I pray, regardless of whether I feel like praying. If I prayed only when I felt like doing it, I wouldn’t pray a lot!
Samuel Logan Brently (1860-1936) was asked near the end of his life whether his feelings for God had ever waned during the past fifty years of his ministry. He answered, “Judging by emotions, yes, judging by volitions, no.” Samuel acknowledged times when he lost feelings for God. He recalled a stretch of twenty-eight days when he felt bereft of God’s nearness, saying: “To my tempted comrades, I would say, ‘Hold fast. Be faithful, regardless of how you feel, for Christ will not leave his own. He, too, was tempted for forty days and nights by the devil. That trial of faith proved to be one of the greatest blessings in my life.'”
His reference to his “trial of faith” was a brick to the head that rendered him disabled for eighteen months. It had been his great ambition to write, but the Salvation Army directed him to serve in one of the most dangerous sections of Boston. In an earlier day, Samuel might have balked at the assignment. When he traveled to England to meet William Booth, director of the Salvation Army, William was cautious to receive him, “You have been your own boss too long. I don’t think you will want to submit to the Salvation Army discipline.” Samuel’s first assignment in training school was to shine the boots of eighteen other cadets. He recoiled, “Have I crossed the Atlantic to black boots?” Then, he remembered Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. “You washed their feet. I will black boots.”
Samuel obeyed orders and went to serve in inner-city Boston. One night, a drunk man threw a paving brick at Brently, which hit him square in the temple, rendering him unfit to speak or function in public. Guess what? He was finally able to write the book of his dreams. In his book, Helps to Holiness, he includes the following prayer: