: it gives us the plain and positive assurance that there are some 
people who can pray in a certain way, and that if those people pray in that 
way they will not only get whatsoever they ask, but that, furthermore, they 
may know before they get it that God has heard their prayer and granted what 
they have asked.  It is certainly a great joy when one prays to be able to 
know that the prayer we have offered has been heard and that what we have 
asked has been granted, and to be just as sure that it is ours as we shall be 
when we actually have it in our hand.
        
                       I.  To Whom the Promise Is Made

Please note, first of all, just who it is to whom God makes this promise.  As 
I have said so often before, when you try to understand and apply the 
promises of God which you find in the Bible you must always be very careful to 
note just exactly who the people are to whom the promise is made.  Just who 
the persons are to whom this promise is made we are told in the immediate 
context, in the verse that immediately precedes, "I write these things to you 
who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have 
eternal life."  Then immediately follows the promise that we are studying
today, so it is as clear as day that the promise is made to those who 
"believe on the name of the Son of God," to them and to nobody else, and 
anyone who does not believe on the name of the Son of God has no right 
whatever to take this promise to himself, or to think that if he does take 
the promise to himself and it is not fulfilled, God's Word has failed.  The 
fault is with himself, and not with God's Word.  He has taken to himself a 
promise that was made to somebody else.  Just what it means to believe on the 
Son of God we are told in the Gospel written by the same one who wrote this 
Epistle, the Gospel of John; John 1:12, "To all who received him [that is, 
received Jesus Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right 
to become children of God."  
         
So John himself interprets "believing on the name of the Son of God" to mean 
receiving the Son of God, that is, receiving Him to be to ourselves what He 
offers Himself to be to all who put their trust in Him, our personal Savior, 
who bore our sins in His own body on the cross, and our Lord and Master to 
whom we surrender the absolute control of our thoughts, our will, and our 
conduct.  So, then, this promise is made to those who have received Jesus 
Christ as their personal Savior and trusted God to forgive them because Jesus 
Christ died on the cross in their place, and also who have received Him as 
their Lord and Master to whom they have surrendered the absolute control of 
their thoughts, their will, and their conduct, those who have made an 
absolute surrender to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  It is made to them, and 
to no one else, and no one else has the least right to claim it.
        
Just here is where many go astray, they do not really "believe on the name of 
the Son of God," they have not really "received him," yet they appropriate to 
themselves this promise that was never made to them.
        
               II.  How We Must Pray in Order to Know that God 
                 Has Heard Our Prayers and Granted the Thing 
                             that We Have Asked

Now we come to the question, How must "those who believe on the name of the 
Son of God" pray in order to know that God has heard their prayer, and has 
granted the thing that they asked?  Read the fourteenth verse again.  "This 
is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything 
according to his will, he hears us."  In order to know that God has heard our 
prayer and granted us what we asked, we must pray according to His will.  
When we who believe on the name of the Son of God pray for anything that we 
know to be according to His will, then we may know, for the all-sufficient 
reason that God says so in His Word, that God has heard the prayer and 
granted us what we asked.  We may know it, not because we feel it, not because 
of any inward illumination of the Holy Spirit; we may know it for the very 
best of all reasons-because God says so in His Word, and "God cannot lie."

But is it possible for us to know what the will of God is, so that we can be 
sure while we are praying that we are asking something that is "according to 
his will"?  We can know the will of God with absolute certainty in many cases 
when we pray.  How can we know the will of God?
        
1.  In the first place, we may know the will of God by the promises in His 
Word.  The Bible was given us for the specific purpose of revealing to us the 
will of God, and when we find that anything is definitely promised in the 
Word of God we know that that is His will, for He has said so in so many 
words.  And when we who believe on the name of the Son of God go to God and 
ask Him for anything that is definitely promised in His Word, we may know 
with absolute certainty that God has heard our prayer and that what we have 
asked of God is granted.  We do not have to feel it--God says so, and that is 
enough.
        
