Always a chance

Keep praying for that impossible man or woman who seems like a lost cause.

In Charles Spurgeon's eyes, no one is beyond the grace and mercy of God.

Spurgeon, a great 19th century British Baptist preacher, offers an encounter between God and Moses as evidence that we should never believe there are really hopeless cases.

You may recall God's reaction to Moses' brother Aaron making a golden calf for the wandering Israelites to worship.  The Lord was furious and threatened to destroy them all and to start a new nation under Moses (Exodus 32).

But Moses pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his people.

Moses suggested the Egyptians would declare God called the Israelites out into the wilderness to destroy them.  The Israelite leader then appealed to the Lord to "turn away from your fierce anger".

He added: "Turn away from this terrible disaster you have threatened against your people."

He reminded God that he had made a binding agreement with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to make his people as numerous as the stars.

And God relented.  There was punishment but the nation was not utterly destroyed.

It appeared to the Israelites that God had changed his mind.   But this may have been a test for Moses.

If so, Moses passed the test with flying colours.  He appealed to the merciful heart of God.

Moses already had an extremely close relationship with the Lord.  He spent hours in prayer with the Lord and obeyed him without reserve.

Except he could not let the threat to the Israelites go by without objecting.

God listened to Moses and he will listen to us if we pray wholeheartedly for people who are far from the Lord.

Such powerful prayer begins with spending a regular time in prayer with God, says Spurgeon.  We can't pray mountain-moving prayer without getting to know our Lord intimately.

This doesn't mean excusing the sin or the sinner - Moses did not excuse Aaron and the Israelites for making the golden calf as a god to worship.

However, no sin is too great to shut out God's mercy.

A couple of centuries ago, John Newton, a slave trader in Africa, became a believer in Christ and turned his life around.  His hymn "Amazing Grace" speaks of his change of heart and the power of God's forgiveness.

"Never let your indignation against sin prevent your prayers for sinners!" says Spurgeon.

He continues: "O you who love the Lord, give him no rest until he saves men."

Spurgeon says Moses could find nothing good in the people who had rejected God to bring before the Lord.  So, he turned his attention to God himself and his nature.  He noted that the Israelites were God's people - not Moses'.

In the same way, we can pray for people asking God not to let his creatures perish.

And, just as Moses pointed out God's covenant - or agreement - with the Israelite patriarchs in the past, so we can bring before the Lord his promises to us in the scriptures.

Finally, Moses told God that he could not go forward without his people. Spurgeon remarks "we never prevail in prayer so much as when we seem to link ourselves with the people for whom we pray".

"When you can pray like that, when you put yourself side by side with the soul for which you are pleading, you will succeed."

So, we must not give up praying for people who seem like hard cases - impossibly far from God.

The reward for answers to these prayers is overwhelming joy in our hearts - and in the heart of God.

What's in a name?

What's in a name?  A lot, when you're speaking about God.

The scriptures are dotted with different names for God, each one describing a separate characteristic.

Learning these names - and praying them - can build our faith as believers and bring hope and consolation in time of need.

We can only know God if we seek to know his character - what he is like.  The names of God in the Bible are intimately connected with what he said and did in the lives of real people in real life.

David Wilkerson says he wrote his book Knowing God by Name: Names of God that bring Healing and Hope after discovering "that God revealed these names to his people only as they needed them - in their moments of deepest crisis".

"It dawned on me that this is how I want to learn my Lord's nature also: to understand his heart in our most desperate times."

He adds: "Scripture makes it abundantly clear that, because of our commitment to the Lord, we are going to be put through the fire of testing.  That is the very reason God revealed his names to his people in the first place: to bring them encouragement, hope and life."

I can think of some examples off the top of my head. 

For instance, the name Jehovah-Jireh means "God will provide, our provider".  It pops up in the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac until God stops him at the last minute, providing a nearby goat caught in a thicket as a sacrifice in place of the young son (Genesis 22).

Abraham passed a major test of faith and God showed he would provide for those who remain faithful to their Lord.

Abraham learned another name for God when the Lord delivered enemies of him and his family into his hand in a memorable battle after his nephew Lot had been carried off by marauders in Genesis 14.  Melchizedek, king of Salem and "priest of God Most High", blessed Abraham and "El Elyon", which means "God Most High, creator and possessor of heaven and earth".

As Wilkerson writes, Melchizedek was telling Abraham that God is the creator of the entire universe and everything in it belongs to him - "he is in control of everything".  God had delivered Abram and his family - he had a plan for Abram and would carry it through.

Reflecting and meditating on the names of God can draw us closer to the Lord.  They take our minds away from our frustrations or personal agonies and remind us who loves us most - God Almighty.

I have kept a list of God's names on my desk for years and I refer to them from time to time in prayer and meditation.  They help me in worship and, as Wilkerson suggests, they give me hope.

Sometimes, I think of these names and their meaning as I prepare to sleep at night.

That is a well-trodden path.

The psalmist King David said in Psalm 63:6:

"I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night."

An unexpected answer to prayer

Richard Wurmbrand felt an unaccountable desire to visit a certain village in Romania.

He went and it was a visit that would change his life.

He had had a tough upbringing and rejected religion.

He was a Jew by birth but had become a convinced atheist.  Still, one day, he prayed to God and said that if the Lord was real, he had to prove it to young Wurmbrand.

At the same time, an old carpenter in a village high up in the mountains prayed to God, saying that he was old and sick but he did not want to die before seeing a Jew become a believer in Jesus because Jesus was a Jew.  He asked that God bring a Jew to his village and he would do his best to bring him to Christ.

In his book Tortured for Christ, Wurmband writes "something irresistible drew me to that village", one of 12,000 in Romania.

He met the carpenter who saw in Wurmbrand the answer to his prayer.  He gave the young man a Bible.

"As he told me some time later," says Wurmbrand, "he and his wife prayed for hours for my conversion and that of my wife."

"The Bible he gave me was written not so much in words, but in flames of love fired by his prayers.  I could barely read it.  I could only weep over it, comparing my bad life with the life of Jesus; my impurity with his righteousness; my hatred with his love - and he (Jesus) accepted me as one of his own."

Shortly after, Wurmbrand's wife became a believer.  They reached out to others and before long there was a new Lutheran church in Romania.

Wurmbrand and his wife later became part of the underground church in Romania during the Nazi occupation and later the Communist takeover.  He spent 14 years in a Communist prison suffering terribly for his faith.  Many Russians became believers as a result of his testimony.

When the young atheist prayed, he got an unexpected answer.  When the old carpenter prayed, he did not know how God would answer, but his faith was strong.

"The prayer of faith links man's petition to the power of God," writes Samuel Chadwick in The Path of Prayer.  "All men believe in the power of prayer to influence mind, develop character, and sanctify motive and will - but that is not all.  Prayer is force.  Prayer changes things."

Yes.  Prayer changes things.