Power Through Prayer (15) ... Unction, Penetrating Power

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 15, Unction ... Penetrating Power:

Unction is that indefinable, indescribable something which an old, renowned Scotch preacher describes thus: “There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to matter or expression,  or from where it comes, but with a sweet violence it pierces into the heart and affections and comes immediately from the Word.”

We call it unction. It is this unction which makes the word of God “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It is this unction which gives such point, sharpness, and power, and which creates such friction and stir in many.

A baptism of this unction, makes the letter of the Word become embellished and fired by a mysterious power, in that a throbbing of life begins—life which receives or life which resists. The unction pervades and convicts the conscience and breaks the heart.

Unction is simply putting God in his own word. By mighty and great prayerfulness and by continual prayerfulness, it is all potential and personal to the speaker; it inspires and clarifies his intellect, gives insight and grasp and projecting power; it gives to the person heart power, which is greater than head power; and tenderness, purity, force flow from the heart by it.

Enlargement, freedom, fullness of thought, directness and simplicity of utterance are the fruits of this unction.

This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven’s distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens, percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arranger, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves.

This unction is not the gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. No prelatical hands can confer it. It is the gift of God—the signet set to his own messengers. It is heaven’s knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful, wrestling prayer.

It takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this holy unction can do this.

The complete chapter on unction ... penetrating power:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XV.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.

Power Through Prayer (14) ... Unction is the difference

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 14, unction is the difference:

(Bounds uses the word “unction” in this discourse; whereas, being passionate about what you share is a modern expression. Better yet, it is only by the Anointing of the Holy Spirit that produces this unction, conviction, a pointed-power in speaking.)

“There was no eloquence—the honest man never dreamed of such a thing,  but there was far better: a cordial communication of vitalized truth. I say vitalized because what he declared to others it was impossible not to feel he lived on himself.”

This unction is the art of communicating. The person who never had this unction never had the art of speaking. The person who has lost this unction has lost the art of influence.

Whatever other arts he may have and retain? ...the art of speak-making, the art of eloquence, the art of great, clear thinking, the art of pleasing an audience? He has lost the divine art of speaking. This unction makes God’s truth powerful and interesting, draws and attracts, edifies, convicts, saves.

This unction vitalizes God’s revealed truth, makes it living and life-giving. Even God’s truth spoken without this unction is light, dead, and deadening. Though abounding in truth, though weighty with thought, though sparkling with rhetoric, though pointed by logic, though powerful by earnestness, without this divine unction it issues in death and not in life.

Mr. Spurgeon says:

“I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into word what is meant by preaching with unction. Yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence. Every one knows what the freshness of the morning is when orient pearls abound on every blade of grass, but who can describe it, much less produce it of itself? Such is the mystery of spiritual anointing. We know, but we cannot tell to others what it is. It is as easy as it is foolish, to counterfeit it.

Unction is a thing which you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than worthless. Yet it is, in itself, priceless, and beyond measure needful if you would edify believers and bring sinners to Christ.”

The complete chapter on unction is the difference:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XIV.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.

Power Through Prayer (13) ... the heart not the head changes lives

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 13, the heart not the head changes lives:

The heart is the Saviour of the world. Heads do not save. Genius, brains, brilliancy, strength, natural gifts do not save. The gospel flows through hearts. All the mightiest forces are heart forces.  Great hearts make great characters; great hearts make divine characters. God is love. Hearts make heaven; heaven is love.

It is the heart and not the head which makes God’s great people of God. The heart counts much every way in religion. The heart must speak from the pulpit. The heart must hear in the pew. In fact, we serve God with our hearts. Head homage does not pass current in heaven.

A theological school to enlarge and cultivate the heart is the golden desideratum of the gospel.

It is easier to fill the head than it is to prepare the heart. It is easier to make a brain sermon than a heart sermon. It was heart that drew the Son of God from heaven. It is heart that will draw men to heaven. Men of heart is what the world needs to sympathize with its woe, to kiss away its sorrows, to compassionate its misery, and to alleviate its pain. Christ was eminently the man of sorrows, because he was preeminently the man of heart.