For example, God says in His Word, James 1:5, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he 
should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it 
will be given to him."  So when I go to God and ask for wisdom, if I am a 
believer on the name of the Son of God, I know with absolute certainty that 
God has heard my prayer and that wisdom will be granted.
        
Some years ago I was speaking at a Y.M.C.A. Bible Conference at Mahtomede, 
White Bear Lake, Minnesota; I was speaking on the subject of prayer.  I had 
to hurry immediately from the amphitheater to the train.  As I passed out of 
the amphitheater I saw another minister from Minneapolis, who was to follow 
me immediately on the program.  He was greatly excited.  He stopped me and 
said, "Mr. Torrey, I am going to tear to pieces everything that you have said 
to these young men this morning." I replied, "If I have not spoken according 
to the Bible, I hope you will tear it to pieces.  But if I have spoken 
according to the Book you had better be careful how you try to tear it to 
pieces."  "But," he exclaimed, "you have produced upon these young men the
impression that they can pray for things and get the very thing that they ask 
for."  I replied, "I do not know whether that is the impression that I have
produced or not, but it certainly is the impression that I intended to 
produce."
 
"But," he said, "that is not right; you must say if it be according to God's 
will."  I replied, "If you do not know that the thing which you have asked is
according to God's will, then it is all right to say, 'If it be according to 
Your will.'  But if you know God's will, what is the need of saying, 'If it be
according to Your will'?" "But," he said, "we cannot know God's will."  I
answered, "What was the Bible given to us for if it was not to reveal God's 
will?"  "Now," I said, "when you find a definite promise in the Bible and 
take that promise to God, don't you know that you have asked something 
according to His will?  For example, we read in James 1:5, "If any of you
lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding 
fault, and it will be given to him."  "Now," I said, "when you ask for wisdom 
do you not know that God is going to give it?" "But," he said, "I do not know 
what wisdom is."  I said, "If you did you would not need to ask it, but 
whatever it may be, do you not know that God is going to give it?" He made 
no reply.  I never heard that he tried to tear what I said to pieces, but I 
know that later he himself spoke very boldly on the subject of confidently 
asking God for the things that we need of Him, and that are according to His 
will.
 
No, when you have a definite promise in God's Word you do not need to put any 
"ifs" before it.  All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus (2 
Corinthians 1:20).  They are absolutely sure, and if you plead any plain 
promise in God's Word you need not put any "ifs" in your petition.  You may 
know that you are asking something that is according to God's will, and it is 
your privilege to know that God has heard you, and it is your privilege to 
know that you have the thing you have asked; it is your privilege to get up 
from prayer with the same absolute certainty that that thing is yours that 
you will afterward have when you actually see it in your hand.
        
Suppose some cold winter morning when I lived in Chicago I had gone down on 
South Clark Street that was then teeming with poor men, and some shivering 
tramp should have come up to me and said, "Mr. Torrey, it is very cold and I 
need an overcoat.  Will you give me an overcoat?" And then I had replied, "If 
you will come over to my house this afternoon at 39 East Pearson Street, at 
two o'clock, I'll give you an overcoat."  Promptly at two o'clock the tramp 
makes his appearance.  I meet him at the door and bring him into the house.  
Then he says to me, "Mr. Torrey, you said to me this morning on South Clark 
Street that if I would come to your home at two o'clock this afternoon you 
would give me an overcoat.  Now, if you will, please give me that overcoat." 
What would I say?  I'd say, "Man, what did you say?" He would reply, "I said, 
if you will, please give me that overcoat."  "But why do you put any 'if' in?  
Did I not say I would?" "Yes."  "Do you doubt my word?" "No."  "Then why do 
you put in an 'if'?"  So why should we put any "ifs" in when we take to God 
any promise of His own?  Does God ever lie?  
 
