Our missionary work in the center of Africa was opened by Brothers Burton and Salter, the latter being my daughter's husband.  They worked and labored.  God was with them in a wonderful way.  But Burton took sick, and all hopes were gone.  Fevers are dreadful there; mosquitoes swarm; great evils are there.  There he was, laid out; there was no hope.  They covered him over and went outside very sorrowfully, because he truly was a pioneer missionary.  They were in great distress and uttered words like this:  "He has preached his last sermon."

When they were in that state, without any prompting whatever, Brother Burton stood right in the midst of them.  He had arisen from his bed and had walked outside, and he now stood in the midst of them.  They were astonished and asked how and what had happened.

All he could say was that he had been awakened out of a deep sleep with a warm thrill that went over his head, right down his body, and out through his toes.

"I feel so well," he said.  "I don't know anything about my sickness."

It remained a mystery.  Later, when he was over in England visiting, a lady said to him, "Brother Burton, do you keep a diary?"

"Yes," he said.

"Don't open the diary," she said, "until I talk with you."

"All right."

This is the story she told.

"At a certain time on a certain day, the Spirit of the Lord moved upon me.  I was so moved by the power of the Spirit that I went alone into a place to pray.  As I went there, believing that, just as usual, I was going to open my mouth and pray, the Spirit laid hold of me and I was praying in the Spirit--not without understanding, but praying in the Spirit.

"As I prayed, I saw right into Africa; I saw you laid out helpless and, to all appearances, apparently dead.  I prayed on until the Spirit lifted me, I knew I was in victory, and I saw you had risen up from that bed.

"Look at your diary, will you?"

He looked in the diary and found that it was exactly the same day.

Many things I have tried to grasp, and have lost. That which I have placed in God's hands I still have.

Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the One who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.

Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality. Plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way. Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered. The strength [not length] of your prayer...wins...God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord.

Your petitions should always be conditioned by 'Thy will be done.'  'Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart' (Psalm 37:4). But the delighting of oneself in Him precedes the fulfillment of our desires. Delighting ourselves in Him will direct our desires, so God can answer our petitions. Remember that you can pray any time, anywhere. Washing dishes, digging ditches, working in the office, in the shop, on the athletic field, even in prison--you can pray and know God hears!

"...God had prepared the people: for the thing was done suddenly."   (2Chron 29:36)

In connection with the work of the West London Mission, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes and his colleagues once found themselves in pressing need of ₤1,000, and to get quiet they met at midnight to pray for it.  After some time of pleading, one of the number bust into praise, being assured that the prayer had been heard and would be answered.  Mr. Hughes did not share this absolute confidence.  He believed with trembling.

 For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in the right spirit. 

Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing to give myself to prayer after having dressed myself in the morning.  Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warmed, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.

I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early in the morning.  The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord's blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were every verse to get a blessing out of it, not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching upon what I had meditated upon, but for obtaining food for my own soul. 

The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not as it were give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.  When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all as I go on into prayer for myself or others as the Word may lead to it, but still continually keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.

Formerly I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc., and often, after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. 

I scarcely ever suffer being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father and to my Friend (vile though I am and unworthy) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word. It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this point.

Hours passed like moments, when I could do nothing else but pray.  It was a prayer of rejoicing. of possession, when the taste of GOD was so great, so pure, so unblended that it drew and absorbed the soul into a profound state of confiding and affectionate rest in God, without intellectual effort for I had no sight but of Jesus only.