by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace
Power through Prayer by
E. M. Bounds is becoming a book on prayer that is being highly
recommended. Many great people of faith have said Bounds has been a
major influence in having a dedicated prayer life. Here are summaries of
the chapters in Power through Prayer.
Power Through Prayer, chapter 11, a model of prayer devotion:
God
has now, and has had, many of these devoted, prayerful people in whose
lives prayer has been a mighty, controlling, conspicuous force. The
world has felt their power, God has felt and honored their power, God’s
cause has moved mightily and swiftly by their prayers, holiness has
shone out in their characters with a divine effulgence.
God found one of the men He was looking for in David Brainerd.
He
was “a young man of distingushed talents, had extraordinary knowledge
of men and things, had rare conversational powers, excelled in his
knowledge of theology. His manner in prayer was almost unmatchable, such as I have
very rarely known equaled. His learning was very considerable, and he
had extraordinary gifts for the pulpit.”
He was God’s man, for God first and last and all the time. God could flow unhindered through him.
Brainerd
lived the life of holiness and prayer. His diary is full and monotonous
with the record of his seasons of fasting, meditation, and retirement.
The time he spent in private prayer amounted to many hours daily. “When I
return home,” he said, “and give myself to meditation, prayer, and
fasting, my soul longs for mortification, self-denial, humility, and
divorcement from all things of the world.” “I have nothing to do,” he
said, “with earth but only to labor in it honestly for God. I do not
desire to live one minute for anything which earth can afford.”
I
had little life and power in the forenoon. Near the middle of the
afternoon God enabled me to wrestle ardently in intercession for my
absent friends, but just at night the Lord visited me marvelously in
prayer. I think my soul was never in such agony before. I was in such
agony till near dark that I was all over wet with sweat, but yet it
seemed to me I had done nothing. O, my dear Saviour did sweat blood for
poor souls! I longed for more compassion toward them.”
It was prayer which gave to his life and ministry their marvelous power.
The
men of mighty prayer are men of spiritual might. Prayers never die.
Brainerd’s whole life was a life of prayer. By day and by night he prayed. Riding through the interminable solitudes of the forests he prayed. On his bed of straw he prayed. Hour by hour, day after day, early morn and late at night, he was praying and fasting, pouring out his soul, interceding, communing with God. He was with God mightily in prayer, and God was with him mightily.
Brainerd’s whole life was a life of prayer. By day and by night he prayed. Riding through the interminable solitudes of the forests he prayed. On his bed of straw he prayed. Hour by hour, day after day, early morn and late at night, he was praying and fasting, pouring out his soul, interceding, communing with God. He was with God mightily in prayer, and God was with him mightily.
Not
only in word and doctrine, in public and in private, but in prayers by
day and night, wrestling with God in secret and travailing in birth with
unutterable groans and agonies, until Christ was formed in the hearts
of the people to whom he was sent.
The complete chapter on a model of prayer devotion:
The
Christian Classics Ethereal Library and many great classic works on
Christian Growth, by the best of the Saints of Old whose works have been
passed down through the ages.
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