There are many cases in which we do not know the will of God, and in such 
cases it is all right to put in "if it be Your will."  And even in cases where
we do not know His will, our prayers should always be in submission to His 
will, for the dearest of anything to the true child of God is God's will, but 
there is no need to put any "ifs" in when He has revealed His will.  To put 
in an "if" in such a case as that is to doubt God, to doubt His Word, and 
really is to "make God a liar."
         
This passage of Scripture is one of the most abused passages in the Bible.  
God put it into His Word to give us "confidence" when we pray.  It is 
constantly misused to make us uncertain when we pray.  Oftentimes when 
some young and enthusiastic believer is asking for something with great 
confidence, some cautious brother will go to him after the meeting is over 
and say to him, "Now, my young brother, you must not be so confident as that 
in your prayers.  It may not be God's will, and we ought to be submissive to 
the will of God, and you should say, 'If it be Your will."'  And so some men 
always have an element of uncertainty in their prayers, and one would think 
that 1 John 5:14 read, "This is the lack of confidence we have in approaching 
God: that we can never know God's will, and therefore can never be sure that 
our prayer is heard."  But that is not the way the verse reads.  It reads, 
"This is the confidence [not uncertainty, but absolute confidence] we have in 
approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  
And if we know that he hears us--whatever we ask--we know that we have what 
we asked of him."  Oh, how subtle the devil is to take a passage of Scripture
that God has put into His Word to fill us with confidence when we pray, and 
use it to make us uncertain when we pray.

2.  But can we know the will of God when we pray, even when there is no
definite promise in regard to the matter about which we are praying?  Yes, in 
many cases we can.  How? Romans 8:26-27, answers the question: "In the same 
way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to 
pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words 
cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, 
because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."  
It is the work of the Holy Spirit when we pray to make known to us what is 
the will of God in the matter about which we are praying, and to show us if 
the thing is according to His will, that it is according to His will.  There 
are many things we need which are not definitely promised in the Word, and it 
doesn't follow at all that because they are not definitely promised in the 
Word they are not "according to the will of God."  It is the will of God to 
give us very many things which He has not definitely promised in His Word, 
and it is the method of God, when we pray, to give us, by the direct 
illumination of the Holy Spirit, to know His will even in regard to things 
about which He has given us no definite promise.
        
For example, while I was pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago, the child of 
a man and woman who were both members of our church was taken very sick.  The 
child first had the measles, and the measles was followed by meningitis.  The 
child sank very low, and the doctor said to the mother, "I can do no more for 
your child.  Your child cannot live."  She immediately hurried to my house to
get me to come up to their house and pray for her child.  But I was out of 
town holding meetings in Pittsburgh.  So she sent for my assistant pastor, 
Rev.  W. S. Jacoby, and he went to the house with one of my colleagues in the 
Bible Institute, and prayed for the child.  That night when I got home from 
Pittsburgh he came around to my house to tell me about it, and he said, "Mr. 
Torrey, if I ever had an answer to my prayers in my life, it was today when I 
was praying for the Duff child."  He was confident that God had heard his
prayer and that the child would be healed.  And the child was healed right 
away.  This was Saturday.  The next morning the doctor called again at the 
house and there was such a remarkable change in the child that he said to 
Mrs. Duff, "What have you done for your child?"  She told him just what she 
had done.  Then he said, "Well, I will give her some more medicine."  "No,"
she said, "you will not.  You said you could do no more for the child, that 
the child must die, and we went to God in prayer and God has healed the 
child.  You are not going to take the honor to yourself by giving him some 
more medicine."  Indeed, the child was not only improved that morning, the 
child was well, and Mrs. Duff was at the morning service and would have 
brought the child with her if it had not been such a stormy morning that she 
thought it would be better not to take it out in the intense cold.

