in
the ear of One who knows that story better than we do. We need not inform
the All-knowing, but we must commune with the All-pitiful. We make our life
known unto God that we may make it bearable unto ourselves.

But let us look at the attitude of mind and heart revealed in this second
position, _Cause me to hear_. Now we are coming to the larger truth about
prayer, and the deeper spirit of it. Prayer is not merely claiming a
hearing; it is giving a hearing. It is not only speaking to God; it is
listening to God. And as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are the
words we hear greater than the words we speak. Let us not forget this. Let
us not pauperize ourselves by our very importunity. Maybe we are vociferous
when God is but waiting for a silence to fall in His earthly temples that
He may have speech with His children. We talk about 'prevailing prayer,'
and there is a great truth in the phrase. All prayer does not prevail.
There is that among men which passes for prayer but has no spiritual grip,
no assurance, no masterful patience, no fine desperation. There is a place
for all these things, and a need for them, in the life of prayer. We need
the courage of a great faith and the earnestness that is born of necessity.
We need to be able to lift up our faces toward heaven in the swelling joys
and the startling perils of these mortal hours and cry, 'Hear me,' knowing
that God does hear us and that the outcrying of every praying heart rings
clear and strong in the courts of the Heavenly King. But we need something
more; we need a very great deal more than this, if we are to enter into the
true meaning of prevailing prayer. The final triumph of prayer is not ours;
it is God's. When we are upon our knees before Him, it is He, and not we,
that must prevail. This is the true victory of faith and prayer, when the
Father writes His purpose more clearly in our minds, lays His commandment
more inwardly upon our hearts. We do not get one faint glimpse into the
meaning of that mysterious conflict at Peniel until we see that the
necessity for the conflict lay in the heart of Jacob and not in the heart
of God. The man who wrestled with the Angel and prevailed passes before us
in the glow of the sunrise weary and halt, with a changed name and a
changed heart. So must it be with us; so shall it be, if ever we know what
it is to prevail in prayer. Importunity must not become a blind and
uninspired clamouring for the thing we desir