Along with a definite object for prayer, it is equally necessary that there should be an earnest desire for its attainment. “Cold prayer,” says an old divine, "asks for denial.” When we ask the Lord without passion, we actually stop His hand and restrain Him from giving us the very blessing we pretend that we are seeking. When you have your object in your eye, your soul must become so possessed with the value of that object, with your own excessive need for it, with the danger that you will be in unless that object should be granted, that you will be compelled to plead for it as a man pleads for his life. Feeling that the thing we ask for cannot be wrong and that He has promised it, we have resolved it must be given, and if not given, we will plead the promise again and again, till heaven’s gates shall shake before our pleas shall cease. Oh, those cold-hearted prayers that die upon the lips — those frozen supplications. They do not move men’s hearts; how should they move God’s heart? We must be earnest. Otherwise, we have no right to hope that the Lord will hear our prayer.
