Power Through Prayer (11) ... a model of prayer devotion

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

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.

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:

\\http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XI.html

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.

Power Through Prayer (10) ... prayer united with lofty devotion

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

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 10, prayer united with lofty devotion:

By every means, modern sainthood must be inspired by the loftiest ideals and by the largest possibilities through the Spirit.

Paul lived on his knees, that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths, and depths of an unmeasurable saintliness, and “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

The divinest thing in religion is holy men and holy women. No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration—this is the secret of power. These we need and must have, and men must be the incarnation of this God-inflamed devotedness.

Brainerd’s spirit was on fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing earthly, worldly, selfish came in to abate in the least the intensity of this all-impelling and all-consuming force and flame. Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul and body are united, as life and the heart are united. There is no real prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The person must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion.

The name and honor of Jesus Christ, the advance of his cause, must be all in all. We must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have him glorified, no toil but for him. Then prayer will be a source of our illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of our success. The perpetual aim, the only ambition, we can cherish is to have God with us.

This age may be a better age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer.

It is prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed by the power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of praying; the more of praying, the more of true saints.

The complete chapter on prayer united with lofty devotion :

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.X.html

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.

Power Through Prayer (9) ... Begin the Day Hard after God

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

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 9, Begin the Day Hard after God:

“I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o’clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: “Early will I seek thee”; “Thou shalt early hear my voice.”

The people who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.

Behind this early rising and early praying is the ardent desire which presses us into this pursuit after God. Morning listlessness is the index to a listless heart. The heart which is behind in seeking God in the morning has lost its relish for God. David’s heart was ardent after God. He hungered and thirsted after God, and so he sought God early, before daylight. The bed and sleep could not chain his soul in its eagerness after God. Christ longed for communion with God; and so, rising a great while before day, he would go out into the mountain to pray.

A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully. The desire for God that keeps so far behind the devil and the world at the beginning of the day will never catch up.

The desire aroused them and put them on the stretch for God, and this heeding and acting on the call gave their faith its grasp on God and gave to their hearts the sweetest and fullest revelation of God, and this strength of faith and fullness of revelation made them saints by eminence, and the halo of their sainthood has come down to us, and we have entered on the enjoyment of their conquests.

We need a generation who seeks God and seeks him early, who give the freshness and dew of effort to God, and secure in return the freshness and fullness of his power that he may be as the dew to them, full of gladness and strength, through all the heat and labor of the day.

Our laziness after God is our crying sin. The children of this world are far wiser than we. They are at it early and late. We do not seek God with ardor and diligence. No man gets God who does not follow hard after him, and no soul follows hard after God who is not after him in early morn. 

The complete chapter on Begin the Day Hard after God:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.IX.html

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.

Power Through Prayer (8) ... Examples of those Devoted to Prayer

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

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 8, Examples of those Devoted to Prayer.

In the online version of Power Through Prayer, there is an extra chapter on examples of praying men, and may I say women.
“Men’ means mankind in general.. Here’s a few of those mentioned.

Payson wore the hard-wood boards into grooves where his knees pressed so often and so long. His biographer says: “His continuing instant in prayer, be his circumstances what they might, is the most noticeable fact in his history, and points out the duty of all who would rival his eminency. To his ardent and persevering prayers must no doubt be ascribed in a great measure his distinguished and almost uninterrupted success.”

The Marquis DeRenty, to whom Christ was most precious, ordered his servant to call him from his devotions at the end of half an hour. The servant at the time saw his face through an aperture. It was marked with such holiness that he hated to arouse him. His lips were moving, but he was perfectly silent. He waited until three half hours had passed; then he called to him, when he arose from his knees, saying that the half hour was so short when he was communing with Christ.

William Bramwell is famous in Methodist annals for personal holiness and for his wonderful success in preaching and for the marvelous answers to his prayers. For hours at a time he would pray. He almost lived on his knees. He went over his circuits like a flame of fire. The fire was kindled by the time he spent in prayer. He often spent as much as four hours in a single season of prayer in retirement.

