A lady in Melbourne, Australia, in reading the book How To Pray was greatly impressed by one sentence of two short words, “Pray through.” It took a great hold upon her and she began to organize prayer circles all over Melbourne. Before we reached Melbourne there were 1,700 prayer circles a week and the wonderful success of the mission was largely due to these prayer circles. After we reached Melbourne, this lady told Mr. Alexander this story and it made a great impression on him. He afterward said the two words, “‘Pray through,’ gripped me like a vice.” One day he had occasion to go into a bank in Liverpool to get some money. While he was standing at the bank counter waiting for the clerk to come, be picked up a pen and began to write on the blotter in large letters these two words, which had been burned into his soul, “Pray through,” “Pray through,” “Pray through.” Over and over and over again he wrote it on the blotter until the big blotter was filled from top to bottom with the words “Pray through.” After he had transacted his business he went away.
The next day a friend to whom he kept talking as he printed on the blotter came to him and said that he had a striking story to tell him. “A businessman came into the bank soon after we had gone. He had grown discouraged with business troubles. He started to transact some business with the same clerk over that blotter, when his eyes caught the long column of ‘PRAY THROUGH.’ He asked who wrote those words, and when he was told, he exclaimed, ‘That is the very message I needed. I will pray through. I have tried to worry through in my own strength, and have merely mentioned my troubles to God. Now I am going to pray the situation through until I get light.’”
A lady who heard Mr. Alexander tell the story wrote a hymn upon it, the last verse of which runs,
“Don’t stop praying but have more trust;
Don’t stop praying! for pray we must;
Faith will banish mountains of care;
Don’t stop praying! God answers prayer.”