Gems of the Promised Messiah & Imam Mahdi, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) – Prayer is a Kind of Death

There is a proverb in Punjabi: ‘He who asks dies a death, so die and then ask.’ The meaning is that it is an afflicted one who prays and that prayer is a form of death. If a person drinks a drop of water and claims that his great thirst has been slaked, he utters a falsehood. His claim would be established if he were to drink a bowl full of water. When prayer is offered in great tribulation so that the soul melts and flows at the threshold of the Divine, that is true prayer and it is God’s way that when such a prayer is offered, He accepts it or responds to it in some other manner.

When you stand up in prayer, you should know it for certain that your God has the power to do all that He wills. Then your prayer will be accepted and you will behold the wonders of God’s power that we have beheld. Our testimony is based on seeing and is not a mere tale. How should the supplication of a person be accepted and how should he have the courage to pray at the time of great difficulties when according to him he is opposed by the law of nature, unless he believes that God has power over everything? You should not be like that. Your God is One Who has suspended numberless stars without any support and Who has created heaven and earth from nothing. Then would you think so ill of Him as to imagine that your objective is beyond His power? Such thinking will frustrate you. Our God possesses numberless wonders, but only those observe them who become wholly His with sincerity and fidelity. He does not disclose His wonders to those who do not believe in His powers and are not faithful to Him.

ENDNOTES

Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) The Essence of Islam, Vol. II (Tilford, Surrey, Islam International Publications Ltd., 2004), 213.