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.