Bishop Andrewes spent the greatest part of five hours every day in prayer and devotion.

Sir Henry Havelock always spent the first two hours of each day alone with God. If the encampment was struck at 6 A.M., he would rise at four.

Earl Cairns rose daily at six o’clock to secure an hour and a half for the study of the Bible and for prayer, before conducting family worship at a quarter to eight.

Dr. Judson’s success in prayer is attributable to the fact that he gave much time to prayer. He says on this point: “Arrange thy affairs, if possible, so that thou canst leisurely devote two or three hours every day not merely to devotional exercises but to the very act of secret prayer and communion with God. Endeavor seven times a day to withdraw from business and company and lift up thy soul to God in private retirement. Begin the day by rising after midnight and devoting some time amid the silence and darkness of the night to this sacred work. Let the hour of opening dawn find thee at the same work. Let the hours of nine, twelve, three, six, and nine at night witness the same. Be resolute in his cause. Make all practicable sacrifices to maintain it.

Power which may last, not unfrequently in an earnest life, late into the night hours, or even to the break of day. Sometimes they refer to common intercession with St. Paul as a concerted struggle. They have, when praying, their eyes fixed on the Great Intercessor in Gethsemane, upon the drops of blood which fall to the ground in that agony of resignation and sacrifice. Importunity is of the essence of successful prayer. Importunity means not dreaminess but sustained work. It is through prayer especially that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.

The complete chapter on Examples of Praying Men:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.VIII.html

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.

 

Power Through Prayer (7) ... Much Time Given to Prayer … by Great People

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

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 7, Much Time Given to Prayer … by Great People

Much time spent with God is the secret of all successful praying. Prayer which is felt as a mighty force is the mediate or immediate product of much time spent with God.

Jacob’s victory of faith could not have been gained without that all-night wrestling. God does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty comers and goers. Much with God alone is the secret of knowing him and of influence with him. He yields to the persistency of a faith that knows him.

Christ, who in this as well as other things is our Example, spent many whole nights in prayer. His custom was to pray much. He had his habitual place to pray. Many long seasons of praying make up his history and character. Paul prayed day and night. It took time from very important interests for Daniel to pray three times a day.

The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character, and have most powerfully affected the world for him, have been men who spent so much time with God as to make it a notable feature of their lives.

Charles Simeon devoted the hours from four till eight in the morning to God. Mr. Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer. He began at four in the morning. Of him, one who knew him well wrote: “He thought prayer to be more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining.”

John Fletcher stained the walls of his room by the breath of his prayers. Sometimes he would pray all night; always, frequently, and with great earnestness. His whole life was a life of prayer.

“Do I meet you praying?” Luther said: “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” He had a motto: “He that has prayed well has studied well.”

Archbishop Leighton was so much alone with God that he seemed to be in a perpetual meditation. “Prayer and praise were his business and his pleasure,”  

Bishop Ken was with God before the clock struck three every morning. Bishop Asbury said: “I propose to rise at four o’clock as often as I can and spend two hours in prayer and meditation.” Samuel Rutherford, the fragrance of whose piety is still rich, rose at three in the morning to meet God in prayer. Joseph Alleine arose at four o’clock for his business of praying till eight. If he heard other tradesmen plying their business before he was up, he would exclaim: “O how this shames me! Doth not my Master deserve more than theirs?”

One of the holiest and among the most gifted of Scotch preachers says: “I ought to spend the best hours in communion with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful employment, and is not to be thrust into a corner.

John Welch, the holy and wonderful Scotch preacher, thought the day ill spent if he did not spend eight or ten hours in prayer. He kept a plaid that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife would complain when she found him lying on the ground weeping. He would reply: “O woman, I have the souls of three thousand to answer for, and I know not how it is with many of them!”

The complete chapter on Much Time Given to Prayer … by Great People

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.VII.html

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.

