Brother Roberts summed up the matter of prayer in the following words: "Some things asked for we have received, and some we have not. But we should not feel discouraged if God were apparently to turn a deaf ear to all our requests. We should consider that His wisdom required the denial of all our desires, as in the case of Job (6:8-11; 13:24-26; 19:7-11). David had to say sometimes:

'0 my God, I cry in the day time, but Thou hearest not, and in the night season I am not silent' (Ps. 22:2). Man is small and life is short, and the issues of futurity are immeasurable and can only be truly judged by unerring wisdom. For this reason, all our petitions should be qualified with the recognition of the will of God as the supreme regulator. We should in everything give thanks, and in all our petitions subordinate our own ideas and wishes to the perfect will of God.

Christ has given us an example in his own prayer to the Father in Gethsemane: "Take away this cup from me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt! This qualification makes us certain of an answer to all our prayers, even if we do not get the answer in the very form we may ask it. This is John's reasoning on the point: "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.' That is, true children of God would desire nothing that God sees not fit to give. What He sees fit, that He gives; and this being what we ask, we know that we always have what we ask: and here we rest, even in the midst of the more direful experiences, knowing that experience of evil is part of the instrumentality by which God is preparing children for Himself during this transitory age of evil, against the perfect and endless ages beyond.