“Give me thy heart,” is God’s requisition of men. “Give me thy heart!” is man’s demand of man.

A professional ministry is a heartless ministry. When salary plays a great part in the ministry, the heart plays little part. We may make preaching our business, and not put our hearts in the business.

The closet is the heart’s study. We will learn more about how to speak and what to say it there than we can learn in our libraries. “Jesus wept” is the shortest and biggest verse in the Bible. It is he who goes forth weeping (not speaking great speeches), bearing precious seed, who shall come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

The complete chapter on the heart not the head changes lives:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XIII.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.

Power Through Prayer (12) ... Heart Preparation is Necessary

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 12, Heart Preparation is Necessary:

Praying makes the presenter a heart presenter. Prayer puts the presenter’s heart into the presenter’s message; prayer puts the presenter’s message into the presenter’s heart.

The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. Men of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The hireling and the stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it is the good shepherd with the good shepherd’s heart who will bless the sheep and answer the full measure of the shepherd’s place.

We have emphasized preparation until we have lost sight of the important thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared message. A prepared heart will make a prepared presentation.

We have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and raised the clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness.

But our great lack is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect—not that we know too much, but that we do not meditate on God and his word and watch and fast and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching, our presenting, our sharing. Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts nonconductors; arrested, they fall shorn and powerless.

God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.

Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: “He who has prayed well has studied well.” We do not say that men are not to think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who cultivates his heart most.

We do say that he who has struggled with his own heart and conquered it; who has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy, courage; who can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a manly intellect, all surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences of his hearers—such a one will be the truest, most successful person in the esteem of his Lord.

The complete chapter on heart preparation is necessary:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XII.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.

Power Through Prayer (11) ... a model of prayer devotion

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 11, a model of prayer devotion:

God has now, and has had, many of these devoted, prayerful people in whose lives prayer has been a mighty, controlling, conspicuous force. The world has felt their power, God has felt and honored their power, God’s cause has moved mightily and swiftly by their prayers, holiness has shone out in their characters with a divine effulgence.

God found one of the men He was looking for in David Brainerd.

He was “a young man of distingushed talents, had extraordinary knowledge of men and things, had rare conversational powers, excelled in his knowledge of theology. His manner in prayer was almost unmatchable, such as I have very rarely known equaled. His learning was very considerable, and he had extraordinary gifts for the pulpit.”

He was God’s man, for God first and last and all the time. God could flow unhindered through him.

Brainerd lived the life of holiness and prayer. His diary is full and monotonous with the record of his seasons of fasting, meditation, and retirement. The time he spent in private prayer amounted to many hours daily. “When I return home,” he said, “and give myself to meditation, prayer, and fasting, my soul longs for mortification, self-denial, humility, and divorcement from all things of the world.” “I have nothing to do,” he said, “with earth but only to labor in it honestly for God. I do not desire to live one minute for anything which earth can afford.”

I had little life and power in the forenoon. Near the middle of the afternoon God enabled me to wrestle ardently in intercession for my absent friends, but just at night the Lord visited me marvelously in prayer. I think my soul was never in such agony before.  I was in such agony  till near dark that I was all over wet with sweat, but yet it seemed to me I had done nothing. O, my dear Saviour did sweat blood for poor souls! I longed for more compassion toward them.”

It was prayer which gave to his life and ministry their marvelous power.

The men of mighty prayer are men of spiritual might. Prayers never die.

Brainerd’s whole life was a life of prayer. By day and by night he prayed. Riding through the interminable solitudes of the forests he prayed. On his bed of straw he prayed. Hour by hour, day after day, early morn and late at night, he was praying and fasting, pouring out his soul, interceding, communing with God. He was with God mightily in prayer, and God was with him mightily.

Not only in word and doctrine, in public and in private, but in prayers by day and night, wrestling with God in secret and travailing in birth with unutterable groans and agonies, until Christ was formed in the hearts of the people to whom he was sent.

The complete chapter on a model of prayer devotion:

\\http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XI.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.