Power Through Prayer (6) ... Great People of Prayer, Success thru Prayer

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

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 6, Great People of Prayer, Success thru prayer:

“In every truly successful mission, prayer is an evident and controlling force—evident and controlling in the life of the person behind it, evident and controlling in the deep spirituality of his work. A mission may be a very thoughtful mission without prayer; the person may secure fame and popularity without prayer; the whole machinery of the person’s life and work may be run without the oil of prayer or with scarcely enough to grease one cog; but no mission can be a spiritual one, securing holiness in the person and in his people, without prayer being made an evident and controlling force.

The apostles’ commission to preach was a blank till filled up by the Pentecost which praying brought. A prayerful minister has passed beyond the regions of the popular, beyond the man of mere affairs, of secularities, of presentation attractiveness. Holiness is the product of his work; transfigured hearts. God is with him. His ministry is not projected on worldly or surface principles. He is deeply stored with and deeply schooled in the things of God. His long, deep communings with God about his people and the agony of his wrestling spirit have crowned him as a prince in the things of God. The iciness of the mere professional has long since melted under the intensity of his praying.

God’s true representatives have been distinguished by one great feature: they were people of prayer. Differing often in many things, they have always had a common center. They may have started from different points, and traveled by different roads, but they converged to one point: they were one in prayer. God to them was the center of attraction, and prayer was the path that led to God. These men prayed not occasionally,  but they so prayed that their prayers entered into and shaped their characters; they so prayed as to affect their own lives and the lives of others; they so prayed as to make the history of the Church and influence the current of the times. They spent much time in prayer, not because they marked the shadow on the dial or the hands on the clock, but because it was to them so momentous and engaging a business that they could scarcely give over.

“The effectual, fervent prayer” has been the mightiest weapon of God’s mightiest soldiers. The statement in regard to Elijah—that he “was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit”—comprehends all prophets, preachers, presenters who have moved their generation for God, and shows the instrument by which they worked their wonders.”

The complete chapter on Great People of Prayer, Success thru Prayer:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.VI.html
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.

 

Power Through Prayer (5) ... Prayer Essentials, getting results from God

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

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 5, Prayer Essentials, getting results from God:

The believers study ought to be a closet, a Bethel, an altar, a vision, and a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went manward; that every part of his message might be scented by the air of heaven and made serious, because God was in the study. As the engine never moves until the fire is kindled, so speaking/presenting, with all its machinery, perfection, and polish, is at a dead standstill, as far as spiritual results are concerned, till prayer has kindled and created the steam.

Prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing. Prayer which is born of vital oneness with Christ and the fullness of the Holy Ghost, which springs from the deep, overflowing fountains of tender compassion, deathless solicitude for man’s eternal good; a consuming zeal for the glory of God; a thorough conviction of the imperative need of God’s mightiest help. Praying grounded on these solemn and profound convictions is the only true praying. Preaching/speaking backed by such praying is the only preaching which sows the seeds of eternal life in human hearts and builds men up for heaven.

It is true that there may be popular preachers, preaching of much intellectual, literary, and brainy force, with its measure and form of good, with little or no praying; but the preaching/speaking which secures God’s end must be born of prayer delivered with the energy and spirit of prayer, followed and made to germinate, and kept in vital force in the hearts of the hearers by the preacher’s prayers, long after the occasion has past.

People who gain mighty results for God are the people who have prevailed in their pleadings with God ere venturing to plead with men. The people who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their talking with men.

Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vain glory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them. So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a shallow lotion for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.

To men who think praying their main business and devote time to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit the keys of his kingdom, and by them does he work his spiritual wonders in this world.

Great praying is the sign and seal of God’s great leaders and the earnest of the conquering forces with which God will crown their labors.

We are commissioned to pray as well as to share. Our mission is incomplete if we do not do both well. We may speak with all the eloquence of men and of angels; but unless he can pray with a faith which draws all heaven to our aid, we will be “as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” for permanent God-honoring, soul-saving uses

The complete chapter on Prayer Essentials, getting results from God:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.V.html
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.

