Below is the account in J.O. Fraser’s life of a very special experience in prayer that I refer to in the attached clip.
Please read slowly and prayerfully.
In Burma James came to a crisis in his understanding of faith. Back in Tantsah, China, it would have been easy to let the days go by, seeing to firewood, dealing with visitors and all kinds of everyday affairs. But here he spent a good deal of time waiting on God. And in waiting he received a great deal in prayer.
Ever since his first meeting with Lisu tribesmen in the Tengyueh market place he had prayed for them. For six years now, he had been praying for a great turning to God among the Lisu. He had not minded hardship or privation in bringing the message, but had been willing to be purified and strengthened in the fire himself. Now, during his stay with Mr and Mrs. Geis, he knew the Spirit of God was indicating that a new step must be taken… ‘Ask in faith.’
“The Lord has taught me many things lately in regard to the spiritual life,” he wrote to his prayer partners. “In fact my own spiritual experience has undergone some upheavals during the past twelve months. Not the least important thing I have learned is in connection with the prayer of faith.” He had come to see that in past years he had wasted much time praying prayers that were not effective at all. Praying without faith was ‘like trying to cut with a blunt knife – much labour is expended to little purpose.‘ The work accomplished by labour in prayer depended on faith. “According to your faith,” not labour, “be it unto you.”
He was impressed with the thought that people failed in praying the prayer of faith because they did not believe God had answered, but only that He would answer their petitions. “They rise from their knees feeling that God will answer some time or other, but not that He has answered already.” This was not, as he saw it, the faith that made prayer effective. “True faith glories in the present tense, and does not trouble itself about the future. God’s promises are in the present tense, and are quite secure enough to set our hearts at rest. Their full outworking is often in the future, but God’s word is as good as His bond and we need have no anxiety. Sometimes He gives at once what we ask, but more often He just gives His promise (Mark 11:24). Perhaps He is more glorified in this latter case, for it means that our faith is tried and strengthened. I do earnestly covet a volume of prayer for my Lisu work – but oh! for a volume of faith too.”
The sinews of his own faith were strengthening and he felt the time had come for a definite prayer of faith himself. At Mr Geis’ house in Burma in 1915, he made the transaction with God. He prayed a clear and definite prayer, recorded in his diary and in the annals of heaven, that God would bring several hundred Lisu to saving faith in Him. It was a prayer he had not prayed before and he never prayed it again. It was not lightly done. Many years of preparation preceded it, and James knew it was an irrevocable step of faith. “I knew,” he wrote soon after, “that the time had come for the prayer of faith.” Fully conscious of what he was doing and what it might cost him, he committed himself to ask in faith for hundreds of Lisu families for Christ. The transaction was done. He rose from his knees “with the deep restful conviction that (he) had already received the answer.”
(Source: Mountain Rain, a biography of James O. Fraser by Eileen Fraser Crossman)
Go to https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2454496.Prayer_of_Faith for Fraser’s book “The Prayer Of Faith”
