Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin
and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen
or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom
of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer. -- John
Wesley
THE apostles knew the necessity and worth of prayer to their ministry. They
knew that their high commission as apostles, instead of relieving them from
the necessity of prayer, committed them to it by a more urgent need; so
that they were exceedingly jealous else some other important work should
exhaust their time and prevent their praying as they ought; so they appointed
laymen to look after the delicate and engrossing duties of ministering to
the poor, that they (the apostles) might, unhindered, "give themselves
continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word." Prayer is put
first, and their relation to prayer is put most strongly -- "give themselves
to it," making a business of it, surrendering themselves to praying,
putting fervor, urgency, perseverance, and time in it.
How holy, apostolic men devoted themselves to this divine work of prayer!
"Night and day praying exceedingly," says Paul. "We will
give ourselves continually to prayer" is the consensus of apostolic
devotement. How these New Testament preachers laid themselves out in prayer
for God's people! How they put God in full force into their Churches by
their praying! These holy apostles did not vainly fancy that they had met
their high and solemn duties by delivering faithfully God's word, but their
preaching was made to stick and tell by the ardor and insistence of their
praying. Apostolic praying was as taxing, toilsome, and imperative as apostolic
preaching. They prayed mightily day and night to bring their people to the
highest regions of faith and holiness. They prayed mightier still to hold
them to this high spiritual altitude. The preacher who has never learned
in the school of Christ the high and divine art of intercession for his
people will never learn the art of preaching, though homiletics be poured
into him by the ton, and though he be the most gifted genius in sermon-making
and sermon-delivery.
The prayers of apostolic, saintly leaders do much in making saints of those
who are not apostles. If the Church leaders in after years had been as particular
and fervent in praying for their people as the apostles were, the sad, dark
times of worldliness and apostasy had not marred the history and eclipsed
the glory and arrested the advance of the Church. Apostolic praying makes
apostolic saints and keeps apostolic times of purity and power in the Church.
What loftiness of soul, what purity and elevation of motive, what unselfishness,
what self-sacrifice, what exhaustive toil, what ardor of spirit, what divine
tact are requisite to be an intercessor for men!
The preacher is to lay himself out in prayer for his people; not that they
might be saved, simply, but that they be mightily saved. The apostles laid
themselves out in prayer that their saints might be perfect; not that they
should have a little relish for the things of God, but that they "might
be filled with all the fullness of God." Paul did not rely on his apostolic
preaching to secure this end, but "for this cause he bowed his knees
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul's praying carried Paul's
converts farther along the highway of sainthood than Paul's preaching did.
Epaphras did as much or more by prayer for the Colossian saints than by
his preaching. He labored fervently always in prayer for them that "they
might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."
Preachers are preeminently God's leaders. They are primarily responsible
for the condition of the Church. They shape its character, give tone and
direction to its life.
Much every way depends on these leaders. They shape the times and the institutions.
The Church is divine, the treasure it incases is heavenly, but it bears
the imprint of the human. The treasure is in earthen vessels, and it smacks
of the vessel. The Church of God makes, or is made by, its leaders. Whether
it makes them or is made by them, it will be what its leaders are; spiritual
if they are so, secular if they are, conglomerate if its leaders are. Israel's
kings gave character to Israel's piety. A Church rarely revolts against
or rises above the religion of its leaders. Strongly spiritual leaders;
men of holy might, at the lead, are tokens of God's favor; disaster and
weakness follow the wake of feeble or worldly leaders. Israel had fallen
low when God gave children to be their princes and babes to rule over them.
No happy state is predicted by the prophets when children oppress God's
Israel and women rule over them. Times of spiritual leadership are times
of great spiritual prosperity to the Church.
Prayer is one of the eminent characteristics of strong spiritual leadership.
Men of mighty prayer are men of might and mold things. Their power with
God has the conquering tread.
How can a man preach who does not get his message fresh from God in the
closet? How can he preach without having his faith quickened, his vision
cleared, and his heart warmed by his closeting with God? Alas, for the pulpit
lips which are untouched by this closet flame. Dry and unctionless they
will ever be, and truths divine will never come with power from such lips.
As far as the real interests of religion are concerned, a pulpit without
a closet will always be a barren thing.
A preacher may preach in an official, entertaining, or learned way without
prayer, but between this kind of preaching and sowing God's precious seed
with holy hands and prayerful, weeping hearts there is an immeasurable distance.
A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God's truth and for God's
Church. He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful flowers,
but it is a funeral, notwithstanding the charmful array. A prayerless Christian
will never learn God's truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to
teach God's truth. Ages of millennial glory have been lost by a prayerless
Church. The coming of our Lord has been postponed indefinitely by a prayerless
Church. Hell has enlarged herself and filled her dire caves in the presence
of the dead service of a prayerless Church.
The best, the greatest offering is an offering of prayer. If the preachers
of the twentieth century will learn well the lesson of prayer, and use fully
the power of prayer, the millennium will come to its noon ere the century
closes. "Pray without ceasing" is the trumpet call to the preachers
of the twentieth century. If the twentieth century will get their texts,
their thoughts, their words, their sermons in their closets, the next century
will find a new heaven and a new earth. The old sin-stained and sin-eclipsed
heaven and earth will pass away under the power of a praying ministry. |