Miscellanies 17 - Praying for the next generation

It is true that perhaps with our solemn prayers and dedication and dying to self in the aim of seeing many won to Christ in our generation may not actually come to pass but will perhaps come to pass in the next generation. And God in his sweet providence may decline us from seeing the fruits for which we have so laboured. Should this prevent us from carrying out our duty of persevering in prayer and pleading to the Almighty for saving our generation? Neigh! But this should rather increase our desires to pray and plead that if it be not so with this generation then let it be more abundantly with the next generation for the sake of our children, grand-children and their world. We ought to press on in faith and die in faith that if we cannot see such harvest among our peers that our children and grandchildren may see it in theirs rooted on the grinding and tilling of our faith in prayer. We should be as the saints of old who ‘all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth’. Hebrews 11:13.