Power Through Prayer (10) ... prayer united with lofty devotion

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 10, prayer united with lofty devotion:

By every means, modern sainthood must be inspired by the loftiest ideals and by the largest possibilities through the Spirit.

Paul lived on his knees, that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths, and depths of an unmeasurable saintliness, and “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

The divinest thing in religion is holy men and holy women. No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration—this is the secret of power. These we need and must have, and men must be the incarnation of this God-inflamed devotedness.

Brainerd’s spirit was on fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing earthly, worldly, selfish came in to abate in the least the intensity of this all-impelling and all-consuming force and flame. Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul and body are united, as life and the heart are united. There is no real prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The person must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion.

The name and honor of Jesus Christ, the advance of his cause, must be all in all. We must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have him glorified, no toil but for him. Then prayer will be a source of our illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of our success. The perpetual aim, the only ambition, we can cherish is to have God with us.

This age may be a better age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer.

It is prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed by the power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of praying; the more of praying, the more of true saints.

The complete chapter on prayer united with lofty devotion :

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.X.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.

Power Through Prayer (9) ... Begin the Day Hard after God

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 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:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.IX.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.

Power Through Prayer (8) ... Examples of those Devoted to Prayer

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 8, Examples of those Devoted to Prayer.

In the online version of Power Through Prayer, there is an extra chapter on examples of praying men, and may I say women.
“Men’ means mankind in general.. Here’s a few of those mentioned.

Payson wore the hard-wood boards into grooves where his knees pressed so often and so long. His biographer says: “His continuing instant in prayer, be his circumstances what they might, is the most noticeable fact in his history, and points out the duty of all who would rival his eminency. To his ardent and persevering prayers must no doubt be ascribed in a great measure his distinguished and almost uninterrupted success.”

The Marquis DeRenty, to whom Christ was most precious, ordered his servant to call him from his devotions at the end of half an hour. The servant at the time saw his face through an aperture. It was marked with such holiness that he hated to arouse him. His lips were moving, but he was perfectly silent. He waited until three half hours had passed; then he called to him, when he arose from his knees, saying that the half hour was so short when he was communing with Christ.

William Bramwell is famous in Methodist annals for personal holiness and for his wonderful success in preaching and for the marvelous answers to his prayers. For hours at a time he would pray. He almost lived on his knees. He went over his circuits like a flame of fire. The fire was kindled by the time he spent in prayer. He often spent as much as four hours in a single season of prayer in retirement.

Bishop Andrewes spent the greatest part of five hours every day in prayer and devotion.

Sir Henry Havelock always spent the first two hours of each day alone with God. If the encampment was struck at 6 A.M., he would rise at four.

Earl Cairns rose daily at six o’clock to secure an hour and a half for the study of the Bible and for prayer, before conducting family worship at a quarter to eight.

Dr. Judson’s success in prayer is attributable to the fact that he gave much time to prayer. He says on this point: “Arrange thy affairs, if possible, so that thou canst leisurely devote two or three hours every day not merely to devotional exercises but to the very act of secret prayer and communion with God. Endeavor seven times a day to withdraw from business and company and lift up thy soul to God in private retirement. Begin the day by rising after midnight and devoting some time amid the silence and darkness of the night to this sacred work. Let the hour of opening dawn find thee at the same work. Let the hours of nine, twelve, three, six, and nine at night witness the same. Be resolute in his cause. Make all practicable sacrifices to maintain it.

Power which may last, not unfrequently in an earnest life, late into the night hours, or even to the break of day. Sometimes they refer to common intercession with St. Paul as a concerted struggle. They have, when praying, their eyes fixed on the Great Intercessor in Gethsemane, upon the drops of blood which fall to the ground in that agony of resignation and sacrifice. Importunity is of the essence of successful prayer. Importunity means not dreaminess but sustained work. It is through prayer especially that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.

The complete chapter on Examples of Praying Men:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.VIII.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.

 

Power Through Prayer (7) ... Much Time Given to Prayer … by Great People

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 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

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.VII.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.