Power Through Prayer (4) ... Talking to God for Men

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

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 4, Talking to God for men:

There are two extreme tendencies in the ministry. The one is to shut itself out from intercourse with the people. The monk, the hermit were illustrations of this; they shut themselves out from men to be more with God. We shut ourselves to our study, we become students, bookworms, Bible worms, sermon makers, noted for literature, thought, and sermons; but the people and God, where are they? Out of heart, out of mind.

The other tendency is to thoroughly popularize the ministry. He is no longer God’s man, but a man of affairs, of the people. He prays not, because his mission is to the people. If he can move the people, create an interest, a sensation in favor of religion, an interest in Church work—he is satisfied. His personal relation to God is no factor in his work. Prayer has little or no place in his plans.

It is impossible for the preacher, speaker, teacher, disciple-er to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. Even sermon-making, speaking, writing, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The speaker may lose God in his message.

Prayer freshens the heart, keeps it in tune with God and in sympathy with the people, lifts a person’s ministry out of the chilly air of a profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility and power of a divine unction.

Prayer that affects one’s ministry must give tone to one’s life. The praying which gives color and bent to character is no pleasant, hurried pastime. It must enter as strongly into the heart and life as Christ’s “strong crying and tears” did; must draw out the soul into an agony of desire as Paul’s did; must be an inwrought fire and force like the “effectual, fervent prayer” of James; must be of that quality which, when put into the golden censer and incensed before God, works mighty spiritual throes and revolutions.

It engages more of time and appetite than our longest dinings or richest feasts. The prayer that makes much of our speaking/sharing must be made much of. The character of our praying will determine the character of our presentation. Light praying will make light preaching. Prayer makes speaking strong, gives it unction, and makes it stick. In every ministry weighty for good, prayer has always been a serious business.

Believers must be preeminently a person of prayer. His heart must graduate in the school of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the heart learn to speak. No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.

He will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men. Speaking without prayer can make our words dead.

The complete chapter on Talking to God for men:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.IV.html
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.

Power Through Prayer (3) ... The Letter Kills

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

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 3, The Letter Kills:

The preaching that kills may be, and often is, orthodox—dogmatically, inviolably orthodox. Nothing is so dead as a dead orthodoxy, too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to pray.

(The word “preaching” here applies to anyone who shares the message of Christ to anyone...whether as a speaker, teacher, or any believer.)

The preaching/speaking that kills may have insight and grasp of principles, may be scholarly and critical in taste.

Letter-preaching may be eloquent, enameled with poetry and rhetoric, sprinkled with prayer spiced with sensation, illumined by genius.  Under such preaching how wide and utter the desolation! how profound the spiritual death!

This letter-preaching deals with the surface and shadow of things, and not the things themselves. It does not penetrate the inner part. It has no deep insight into, no strong grasp of, the hidden life of God’s Word.

The failure is in the preacher. God has not made him. He has never been in the hands of God like clay in the hands of the potter. He has been busy about the sermon, its thought and finish, its drawing and impressive forces; but the deep things of God have never been sought, studied, fathomed, experienced by him.

The city of our God becomes the city of the dead; the Church a graveyard, not an embattled army. Praise and prayer are stifled; worship is dead. The preacher and the preaching have helped sin, not holiness; peopled hell, not heaven.

Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces.

The deader they are the longer they grow. A plea for short praying, live praying, real heart praying, praying by the Holy Spirit—direct, specific, ardent, simple, unctuous in the pulpit—is in order. A school to teach preachers how to pray, as God counts praying, would be more beneficial to true piety, true worship, and true preaching than all theological schools.

Prayer to God the noblest exercise, the loftiest effort of man, the most real thing! Shall we not discard forever accursed preaching that kills and prayer that kills, and do the real thing, the mightiest thing—prayerful praying, life-creating preaching, bring the mightiest force to bear on heaven and earth and draw on God’s exhaustless and open treasure for the need and beggary of man?

The complete chapter on the Letter Kills:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.III.html
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.