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.
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