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 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:
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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