The work of salvation hinges entirely upon the will of God and not upon the will of man. This is the unshakable rock upon which all true intercession must rest. You are not beseeching a reluctant deity but pleading with the One who declares, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” It is the Father’s good pleasure to give the kingdom, and His sovereign grace does not dangle upon the thread of human volition. When you pray for this landlord’s surrender, you are asking precisely what God has covenanted to do for His elect, to make them willing in the day of His power. The voice of God, when it speaks with creative authority, is not a suggestion whispered into the ear of a neutral free agent; it is a Divine fiat that raises the spiritually dead. Lazarus came forth not because he summoned a latent inclination to obey, but because the voice that commanded him carried its own power of performance. So pray with boldness, for you are asking the Lord to do His own appointed business.
Underneath are the everlasting arms, though the man knows it not. These arms are not merely cushions for the falling saint but a mighty undertow drawing the drowning sinner to the shore. The goodness of God, which has preserved this man’s very breath until this hour, is meant to lead him to repentance. Every sunrise he has squandered, every meal he has consumed without gratitude, every moment of forbearance he has mistaken for indifference, all these are arguments Jehovah is marshalling against his rebellion. Do not think your prayers are battering against a brazen wall. No, God often reveals Himself by men to men, and by His Holy Scriptures a precious text laid home to an aching heart will soon give it peace. The divine voice may sound through a sermon, a providential trial, or a sudden meditation upon his mortality. He may be busy with his merchandise and his trade, thinking he can buy and sell and get gain without asking God’s consent at all, but the Lord knows how to hedge up his way with thorns and build a wall that he cannot scale until he finds his paths blocked by mercy in disguise.
This salvation, when it arrives, will be God’s from top to bottom. It will be a real salvation in its constancy, not a temporary spasm of terror but a permanent renovation of the heart. Wherever we spiritually see Christ, we see God’s salvation. And mark this, if God is so near, it is an evident impossibility to deceive Him, He is not mocked. The Spirit will not settle for a partial surrender; He will press the matter until every idol tumbles and the will itself is bent into glad captivity. God’s will about the future is that this man should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Therefore, with holy reverence but relentless faith, keep asking. If it is God’s truth that you declare in your petitions, if God Himself has laid this burden upon you, then you are not praying against the grain of the universe but along the very grain of His decrees. His promise may tarry, but it never fails. Has God forgotten to be gracious? What hot shots these are for unbelief! Cease measuring the distance between the prayer and the answer; God’s nearness is what matters. Whether this landlord sees it yet or not, the eternal arms are at the bottom of his dying bed, at the bottom of his counting-house, at the bottom of his deepest fall, ready to catch him and make him cry out, “You are my God.”