Thursday, August 16, 2012

Purpose in Prayer (4) ... Incidents of Mighty Power


by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission,
Empowering your life through prayer
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

In prayer we have the greatest privilege of God's Presence and interacting with God with His purpose than any other activity in our lives. E. M. Bounds in his book, the Purpose in Prayer, we learn how this is so important. Here are excerpts from chapter 4, Incidents of Mighty Prayer.

"In every circumstance of life, prayer is the most natural out-pouring of the soul, the unhindered turning to God for communion and direction. Whether in sorrow or in joy, in defeat or in victory, in health or in weakness, in calamity or in success, the heart leaps to meet with God just as a child runs to his mother’s arms, ever sure that with her is the sympathy that meets every need.

"Martin Luther...Then not a day passes in which he does not employ in prayer at least three of his very best hours. He petitions God with as much reverence as if he was in the divine presence.

“I tell the Lord my troubles and difficulties, and wait for Him to give me the answers to them,” says one man of God. “And it is wonderful how a matter that looked very dark will in prayer become clear as crystal by the help of God’s Spirit. I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God."

"To have God thus near is to enter the holy of holies—to breathe the fragrance of the heavenly air, to walk in Eden’s delightful gardens. Nothing but prayer can bring God and man into this happy communion.

"Professor James, in his famous work, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” tells of a man of forty-nine who said: “God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I feel His presence positively, and the more as I live in closer harmony with His laws as written in my body and mind. I feel Him in the sunshine or rain; and all mingled with a delicious restfulness most nearly describes my feelings. I talk to Him as to a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful. He answers me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken that it seems my outer ear must have carried the tone, but generally in strong mental impressions. Usually a text of Scripture, unfolding some new view of Him and His love for me, and care for my safety ... That He is mine and I am His never leaves me; it is an abiding joy. Without it life would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.”

For more on incidents of mighty prayer,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/purpose.IV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library features many books by the Christians who walked in the very power of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages.

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