Excerpts from The Set of the Sail by A. W. Tozer

Believing Prayer

Men may, and often do, pray without faith (though this is not true prayer), but it is not thinkable that men should have faith and not pray. The biblical formula is “the prayer of faith.” Prayer and faith are here bound together by the little preposition “of,” and what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Faith is only genuine as it eventuates into prayer . . .

What profit is there in prayer? Much every way. Whatever God can do faith can do, and whatever faith can do prayer can do when it is offered in faith. An invitation to prayer is, therefore, an invitation to omnipotence, for prayer engages the Omnipotent God and brings Him into our human affairs. Nothing is impossible to the man who prays in faith, just as nothing is impossible with God. This generation has yet to prove all that prayer can do for believing men and women.

According to the Bible, we have because we ask, or we have not because we ask not. It does not take much wisdom to discover our next move. Is it not to pray, and pray again and again till the answer comes? God waits to be invited to display His power in behalf of His people. The world situation is such that nothing less than God can straighten it out. Let us not fail the world and disappoint God by failing to pray.

• Let us be deliberate in our prayers.
• Let us cultivate the habit of definitely believing when we have thus prayed.
• We must claim the faith of God, the Spirit of Jesus, the enabling of His trust to sustain ours.
• We must stand fast, and not be shaken by either delay or apparent denial, drawing comfort and encouragement from His seeming refusals.

“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).