_If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers
had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with
all their might to cry to God for their ministers--had, as it were,
risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant
prayers for them--they would have been much more in the way of
success._--JONATHAN EDWARDS.
Somehow the practice of praying in particular for the preacher has
fallen into disuse or become discounted. Occasionally have we heard the
practice arraigned as a disparagement of the ministry, being a public
declaration by those who do it of the inefficiency of the ministry. It
offends the pride of learning and self-sufficiency, perhaps, and these
ought to be offended and rebuked in a ministry that is so derelict as
to allow them to exist.
Prayer, to the preacher, is not simply the duty of his profession, a
privilege, but it is a necessity. Air is not more necessary to the
lungs than prayer is to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for
the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher
be prayed for. These two propositions are wedded into a union which
ought never to know any divorce: _the preacher must pray; the preacher
must be prayed_ for. It will take all the praying he can do, and all
the praying he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities and
gain the largest, truest success in his great work. The true preacher,
next to the cultivation of the spirit and fact of prayer in himself, in
their intensest form, covets with a great covetousness the prayers of
God’s people.
The holier a man is, the more does he estimate prayer; the clearer
does he see that God gives himself to the praying ones, and that the
measure of God’s revelation to the soul is the measure of the soul’s
longing, importunate prayer for God. Salvation never finds its way to a
prayerless heart. The Holy Spirit never abides in a prayerless spirit.
Preaching never edifies a prayerless soul. Christ knows nothing of
prayerless Christians. The gospel cannot be projected by a prayerless
preacher. Gifts, talents, education, eloquence, God’s call, cannot
abate the demand of prayer, but only intensify the necessity for the
preacher to pray and to be prayed for. The more the preacher’s eyes are
opened to the nature, responsibility, and difficulties in his work,
the more will he see, and if he be a true preacher the more will he
feel, the necessity of prayer; not only the increasing demand to pray
himself, but to call on others to help him by their prayers.
Paul is an illustration of this. If any man could project the gospel
by dint of personal force, by brain power, by culture, by personal
grace, by God’s apostolic commission, God’s extraordinary call, that
man was Paul. That the preacher must be a man given to prayer, Paul
is an eminent example. That the true apostolic preacher must have the
prayers of other good people to give to his ministry its full quota of
success, Paul is a preëminent example. He asks, he covets, he pleads
in an impassioned way for the help of all God’s saints. He knew that
in the spiritual realm, as elsewhere, in union there is strength;
that the concentration and aggregation of faith, desire, and prayer
increased the volume of spiritual force until it became overwhelming
and irresistible in its power. Units of prayer combined, like drops
of water, make an ocean which defies resistance. So Paul, with his
clear and full apprehension of spiritual dynamics, determined to make
his ministry as impressive, as eternal, as irresistible as the ocean,
by gathering all the scattered units of prayer and precipitating
them on his ministry. May not the solution of Paul’s preëminence in
labors and results, and impress on the Church and the world, be found
in this fact that he was able to center on himself and his ministry
more of prayer than others? To his brethren at Rome he wrote: “Now
I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for
the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in prayers
to God for me.” To the Ephesians he says: “Praying always with all
prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with
all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that
utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to
make known the mystery of the gospel.” To the Colossians he emphasizes:
“Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of
utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in
bonds: that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.” To the
Thessalonians he says sharply, strongly: “Brethren, pray for us.” Paul
calls on the Corinthian Church to help him: “Ye also helping together
by prayer for us.” This was to be part of their work. They were to lay
to the helping hand of prayer. He in an additional and closing charge
to the Thessalonian Church about the importance and necessity of their
prayers says: “Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the
Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you:
and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men.” He
impresses the Philippians that all his trials and opposition can be
made subservient to the spread of the gospel by the efficiency of their
prayers for him. Philemon was to prepare a lodging for him, for through
Philemon’s prayer Paul was to be his guest.
Paul’s attitude on this question illustrates his humility and his deep
insight into the spiritual forces which project the gospel. More than
this, it teaches a lesson for all times, that if Paul was so dependent
on the prayers of God’s saints to give his ministry success, how much
greater the necessity that the prayers of God’s saints be centered on
the ministry of to-day!
Paul did not feel that this urgent plea for prayer was to lower his
dignity, lessen his influence, or depreciate his piety. What if it
did? Let dignity go, let influence be destroyed, let his reputation
be marred--he must have their prayers. Called, commissioned, chief of
the Apostles as he was, all his equipment was imperfect without the
prayers of his people. He wrote letters everywhere, urging them to
pray for him. Do you pray for your preacher? Do you pray for him in
secret? Public prayers are of little worth unless they are founded on
or followed up by private praying. The praying ones are to the preacher
as Aaron and Hur were to Moses. They hold up his hands and decide the
issue that is so fiercely raging around them.
The plea and purpose of the apostles were to put the Church to praying.
They did not ignore the grace of cheerful giving. They were not
ignorant of the place which religious activity and work occupied in the
spiritual life; but not one nor all of these, in apostolic estimate
or urgency, could at all compare in necessity and importance with
prayer. The most sacred and urgent pleas were used, the most fervid
exhortations, the most comprehensive and arousing words were uttered to
enforce the all-important obligation and necessity of prayer.
“Put the saints everywhere to praying” is the burden of the apostolic
effort and the keynote of apostolic success. Jesus Christ had striven
to do this in the days of his personal ministry. As he was moved by
infinite compassion at the ripened fields of earth perishing for lack
of laborers--and pausing in his own praying--he tries to awaken the
stupid sensibilities of his disciples to the duty of prayer as he
charges them, “Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth
laborers into his harvest.” “And he spake a parable unto them to this
end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.”