Prayer

with their hands, and could return to their labor refreshed in body and spirit.—(Gospel
Workers, 240.)
Genuine prayer does not depend upon time or place or circumstances.—Pray
in your closet, and as you go about your daily labor let your heart be often uplifted to
God.
It was thus that Enoch walked with God. These silent prayers rise like precious
incense before the throne of grace. Satan cannot overcome him whose heart is thus
stayed upon God.
There is no time or place in which it is inappropriate to offer up a petition to
God. There is nothing that can prevent us from lifting up our hearts in the spirit of
earnest prayer. In the crowds of the street, in the midst of a business engagement,
we may send up a petition to God and plead for divine guidance, as did Nehemiah
when he made his request before King Artaxerxes. A closet of communion may be
found wherever we are. We should have the door of the heart open continually and
our invitation going up that Jesus may come and abide as a heavenly guest in the
soul.—(Steps to Christ, 98, 99).
Wherever we are, whatever our employment, our hearts are to be uplifted to God
in prayer. This is being instant in prayer. We need not wait until we can bow upon our
knees before we pray. On one occasion, when Nehemiah came in before the king, the
king asked why he looked so sad, and what request he had to make. But Nehemiah
dared not answer at once. Important interests were at stake. The fate of a nation
hung upon the impression that should then be made upon the monarch’s mind; and
Nehemiah darted up a prayer to the God of Heaven, before he dared to answer the
king. The result was that he obtained all that he asked or even desired.—(The Signs
of the Times, October 20, 1887.)
All your good purposes and good intentions will not enable you to withstand the
test of temptation. You must be men of prayer. Your petitions must be not faint,
occasional, and fitful, but earnest, persevering, and constant. It is not necessary to be
alone, or to bow upon your knees, to pray; but in the midst of your labor
214