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 12, Heart Preparation is Necessary:
Praying
makes the presenter a heart presenter. Prayer puts the presenter’s
heart into the presenter’s message; prayer puts the presenter’s message
into the presenter’s heart.
The
heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. Men
of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The hireling
and the stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it is the good
shepherd with the good shepherd’s heart who will bless the sheep and
answer the full measure of the shepherd’s place.
We
have emphasized preparation until we have lost sight of the important
thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a
prepared message. A prepared heart will make a prepared presentation.
We
have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and raised the
clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety,
rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of
holiness.
But
our great lack is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack
of knowledge but lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect—not that
we know too much, but that we do not meditate on God and his word and
watch and fast and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our
preaching, our presenting, our sharing. Words pregnant with divine truth
find in our hearts nonconductors; arrested, they fall shorn and
powerless.
God’s
revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and
strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of
human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity,
the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.
Our
great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: “He who
has prayed well has studied well.” We do not say that men are not to
think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who
cultivates his heart most.
We
do say that he who has struggled with his own heart and conquered it;
who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy,
courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained,
through a manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel
on the consciences of his hearers—such a one will be the truest, most
successful person in the esteem of his Lord.
The complete chapter on heart preparation is necessary:
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment