The Directness of Prayer: No Mediator Required

For unto Thee will I pray.—Prayer stands as the Christian's most direct access to Adonai. When you restrain prayer before God, you act in opposition to your own conscience and confession of what is right. You know you ought to pray. How can you escape the charge of inconsistency when prayer is excluded from your practical system?

By neglecting prayer, you resist the authority of God Himself. Adonai has commanded you to pray. Can you venture to treat His command with contempt and yet hope to prosper? What title have you to expect that in this particular you can disobey God with impunity?

Without prayer, all the provisions made in the gospel for your deliverance and happiness remain vain to you. The gospel proposes to bestow salvation's benefits, but according to a certain scheme: those who do not pray for them cannot claim them.

Observe the beauty of direct prayer: no priest stands between the worshipper and his Lord. Every man must state his own case. God is placed in His right position as the throned Father, listening to each of His subjects. What intercession could be more vital? No mediator can know the secret circumstances that only the petitioner understands. Even when words fail, the tremulous tones of a man's voice suggest what literal expression cannot convey. The Psalmist's purpose—to pray earnestly, with great earnestness, to the holy God who hears—should become ours.