“To Obey is Better than Sacrifice”

“If two of you shall agree”

“Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Jesus, Matthew 18:19).

Men seem to think that unless they gather a whole crowd to support their cause, no one will listen to them or be impressed. To focus the attention of the public or the government upon their project or plan, they crank up a mass rally with their supporters or stage noisy demonstrations.

In industry, thousands of valuable man-hours are lost by strikes for every conceivable reason. . . . These striking men are certain that their strength lies in numbers. Politicians too stick to this principle. Take the crowd away from them and they look so sheepish and imbecile.

It is numbers, numbers, numbers; we are brainwashed into thinking that numbers mean everything. But the Lord Jesus said that “if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 18:19).

“If two of you shall agree”: it seems a simple enough thing to achieve, but in reality it is difficult to find two people who will agree on unselfish projects.

Gather two businessmen and say to them, “Look, there are too many broken homes in this city. The children of these homes are neglected and love-lorn; in time they will become a danger to society, unless we find some way to shower love upon them. Perhaps you must build a special home for them and set aside part of your money for their care.” They may agree that this would be nice and even necessary to do; but one or the other or both of them will find excuses. . . . How many great plans die at the committee stage itself!

Two men can’t agree; two women rarely agree; two sisters, but they have diametrically opposed views; two leaders, but they use completely different methods. So we have a babel of voices, one crying one thing and another the opposite.

But when a man repents of his sins and receives the New Life in Christ, there comes a great longing in him to do good to his neighbours. It is not an aimless and haphazard scattering of money I am talking about, but a strong, fixed, benevolent longing, to sacrifice, to serve, and to save others. So it is not hard for two young men who are transformed by Jesus’ power to put their hearts and heads together, to launch some great movement which will transform the lives of thousands.

True conversion means renouncing self and reaching out to Christ. When self is still strongly entrenched in you, you cannot say you are truly converted. A person who has come to the Cross of Jesus and seen that irresistible love which claims his all—his will, mind, ambitions, and whole personality—truly turns away from doing his own will and begins to do God’s will. Turning from self-will to God’s will is true conversion.

Such a man wants to glorify God, and live a self-denying life. Pleasing the Saviour is his greatest delight. Now for two converted people to pray together and think alike is nothing astonishing. They have the Word of God to unify them. When two people thus pray together with unified hearts and minds, great power is generated; miracles take place; God is right there amongst them. It has been said that the Church is where the Holy Spirit works.

When we pray in Jesus’ Name, it is hardly possible to ask selfish little things from God. Jesus our Lord teaches us to pray for great things, things that build His kingdom.

“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done 
. . .” God rarely likes to deny His children. Unless it is absolutely injurious to you, God does not want to withhold a request which comes from united hearts.

I meet many young couples who have been married several years but don’t pray together. Living together and yet not praying together! You can reduce your marriage to the purely animal level, but be sure, dire consequences will stem from the neglect of praying together.

From the time I was a child I saw my father and mother praying together daily. Their prayer resulted in our home being a lovely place, full of harmony and peace. In that atmosphere there was health and hardly any painful disease. We enjoyed great security as children. Fear had no place in our home. We knew that when our father prayed God did miracles. So nothing worried us unduly. Mother was gentle on the one hand and firm on the other and taught us implicit obedience.

My father and mother made a wonderful team. We children never heard them fighting or arguing about money, but we often heard their voices in prayer. We had many opportunities to see the efficacy of prayer made from clean hearts.

There was a very cultured old lady who lived in our home for a long period. She had held very high government positions and as she desired the fellowship of God’s children, my father let her stay with us.

One day, however, she was taken ill with severe abdominal pain. It was an emergency case of intestinal obstruction. But doctors would not operate on her as she was very old and frail. . . . But the suffering became unbearable. We children who had never known our parents’ prayer to fail, were watching the worsening condition with some concern. Whatever was to be done needed to be done quickly.

That night, father and mother spent nearly the whole night in prayer. And the Lord who said, “Whatsoever you agree on earth and pray for, it shall be done,” heard their prayer. By the morning the agony ceased and the gentle old lady was healed. Never again did she suffer in that way.

Our motives are very important in prayer. If you want your prayer to be answered purely because it will add to your comfort and prosperity, God is in no way obliged to hear you. Nor should you ask for your prayer to be heard in order that your importance should be enhanced, or that you should gain a reputation among your acquaintances as a man of piety. There should be nothing selfish in your asking.

Why do you want your health to be restored? Is it to rise up and glorify God and be His true disciple? Why do you ask for promotion? Is it that in that higher post, you want to wield a stronger influence for Jesus and for righteousness, such that all evil or unrighteousness should be banished from your office? If so, God will grant you your desire. I always rejoice when men whom Jesus has transformed—righteous men—come to positions of great responsibility.

Get yourself a new heart and begin to pray with those who call on the Lord with a pure heart.

—Joshua Daniel

“Reality Check”

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23-24).

