I judge that my prayer is more than the devil himself;
if it were otherwise, Luther would have fared differently long before
this. Yet men will not see and acknowledge the great wonders or miracles
God works in my behalf. If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I
should lose a great deal of the fire of faith. -- Martin Luther
ONLY glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the apostles get before
Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling on Pentecost elevated prayer
to its vital and all-commanding position in the gospel of Christ. The call
now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit's loudest and most exigent call.
Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves
with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early
and late and long.
Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to pray
and put them at it? Do we know we are raising up a prayerless set of saints?
Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God's people to praying? Let
them come to the front and do the work, and it will be the greatest work
which can be done. An increase of educational facilities and a great increase
of money force will be the direst curse to religion if they are not sanctified
by more and better praying than we are doing. More praying will not come
as a matter of course. The campaign for the twentieth or thirtieth century
fund will not help our praying but hinder if we are not careful. Nothing
but a specific effort from a praying leadership will avail. The chief ones
must lead in the apostolic effort to radicate the vital importance and fact
of prayer in the heart and life of the Church. None but praying leaders
can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints.
A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need some body who
can set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation
of praying saints. Non-praying saints are a beggarly gang of saints who
have neither the ardor nor the beauty nor the power of saints. Who will
restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles,
who can set the Church to praying.
We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the Church in
this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied holiness,
of such marked spiritual vigor and consuming zeal, that their prayers, faith,
lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and aggressive form as to
work spiritual revolutions which will form eras in individual and Church
life.
We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices, nor those
who attract by a pleasing entertainment; but men who can stir things, and
work revolutions by the preaching of God's Word and by the power of the
Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of things.
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this
matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of thorough
consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of one's
self in God's glory, and an ever-present and insatiable yearning and seeking
after all the fullness of God -- men who can set the Church ablaze for God;
not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts
and moves everything for God.
God can work wonders if he can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders
if they can get God to lead them. The full endowment of the spirit that
turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter days.
Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual revolutions change
the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of the Church.
The Church has never been without these men; they adorn its history; they
are the standing miracles of the divinity of the Church; their example and
history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An increase in their
number and power should be our prayer.
That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again, and be
better done. This was Christ's view. He said "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."
The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing great
things for God. The Church that is dependent on its past history for its
miracles of power and grace is a fallen Church.
God wants elect men -- men out of whom self and the world have gone by a
severe crucifixion, by a bankruptcy which has so totally ruined self and
the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery; men who by
this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect hearts.
Let us pray ardently that God's promise to prayer may be more than realized.
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