hear me!_"

4. "_My God will hear me._" _What a solemn responsibility!_--How often
we complain of darkness, of feebleness, of failure, as if there was no
help for it. And God has promised in answer to our prayer to supply our
every need, and give us His light and strength and peace. Would that we
realised the responsibility of having such a God, and such promises,
with the sin and shame of not availing ourselves of them to the utmost.
How confident we should feel that the grace, which we have accepted and
trusted to enable us to pray as we should, will be given.

There is more. This access to a prayer-hearing God is specially meant to
make us intercessors for our fellowmen. Even as Christ obtained His
right of prevailing intercession by His giving Himself a sacrifice to
God for men, and through it receives the blessings He dispenses, so, if
we have truly with Christ given ourselves to God for men, we share His
right of intercession, and are able to obtain the powers of the heavenly
world for them too. The power of life and death is in our hands (1 John
v. 16). In answer to prayer the Spirit can be poured out, souls can be
converted, believers can be established. In prayer the kingdom of
darkness can be conquered, souls brought out of prison into the liberty
of Christ, and the glory of God be revealed. Through prayer, the sword
of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, can be wielded in power, and,
in public preaching as in private speaking, the most rebellious made to
bow at Jesus' feet.

What a responsibility on the Church to give herself to the work of
intercession! What a responsibility on every minister, missionary,
worker, set apart for the saving of souls, to yield himself wholly to
act out and prove his faith: "My God will hear me!" And what a call on
every believer, instead of burying and losing this talent, to seek to
the very utmost to use it in prayer and supplication for all saints and
for all men. My God will hear me: The deeper our entrance into the truth
of this wondrous power God hath given to men, the more whole-hearted
will be our surrender to the work of intercession.

5. "_My God will hear me._" _What a blessed prospect!_--I see it--all
the failures of my past life have been owing to the lack of this faith.
My failure, especially in the work of intercession, has had its deepest
root in this--I did not live in the full faith of the blessed assurance,
"_My God will hear me!_" Praise God! I begin to s