Don’t make a mistake

No Christian is greater than his prayer life. The people who are not praying are playing. If the Elders are not praying, the sheep are straying. The platform can be a shop window to display one’s talents. The prayer closet allows no showing off.

The Church has many organizers, but few agonizers; many who will pay, and plenty who will play, but few who will pray ; many resters, but few wrestlers ; many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding. Failing in prayer, the people of Cod will surely fail everywhere.

Two prerequisites to dynamic Christian living are vision and passion, and both of these are generated in the closet of prayer. The ministry of preaching is open to a few. The ministry of praying is open to every child of God. And yet, how many of us can remember the time we missed our bed [or a night of wailing upon God, we fiddle while souls are going to hell.

Don’t mistake the scaffolding for the building. Beware of the present-day preaching with its pale interpretation of divine truths which would cause us to mistake action for unction, commotion for creation, and rattles for revivals.

The secret of praying is praying in secret. A worldly Christian will stop praying, and a praying Christian will slop worldliness. A veritable Niagara of words may leave God unimpressed and un-moved. We need to say “Lord teach us to pray.” When we pray, God listens to our heartbeat. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was one of the most effective intercessors, yet she had no language. “ Her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.” There are groanings when we pray in the Spirit, which cannot be uttered.

Tithes may build a church, but tears will give it life. That is the difference between the modem church, and the early church. Our accent is on paying, theirs was on praying. When we. have paid, the place is taken. When they had prayed, the place was shaken.

In the matter of hell-shaking, sin-breaking, world-taking prayer, never have so many left so much to so few. Brethren Let Us Pray.

(Selected)

(Reproduced by kind permission of Light and Liberty)