“Holy Ann”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:6). After hearing this Bible verse one Sunday, young Ann Preston—an untaught, unlettered Irish girl—knelt down voluntarily for the first time in her life and began to cry out.

While crying out, Ann had a powerful revelation of her distress. “I see all the sins that ever I did from the time I was five years old all written on the chair in front of me, every one,” she told the mistress for whom she worked. Looking down, Ann cried out: “Oh, ma’am, worse than all, I see hell open ready to swallow me.” She began to smite her breast, and cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Desperation gripped her as she repeatedly cried for mercy.

At midnight, Ann jumped up: “No mercy, Lord, for me?” But as the question passed her lips, assurance filled her heart. Ann always said that as she looked up she saw the Saviour as He was on Calvary, and knew there and then that His blood atoned for her sins. “I felt then something burning in my heart,” she would later say, “I just longed for the morning, that I could go home and tell my father and mother what the Lord had done for me.”

Ann picked up a Testament, and then prayed her first simple request as a child of God. “O Lord,” she said, “You that have taken away this awful burden, intolerable to bear, couldn’t You enable me to read one of these little things?” putting her finger on a verse. She read: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst” (John 4:13-14).

There is, however, a class of Christian life which God makes possible and Ann did not immediately possess. It is where the human will is surrendered to its Maker, the whole life is consecrated, and the Holy Spirit of God fills the soul. The years proved that Ann had a great battle: an ungovernable temper. She wept over it, confessed it, fought with it—but would fall again.

One evening, Ann heard Psalm 34 read out. Verse 16 impressed itself strongly upon her: “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” She asked the reader to mark the verse for her, went to her room, knelt down, and prayed for light. She opened the Bible at the place where the leaf had been turned down. “You can’t read it,” the devil said. “Well, the Lord will give it to me,” Ann replied. Wonderfully, Ann was enabled to read the verse repeatedly. (From thence, unlettered Ann could read the Bible although no other book.)

While still upon her knees, Ann said: “Lord, what is evil?” The answer came: “Anger, wrath, malice,” and so on. Ann wept and prayed all night long as her inward sinfulness was revealed. Toward morning, she cried out: “O Lord, how shall I know when I get deliverance?” The answer came: “Well, Jacob wrestled until he prevailed.” In her simplicity, Ann asked: “What does ‘prevailed’ mean?” The reply came: “Getting just what you came for and all you want.” Again she queried: “And what will it do for me when I get it?” The reply came back: “It will enable you to rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything to give thanks. You will live above the troubles of this world and the things that now upset you.” Ann fervently desired to be sanctified [made holy] throughout—body, soul, and spirit (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23).

The following day, Ann persisted, pleading Jesus’ promise: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. She cried: “Lord, I have been knocking all night. Open unto me! Open unto me!” The answer came.

For two hours it seemed as if Ann had entered into heaven. The house was filled with her shouts of praise! The trees appeared to clap their hands and praise God! For eight days, Ann ate nothing for joy. The following years felt as though lived in the heavenly places. When one morning Ann found her lips dumb instead of the usual praise, it was revealed to her that “the just shall live by faith” and that she should simply trust God. Ann applied these principles and obtained perfect peace.

Ann’s life became a witness to the power of faith, holiness, and ‘prevailing’ in prayer until her death in 1906.

—See Helen E. Bingham, An Irish Saint: The Life Story of Ann Preston (“Holy Ann”)

“Look to Christ and Live!”

While concerned about his soul, young Charles determined to visit all the chapels in his town to find out the way of salvation. He was willing to be and do anything if God would only forgive his sin. Yet he never obtained the answer to his deepest longing: “How can I get my sins forgiven?”

One Sunday, a snowstorm prevented Charles from going on to a certain place of worship so he ended up in a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. As the minister did not come that morning, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or tailor or something of the sort, finally went up to preach. He had to stick to his text, having little else to say:

“LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH” (Isaiah 45:22a).

Charles thought he saw a glimpse of hope in those words.

The preacher began thus in his broad Essex dialect: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. . . . Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!” said he, “many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some on ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’”

Then the man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!”

At length, the preacher turned to Charles under the gallery and fixing his eyes on him, said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, Charles did. It was a good blow, and struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Lifting up his hands, the man shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.”

Charles saw the way of salvation at once; and he looked indeed. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and he saw the sun. He looked, and lived, and leaped in joyful liberty as he beheld his sin punished upon the great Substitute—Jesus—and put away for ever. “I do from my soul confess,” wrote this Charles Spurgeon later, “that I never was satisfied till I came to Christ.”

—See Charles Spurgeon’s Autobiography

About Us

This newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen’s Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the US, UK, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Australia and is supported by unsolicited sacrificial gifts of young people. For a free subscription or for other enquiries, please contact any of the addresses below.

This Fellowship is an inter-denominational missionary and prayer group working for revival in churches and amongst students in several countries. We invite every layperson to become God’s ally in changing his or her corner of the world. We train people in evangelistic work and to be self-supporting missionaries.

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