Now, neither Mr. Jacoby nor I could pray for every sick child in that way, 
for it is not the will of God to heal every sick child, nor every sick adult.  
It is God's general will in regard to His children that they be well in body, 
but there are cases when God, for wise purposes of His own, does not see fit 
to heal the sick; and there are cases, if we are living near to God and 
listening for the voice of His Spirit, and are entirely surrendered to the 
Spirit in our praying, in which the Spirit of God will make clear to us the 
will of God, and we shall know that our prayer is heard, and we will know 
that the request is ours long before we actually get it.
        
Take another and entirely different illustration, for the healing of the body 
is only one of the ways in which God answers prayer, and not by any means the 
most important.  In my first pastorate we had a union meeting of all the 
churches of the town.  In the course of the meetings we had a day of fasting 
and prayer.  During the morning meeting while we were praying, God led me to 
pray that one of the most unlikely men in the town might be saved that night.  
The man had led a wild, roaming life; few in his family were Christians; but 
as we knelt in prayer that morning God put a great burden on my heart for 
that man's salvation, and I prayed that he might come to the meeting and be 
saved that night.  And as I prayed, God gave me great confidence that the man 
would come and be saved.  And come he did, and saved he was, that night.  
There was not a man in that whole town who was more unlikely to be saved than 
he.  That was more than forty years ago, but when I was in Chattanooga, 
Tennessee, a few years ago, I met another man whose mother was saved about 
the same time, and he told me that this man was then living in Tennessee and 
was still living a Christian life.  Now, I cannot pray for the salvation of 
every unsaved person in that way, but by His Spirit, God revealed to me His 
will regarding that man, and in many a case He has revealed His will.
        
Take still another illustration.  One day, when I was in Northfield, Mass., I 
received word from Mr. Fitt, Mr. Moody's son-in-law, in Chicago, that we 
needed five thousand dollars for the work in Chicago at once, and asking me 
to pray for it.  Another member of the faculty of the Bible Institute was in 
Northfield at that time, and that night we went out into a summer-house on my 
place and knelt down and prayed God to send that five thousand dollars.  And 
God gave my friend great confidence that He had heard the prayer, and he said 
to me, "God has heard the prayer and the five thousand dollars will come." 
Mr. Fitt and Mr. Gaylord also prayed in Chicago, and God gave Mr. Gaylord a 
great confidence that the five thousand dollars would come.  We knew it was 
ours, we knew that God had heard the prayer and that we had received the five 
thousand dollars.  And a telegram came the next day (I think it was) from 
Indianapolis, saying that five thousand dollars had been deposited in a bank 
in Indianapolis to our account and was awaiting our order.  Though we had 
prayed for the money and expected it, Mr. Fitt could hardly believe the news, 
and sent to our bank in Chicago, which inquired of the bank in Indianapolis 
if the information were true, and learned that it was.  So far as I know, the 
man who put that money in the bank in Indianapolis at our call had never 
given a penny to the Bible Institute before.  I did not know there was such a 
man in the world, and, so far as I know, he has never given a penny to the 
Bible Institute since.  Now, I cannot go to God every time I want money and 
think I need it and ask God for it with that same confidence, but there are 
times when I can.  There have been many such times in my life, and God has 
never failed, and He never will.  Banks sometimes fail; God never falls.
        
To sum it all up, when God makes known His will, either by a specific promise 
of His Word or by His Holy Spirit while we are praying, that what we ask for 
is "according to His will," it is our privilege to know--if we really believe 
on the name of the Son of God--that our prayer is granted, and that it is 
ours, just as truly ours, as it will be when later we actually have it in our 
hand.

                           III.  Praying in Faith

The passage we have been studying is closely related to another passage in 
the Gospel of Mark, which contains a promise of our Lord Himself that God 
will answer prayer.  It is a very familiar passage; you will find it in Mark 
11:24, "I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have 
received it, and it will be yours."  I will not stop to call your attention 
to whom this promise is made, further than to say that it is made, as are all 
the other promises of God to answer prayer which we have been studying, to 
those who believe on Jesus Christ, those who are united to Jesus Christ by 
a living faith that manifests itself in an obedient love.  This is evident 
from the context, as you can find out for yourself if you will read the 
promise in its context.
 
