Spirit Savvy Network
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It's about: 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 of Prayer, we learn how this is so important. Here are excerpts from chapter 2, "Possibilities and Necessities of Prayer."
"These men knew how to pray and how to prevail in prayer. Their faith in prayer was no passing attitude that changed with the wind or with their own feelings and circumstances; it was a fact that God heard and answered, that His ear was ever open to the cry of His children, and that the power to do what was asked of Him was commensurate with His willingness. And thus these men, strong in faith and in prayer, “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”
"Everything then, as now, was possible to the men and women who knew how to pray. Prayer, indeed, opened a limitless storehouse, and God’s hand withheld nothing. Prayer introduced those who practiced it into a world of privilege, and brought the strength and wealth of heaven down to the aid of finite man. What rich and wonderful power was theirs who had learned the secret of victorious approach to God! With Moses it saved a nation; with Ezra it saved a church. And yet, strange as it seems when we contemplate the wonders of which God’s people had been witness, there came a slackness in prayer.
"It takes effort and toil and care to prepare the incense. Prayer is no laggard’s work. When all the rich, spiced graces from the body of prayer have by labour and beating been blended and refined and intermixed, the fire is needed to unloose the incense and make its fragrance rise to the throne of God. The fire that consumes creates the spirit and life of the incense.
"Without fire prayer has no spirit; it is, like dead spices, for corruption and worms.“The greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer,” writes Principal Alexander Whyte. “And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer.
"And those servants best put their Lord’s money “to the exchangers” who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer, till they literally “pray without ceasing,” and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments.” It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.
For all of chapter 2 of the Purpose of Prayer, go to
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/purpose.II.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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