At Christmas time last year The Most Charming Grandson#1 and I happened to chance by a telephone booth while we were out and about. He willingly posed so that I could take a photo, but he had no concept of what it was or why it would even be necessary. At only three years of age, telephones to him were small devices that slip into a back pocket, or, when you visit Nana and Grandpa, strange handsets on a shelf in the hallway. Phone booths were and are totally foreign to his world.
When Charles Spurgeon wrote the words of the following devotion for August 13 in Faith's Checkbook, telephones were still new contraptions. However, he obviously grasped their significance in the world of communication. Telephones have changed dramatically in ways Spurgeon could never have imagined since these words were penned, but his devotion on prayer is still very much applicable to our day and age.
Before and During the Call
"It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear" (Isaiah 65:24).
Quick work this! The LORD hears us before we call and often answers us in the same speedy manner. Foreseeing our needs and our prayers, He so arranges providence that before the need actually arises He has supplied it, before the trial assails us He has armed us against it. This is the promptitude of omniscience, and we have often seen it exercised. Before we dreamed of the affliction which was coming, the strong consolation which was to sustain us under it had arrived. What a prayer-answering God we have!
The second clause suggests the telephone. Though God be in heaven and we upon earth, yet He makes our word, like His own word, to travel very swiftly. When we pray aright we speak into the ear of God. Our gracious Mediator presents our petitions at once, and the great Father hears them and smiles upon them. Grand praying this! Who would not be much in prayer when he knows that he has the ear of the King of kings? This day I will pray in faith, not only believing that I shall be heard, but that I am heard; not only that I shall be answered, but that I have the answer already. Holy Spirit, help me in this!
Faith's Checkbook can be found online for free here or, as I've recently discovered, is available on the YouDevotion app. (I especially love the app because I can have Faith's Checkbook and Daily Light on the Daily Path all in the one place and in a font size I can read.)
