| The Building of Character |
Chapter 23 |
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Another reason why some cease to pray for their friends is that answers to prayers already offered in their behalf have been so long delayed. There are mothers, for example, who for weary years have been pleading for the salvation of children who still remain impenitent. In the unanswering of their supplications they lose faith and hope, and their prayer languishes. The same is true of other prayers. Hearts fail in the long delays.
But deferred answers should not chill the warmth and earnestness of our asking. Delays are not refusals. God has His own time and way of granting our requests for others as well as for ourselves. There are some blessings it takes a great while to prepare. They are like fruits which cannot ripen until their season comes, and to give them at once would only be to put into our hand unripe and unwholesome fruit. There are purposes which God is working out in our friend’s life, through the sorrow, the loss, or the burden, which cannot be completed if our prayers are answered at once. It was more than twenty years before Jacob saw his prayers for his lost boy answered. We should not cease to pray because the answer tarries. Perhaps the coming of the blessing at last will depend upon our continuance in prayer. If we faint it will not come. It is a sad thing if deferred answers cause any of us to cease to pray for a careless friend. That is giving him up, and when we give him up and cease to supplicate for him, what hope has he remaining?
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