_I judge that my prayer is more than the devil himself; if it were
otherwise, Luther would have fared differently long before this. Yet
men will not see and acknowledge the great wonders or miracles God
works in my behalf. If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I
should lose a great deal of the fire of faith._--MARTIN LUTHER.
Only glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the apostles
get before Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling on Pentecost
elevated prayer to its vital and all-commanding position in the gospel
of Christ. The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit’s
loudest and most exigent call. Sainthood’s piety is made, refined,
perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when
the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.
Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to
pray and put them at it? Do we know we are raising up a prayerless set
of saints? Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God’s people
to praying? Let them come to the front and do the work, and it will
be the greatest work which can be done. An increase of educational
facilities and a great increase of money force will be the direst curse
to religion if they are not sanctified by more and better praying than
we are doing. More praying will not come as a matter of course. The
campaign for the twentieth or thirtieth century fund will not help
our praying but hinder if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific
effort from a praying leadership will avail. The chief ones must lead
in the apostolic effort to radicate the vital importance and _fact_ of
prayer in the heart and life of the Church. None but praying leaders
can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints.
A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need somebody
who can set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a
generation of praying saints. Nonpraying saints are a beggarly gang
of saints who have neither the ardor nor the beauty nor the power
of saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of
reformers and apostles, who can set the Church to praying.
We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the Church
in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied
holiness, of such marked spiritual vigor and consuming zeal, that their
prayers, faith, lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and
aggressive form as to work spiritual revolutions which will form eras
in individual and Church life.
We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices, nor
those who attract by a pleasing entertainment; but men who can stir
things, and work revolutions by the preaching of God’s Word and by the
power of the Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of
things.
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in
this matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power
of thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute
losing of one’s self in God’s glory, and an ever-present and insatiable
yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God--men who can set the
Church ablaze for God; not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense
and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.
God can work wonders if he can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders
if they can get God to lead them. The full endowment of the spirit
that turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these
latter days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual
revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need
of the Church.
The Church has never been without these men; they adorn its history;
they are the standing miracles of the divinity of the Church; their
example and history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An
increase in their number and power should be our prayer.
That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again, and
be better done. This was Christ’s view. He said: “Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my
Father.” The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands
for doing great things for God. The Church that is dependent on its
past history for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen Church.
God wants elect men--men out of whom self and the world have gone by a
severe crucifixion, by a bankruptcy which has so totally ruined self
and the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery; men
who by this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect
hearts.
Let us pray ardently that God’s promise to prayer may be more than
realized.
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Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.