And how must we pray in order to get the thing that we ask?  We must pray in 
faith, that is, we must pray with confident expectation of getting the very 
thing that we ask.  Some say that any prayer that is in submission to the 
will of God, and in faith and dependence on Him, is a prayer of faith.  But 
it is not "the prayer of faith" in the Bible sense of "the prayer of faith."  
"The prayer of faith," in the Bible sense, is the prayer that has no doubt 
whatever that God has heard and granted the specific thing "which we have 
asked of him."  This is evident from James 1:5-7, "If any of you lacks wisdom,
he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it 
will be given to him.  But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, 
because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the 
wind.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord."
No matter how positive the promises of God may be, we will never receive them 
in our own experience till we absolutely believe them, and the prayer that 
gets what it asks is "the prayer of faith," that is, the prayer that has no 
doubt whatever of getting the very thing that is asked.
 
This comes out clearly in Mark 11:24, "I tell you, whatever you ask for in 
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."  When we 
pray to God, and pray according to His will as known by the promises of His 
Word, or as known by the Holy Spirit revealing His will to us, we should 
confidently believe that the very thing that we have asked is granted us.  We 
should "believe that" we "have received," and what we thus believe we have 
received we shall afterward have in actual personal experience.
        
Take, for example, the matter of praying for "the baptism with the Holy 
Spirit."  When anyone prays for the Holy Spirit, anyone who is united to Jesus
Christ by a living faith that reveals itself in an obedient love, anyone who 
has received Jesus Christ as his Savior and is trusting God to forgive him on 
the sole ground that Jesus Christ died in his place, and who has received 
Jesus Christ as his Lord and Master, and has surrendered all his thoughts and 
purposes and conduct to God's control, he may know that he has prayed for 
something according to God's will, for Jesus Christ definitely says in Luke 
11:13, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your 
children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to 
those who ask him!" And as one knows that he has asked something which is 
according to God's will as God has clearly revealed it in His Word, it is 
one's privilege to say, "I have what I asked.  I have the Holy Spirit." 
 
It is not a question at all of whether one feels that he has received the 
Holy Spirit or not; it is not a question of some remarkable experience: it is 
simply a question of taking God at His Word and that he who prays believes 
that he has received, just because God says so.  And what he has taken by 
naked faith on the Word of God, simply believing he has received, because God 
says so, he will afterward actually possess.  There is no need that he go to 
any "special meeting," no need that he work himself up into a frenzy of 
emotionalism, no need that he fall into a trance, or fall into 
unconsciousness, an experience utterly foreign to anything described in the 
New Testament.  He has far better ground for his assurance that he has 
received what he asked than any feeling or any ecstasy; he has the immutable 
Word of God, "God who cannot lie."

Praying in faith, that is praying with an unquestioning belief that you will 
receive just exactly what you ask; yes, believing as you pray that God has 
heard your prayer and that you have received the thing that you ask, is one 
of the most important factors in obtaining what we ask when we pray.  As 
James puts it in 1:6-7, "When he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because 
he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That 
man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord."  That is, let 
not the man who has any doubt that God has heard his prayer think that he 
shall receive anything of the Lord.  So the tremendously important question 
arises, How can we pray the prayer of faith?  How can we pray with a 
confident, unquestioning certainty in our minds that God has heard our prayer 
and granted the thing that we ask? This has been partly answered in what we 
have already said, but in order that it may be perfectly clear, let us repeat 
the substance of it again.

1.  To pray the prayer of faith we must, first of all, study the Word of God, 
especially the promises of God, and find out what the will of God is and 
build our prayers on the written promises of God.  Intelligent faith, and 
that is the only kind of faith that counts with God, must have a warrant.  We 
cannot believe by just trying to make ourselves believe.  Such belief as that 
is not faith but credulity, it is "make-believe."
        
