To cry out for the Lord’s help in your studies is the instinct of a soul that knows its own frailty, and there is nothing monstrous in it, it is the most reasonable thing in the world, for the God who bids you pray has not ordained an absurdity. He does not mock His children; when you ask, you shall receive the help you need, for all true prayer meets with Heaven’s response. Yet let me press you a little further, for the passing of classes, though a real need, is but the shell of the matter. What is the very life within that shell? It is that your soul be quickened in the way of the Lord, for a man may pass every examination under the sun and yet fail utterly in the school of Christ. The prayer, “Lord, be at my side that I may pass,” may be but the cry of nature; but the prayer, “Quicken me in Your way,” is the index of spiritual life already begun. Are you as eager in the prayer meeting, in the private place of devotion, in the searching of the Scriptures, as you are in your textbooks? If not, take your summer classes as a Kidron brook, a season of sorrow and distress through which the King’s highway runs, and learn to pass over it not merely to gain a grade, but to gain more of Christ.
Here is the key to prevailing: find His promise and plead it. Do not pray with a vague hope, as if you whistled to the wind. Search the Word. Has He not said, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God”? There is your foothold. Take that promise, spread your case before the Most High, and say, “Lord, remember this Word unto Your servant. You have told me to ask for wisdom; I need it now for these studies, for the mind You gave me is dull without Your light. Fulfill this pledge of Yours, not for my boasting, but that I may be a diligent steward.” This is the true pleading that moves the Father’s heart, for it claims nothing of self but rests all on His own declared faithfulness.
Do not, however, pray as Peter did in his first fright, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” That had a measure of humility, yes, but a far braver prayer is from the same humble lips: “Come nearer to me, Lord, for I am a sinful man and can do nothing without You.” Acknowledge your insufficiency, your wandering thoughts, your time misspent, and then press closer to Him, not away. Lay hold of Him and say, “I will not let You go except You bless me.” And while you are thus pleading for yourself, let the sweetness of intercessory prayer rise to God for your fellow students, that their souls may prosper too, for such prayer is the omen of returning greatness in your own life. The Lord bless you with soundness in your mind and, above all, with a new song in your soul that will outlast the summer and last into eternity.