If some Christians that have been complaining of their
ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves
with all their might to cry to God for their ministers -- had, as it were,
risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent and incessant prayers
for them -- they would have been much more in the way of success.
-- Jonathan Edwards
SOMEHOW the practice of praying in particular for the preacher has fallen
into disuse or become discounted. Occasionally have we heard the practice
arraigned as a disparagement of the ministry, being a public declaration
by those who do it of the inefficiency of the ministry. It offends the pride
of learning and self-sufficiency, perhaps, and these ought to be offended
and rebuked in a ministry that is so derelict as to allow them to exist.
Prayer, to the preacher, is not simply the duty of his profession, a privilege,
but it is a necessity. Air is not more necessary to the lungs than prayer
is to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray.
It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for. These two propositions
are wedded into a union which ought never to know any divorce: the preacher
must pray; the preacher must be prayed for. It will take all the praying
he can do, and all the praying he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities
and gain the largest, truest success in his great work. The true preacher,
next to the cultivation of the spirit and fact of prayer in himself, in
their intensest form, covets with a great covetousness the prayers of God's
people.
The holier a man is, the more does he estimate prayer; the clearer does
he see that God gives himself to the praying ones, and that the measure
of God's revelation to the soul is the measure of the soul's longing, importunate
prayer for God. Salvation never finds its way to a prayerless heart. The
Holy Spirit never abides in a prayerless spirit. Preaching never edifies
a prayerless soul. Christ knows nothing of prayerless Christians. The gospel
cannot be projected by a prayerless preacher. Gifts, talents, education,
eloquence, God's call, cannot abate the demand of prayer, but only intensify
the necessity for the preacher to pray and to be prayed for. The more the
preacher's eyes are opened to the nature, responsibility, and difficulties
in his work, the more will he see, and if he be a true preacher the more
will he feel, the necessity of prayer; not only the increasing demand to
pray himself, but to call on others to help him by their prayers.
Paul is an illustration of this. If any man could project the gospel by
dint of personal force, by brain power, by culture, by personal grace, by
God's apostolic commission, God's extraordinary call, that man was Paul.
That the preacher must be a man given to prayer, Paul is an eminent example.
That the true apostolic preacher must have the prayers of other good people
to give to his ministry its full quota of success, Paul is a preeminent
example. He asks, he covets, he pleads in an impassioned way for the help
of all God's saints. He knew that in the spiritual realm, as elsewhere,
in union there is strength; that the concentration and aggregation of faith,
desire, and prayer increased the volume of spiritual force until it became
overwhelming and irresistible in its power. Units of prayer combined, like
drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance. So Paul, with his
clear and full apprehension of spiritual dynamics, determined to make his
ministry as impressive, as eternal, as irresistible as the ocean, by gathering
all the scattered units of prayer and precipitating them on his ministry.
May not the solution of Paul's preeminence in labors and results, and impress
on the Church and the world, be found in this fact that he was able to center
on himself and his ministry more of prayer than others? To his brethren
at Rome he wrote: "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus
Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with
me in prayers to God for me." To the Ephesians he says: "Praying
always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that
utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make
known the mystery of the gospel." To the Colossians he emphasizes:
"Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of
utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds:
that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak." To the Thessalonians
he says sharply, strongly: "Brethren, pray for us." Paul calls
on the Corinthian Church to help him: "Ye also helping together by
prayer for us." This was to be part of their work. They were to lay
to the helping hand of prayer. He in an additional and closing charge to
the Thessalonian Church about the importance and necessity of their prayers
says: "Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may
have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: and that we
may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men." He impresses the
Philippians that all his trials and opposition can be made subservient to
the spread of the gospel by the efficiency of their prayers for him. Philemon
was to prepare a lodging for him, for through Philemon's prayer Paul was
to be his guest.
Paul's attitude on this question illustrates his humility and his deep insight
into the spiritual forces which project the gospel. More than this, it teaches
a lesson for all times, that if Paul was so dependent on the prayers of
God's saints to give his ministry success, how much greater the necessity
that the prayers of God's saints be centered on the ministry of to-day!
Paul did not feel that this urgent plea for prayer was to lower his dignity,
lessen his influence, or depreciate his piety. What if it did? Let dignity
go, let influence be destroyed, let his reputation be marred -- he must
have their prayers. Called, commissioned, chief of the Apostles as he was,
all his equipment was imperfect without the prayers of his people. He wrote
letters everywhere, urging them to pray for him. Do you pray for your preacher?
Do you pray for him in secret? Public prayers are of little worth unless
they are founded on or followed up by private praying. The praying ones
are to the preacher as Aaron and Hur were to Moses. They hold up his hands
and decide the issue that is so fiercely raging around them.
The plea and purpose of the apostles were to put the Church to praying.
They did not ignore the grace of cheerful giving. They were not ignorant
of the place which religious activity and work occupied an the spiritual
life; but not one nor all of these, in apostolic estimate or urgency, could
at all compare in necessity and importance with prayer. The most sacred
and urgent pleas were used, the most fervid exhortations, the most comprehensive
and arousing words were uttered to enforce the all-important obligation
and necessity of prayer. "Put the saints everywhere to praying"
is the burden of the apostolic effort and the keynote of apostolic success.
Jesus Christ had striven to do this in the days of his personal ministry.
As he was moved by infinite compassion at the ripened fields of earth perishing
for lack of laborers and pausing in his own praying -- he tries to awaken
the stupid sensibilities of his disciples to the duty of prayer as he charges
them, "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers
into his harvest." "And he spake a parable unto them to this end,
that men ought always to pray and not to faint." < |