The great warrant for intelligent faith is God's Word.  As Paul puts it in 
Romans 10:17, "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard 
through the word of Christ."  The faith that is built on the sure Word of God 
is an intelligent faith, it has something to rest on.  So if we would pray 
the prayer of faith we must study much the Word of God and find out what God 
has definitely promised, and then, with God's promise in mind, approach God 
and ask Him for that thing which He has promised.
        
Here is the point at which many go astray.  Here is the point at which I went 
astray in my early prayer life.  Not long after my conversion I got hold of 
this promise of our Lord Jesus in Mark 11:24, "I tell you, whatever you ask 
for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."  I 
said to myself, "All that I need to do if I want anything is to ask God for 
it and then make myself believe that I am going to get it, and I'll have it."  
So whenever I wanted anything I asked God for it and tried to make myself 
believe I was going to get it, but I didn't get it, for it was only "make-
believe" and I did not really believe at all.  But I later learned that 
"faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the 
word of Christ," and that if I wished to Pray "the prayer of faith" I must 
have some warrant for my faith, some ground on which to rest my faith, and 
that the surest of all grounds for faith was the Word of God.  So when I 
desired anything of God I would search the Scriptures to find if there was 
some promise that covered that case, and then go to God and plead His own 
promise; and thus testing on that promise I would believe that God had heard, 
and He had, and I got what I asked.

One of the mightiest men of prayer of the last generation was George Mueller 
of Bristol, England, who in the last sixty years of his life (he lived to be 
ninety-two or ninety-three) obtained the English equivalent of seven million 
four hundred dollars by prayer ($7,000,400).  But George Mueller never prayed 
for something just because he wanted it, or even just because he felt it was 
greatly needed for God's work.  When it was laid on George Mueller's heart to 
pray for anything, he would search the Scriptures to find if there was some 
promise that covered the case.  Sometimes he would search the Scriptures for 
days before he presented his petition to God.  And then, when he found the 
promise, with his open Bible before him and his finger on that promise, he 
would plead that promise and so he received what he asked.  He always prayed 
with an open Bible before him.

2.  But this is not all that is to be said about how to pray the prayer of 
faith.  It is possible for us to have faith in many an instance when there is
no definite promise covering the case, and to pray with the absolute 
assurance that God has heard our prayer, to believe with a faith that has not
a shadow of doubt in it that we have received what we have asked.  The way 
that comes to pass we are plainly told in the passage to which I have already 
referred in the earlier part of this sermon, Romans 8:26-27, "In the same 
way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to
pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words 
cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, 
because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."  
That is to say, the Holy Spirit, as we have already said, often times makes 
clear to us as we pray what it is the will of God to do, so that, listening 
to His voice, we can pray with absolute confidence, with a confidence that 
has not a shadow of doubt, that God has heard our prayer and granted the 
thing that was asked.
 
My first experience, at least the first that I recall, of this wonderful 
privilege of knowing the will of God, and praying with confident faith even 
when one had no definite promise in the written Word that God would hear the 
prayer, came very early in my ministry.  There was a young dentist in my 
congregation whose father was a member of our church.  This dentist was taken 
very ill with typhoid fever, and went down to the very gates of death.  I 
went to see him and found him unconscious.  The doctor and his father were by 
the bedside, and the doctor said to me, "He cannot live.  The crisis is past 
and it has turned the wrong way.  There is no possibility of his recovery."  
I knelt down to pray, and as I prayed a great confidence came into my heart, 
an absolutely unshakable confidence that God had heard my prayer and that the 
man was to be raised up.  As I rose from my knees I said to the father and 
the doctor, "Ebbie will get well.  He will not die at this time."  The doctor
smiled and said, "That is all right, Mr. Torrey, from your standpoint, but he 
cannot live.  He will die."  I replied, "Doctor, that is all right from your 
standpoint, but he cannot die; he will live."  I went home.  Not long after, 
word was brought to me that the young man was dying.  They told me what he 
was doing, and said that no one ever did that except just when he was dying.  
I calmly replied, "He is not dying.  He will not die.  He will get well."  I 
knew he would: he did.  The last I knew of him he was still living, and his 
healing took place between forty and forty-five years ago.  But I cannot pray 
for every sick man in that way, not even though he is an earnest Christian, 
as this man was not at that time.  Sometimes it is God's will to heal, 
usually it is God's will to heal, if the conditions are met; but it is not 
always God's will to heal.  "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick 
person well," God tells us in James 5:15; but it is not always possible to 
pray "the prayer of faith"; we can pray it only when God makes it possible by 
the leading of His Holy Spirit 
 
