Marvels and Prayer
J. Leckie, D. D. Job 5:8-9 I would seek to God, and to God would I commit my cause:… Nothing could be better than the counsel proffered in the text, nothing more certain than the grounds on which he rests his counsel. To seek unto God, and spread out one's cause before Him, that must be the best thing to do in any emergency. Does not the wonderful actually take place often in human life? Is it only in the great world that marvels occur, unexpected and great elevations, turnings, unfoldings, light, and help? Is it not mere blindness that refuses to see the marvellous in our own sphere, and seeks it far away in old times, or on foreign shores? If we believe that God encompasses and pervades all human life, shall we not see God's hand in all these things, and learn to look to Him with expectation, what, ever our circumstances may be? I. WHY, THEN, DO WE NOT EXPECT MARVELLOUS THINGS FROM GOD? 1. One reason is that we go too much by past experience. We have difficulty in rising above the familiar. 2. Some think too much of law. The idea of law pervading all things, not only facts and phenomena of nature, but thought and feeling, soul and. heart, has wrought itself deep into many minds. There seems no room for the strange, the marvellous. Men forget two things, freedom and God. A spirit is something not included in the rigid system of law. A spirit is itself a cause, and originates. It produces. That lies in the very nature of a moral being; and God is infinitely free, and deals with the soul in ways unsearchable. 3. Men think only of their own working, and not of God's. Consequently they settle down into small expectations. 4. We fear to lessen our own diligence by the expectation of great and marvellous things being done for us. II. SOME REASONS WHY WE SHOULD CHERISH THE EXPECTATION OF THE GREAT AND MARVELLOUS. Such an expectation is essential to the praying spirit. Prayer expects great things. Could it not breathe courage and joy into us in our own individual sphere, if we could live habitually in the belief that God may do astonishing things for us — raising us out of difficulties, opening a way for us where none appears? (J. Leckie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause: WEB: "But as for me, I would seek God. I would commit my cause to God,