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.
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