But "the prayer of faith" will not only heal the sick, it will bring many 
other blessings, blessings of far more importance than physical healing.  It 
will bring salvation to the lost; it will bring power into our service; it 
will bring money into the treasury of the Lord; it will bring great revivals 
of religion.  In my first pastorate one of the first persons to accept Christ 
was a woman who had been a backslider for many years.  But she not only came 
back to the Lord, but came back in a very thorough way.  Not long after her 
conversion God gave to her a great spirit of prayer for a revival in our 
church and community.  When I had been there about a year she was called to 
go out to California with a sick friend, but before going she came into the 
prayer meeting on her last prayer-meeting night there, and said, "God has 
heard my prayer for a revival.  You are going to have a great revival here in 
the church."  And we did have a revival, not only in the church, but in the 
whole community, a revival that transformed every church in the community and 
brought many souls to Christ.  And the revival went on again the next year, 
and the next, and the next, until I left that field.  And it went on under 
the pastor who followed me and the pastor who followed him.

Oh, yes, "the prayer of faith" is the great secret of getting the things of 
all kinds that we need in our personal life, that we need in our service, 
that we need in our work, that we need in our church, that we need 
everywhere.  There is no limit to what "the prayer of faith can do," and if we 
would pray more and pray more intelligently, and pray "the prayer of faith," 
there is no telling what we could do as a church and as an institute (Moody 
Bible Institute).  But as we have said, in order to pray "the prayer of 
faith" we must, first of all, study our Bible much in order that we may know 
the promises of God, what they are, how large they are, how definite they 
are, and just exactly what is promised.  In addition to that, we must live so 
near to God, be so fully surrendered to the will of God, have such a delight 
in God and so feel our utter dependence on the Spirit of God, that the Holy 
Spirit Himself can guide us in our prayers and indicate clearly to us what 
the will of God is, and make us sure while we pray that we have asked for 
something that is according to God's will, and thus enable us to pray with 
the absolute confidence that God has heard our prayer, and that "we have 
received" the things that we asked of Him.
        
Here is where many of us fail in our prayer life: We either do not know that 
it is our privilege to "pray in the Spirit," that is, to pray under the 
Spirit's guidance; or else we do not realize our utter dependence on the Holy 
Spirit, and cast ourselves on Him to lead us when we pray, and therefore we 
pray for the things which our own heart, our own selfish desire, prompts us 
to pray for; or else we are not in such an attitude toward God that the 
Spirit of God can make His voice heard in our hearts.

Oh that we might all be made to realize the immeasurable blessings for 
ourselves, for our friends, and for the church and for the world, that lie 
within the reach of "the prayer of faith," and determine that we would pray 
"the prayer of faith"; and then get down to the study of the Word of God so 
that we could know God's will and what to pray for; and be in such a relation 
toward God, be so fully surrendered to His will and in utter, constant 
dependence on the Holy Spirit, looking to the Holy Spirit that as we pray it 
might not be so much we who pray as the Holy Spirit praying through us!  Then 
we would soon see this spiritual-desert city, and our spiritual-desert 
churches, "blossom as the rose."

Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of
Bible Bulletin Board
P.O. Box 130
Shreveport, LA 71110     
        
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