by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
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
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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