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 some body who can set the saints to this business of
praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Non-praying
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.