Prayer

from the Writings of William Fenton Tyree, Sr.
Compiled & Edited by C. Virginia Tyree
May, 1990

 Some are teachers, some preachers, some deacons, elders or
 bishops.  There are diversities of orders and occupations
 within the family of God, yet the one common and uniform
 exercise, enjoined upon us all, is prayer.  No duty or
 privilege is so universal, and, perhaps, none is so
 imperfectly understood.
 
 "Prayer is the souls sincere desire,
 Uttered or unexpressed
 The motion of a hidden fire
 That trembles in the breast."
 
 "Prayer is the simplest form of speech
 That infant lips can try,
 Prayer, - the sublimest strains
 That reach the Majesty on high."
 
 Prayer, in its deepest sense, is a wordless attitude of the
 soul in waiting before God.  No forms of human speech are
 full enough to become the vehicle for conveying the deepest
 emotions and sentiments of the soul.  Prayer is an
 unutterable yearning for a fuller revelation of God in the
 heart and life of the supplicant and worshiper.
 
 Most of our praying is grounded in unconscious selfishness, -
 the dominance of our will, - the binding of the will of God
 to conform to our own desires.  That is wrong.  The heart and
 very substance of the Lord's prayer is bound up in the words
 "thy will be done."  True prayer, therefore, is not so much
 petition as it is submission, - an unreserved yielding of our
 own wills to the will of God.  And, after all, is not that
 the proper and becoming attitude.  Surely, God knows what is
 best for us, and it is just as true that if we fully
 surrender ourselves to Him, - yield our wills to complete
 domination by His will, all things must then be right with
 us.
 
 The circumstances of our lives are not of primary importance
 to us.  Sometimes we are succeeding when we seem to be
 failing.  God is trying to make men and women out of us, -
 trying to save us.  He is exhausting divine grace in the
 effort to bring us to yield our wills to His will.
 
 The question with you is not "What do I want to do?" but
 rather, "What does God want me to do in this matter?"

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