PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Power Through Prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree), 1835-1913 · 22,037 words · 35 reading sections
Forewords
Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been rationalised. Small capitals have been replaced by full capitals. Italics are indicated by _underscores_. The quotations that precede each chapter have been moved to follow the relevant chapter number. POWER THROUGH PRAYER BY E.…
319 wordsSECTION 2I
II BY MR. ALBERT A. HEAD. If there is one need felt beyond another by the members of the Church of Christ to-day, it is power _in_ prayer—desire _for_ prayer—time to be devoted _to_ prayer. What a number of unions for prayer exist already, and yet how few members continue "instant in prayer" or "pray without ceasing.…
765 wordsSECTION 3I
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but …
813 wordsSECTION 4I
The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself. The training of the twelve was the great, difficult, and enduring work of Christ. Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-t…
351 wordsSECTION 5Ii
_But above all he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and weight of his spirit, the reverence and solemnity of his address and behaviour, and the fewness and fullness of his words have often struck even strangers with admiration as they used to reach others with consolation. The most awful, living, reverend frame I …
1,007 wordsSECTION 6Iii
_During this affliction I was brought to examine my life in relation to eternity closer than I had done when in the enjoyment of health. In this examination relative to the discharge of my duties toward my fellow-creatures as a man, a Christian minister, and an officer of the Church, I stood approved by my own cons…
759 wordsSECTION 7Iii
Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces. The preacher who has retired from prayer as a conspicuous and largely prevailing element in his own character has shorn his preaching of its disti…
321 wordsSECTION 8Iv
_Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen without whose salvation nothing could make him happy. Prayer—secret, fervent, believing prayer—lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the language where a missionary li…
867 wordsSECTION 9V
Prayer is not a little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our mother's apron strings; neither is it a little decent quarter of a minute's grace said over an hour's dinner, but it is a most serious work of our most serious years. It engages more of time and appetite than our longest dinings or richest feasts. T…
699 wordsSECTION 10V
It is true that there may be popular preaching, pleasant preaching, taking preaching, preaching of much intellectual, literary, and brainy force, with its measure and form of good, with little or no praying; but the preaching which secures God's end in preaching must be born of prayer from text to exordium, delivered w…
606 wordsSECTION 11Vi
_The principal cause of my leanness and unfruitfulness is owing to an unaccountable backwardness to pray. I can write or read or converse or hear with a ready heart; but prayer is more spiritual and inward than any of these, and the more spiritual any duty is the more my carnal heart is apt to start from it. Prayer…
770 wordsSECTION 12Vii
Prayer was to them what it was to Paul, a striving with earnest effort of soul; what it was to Jacob, a wrestling and prevailing; what it was to Christ, "strong crying and tears." They "prayed always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance." "The effectual, fervent p…
806 wordsSECTION 13Vii
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," says his biographer. Bishop Ken was so much with God that his soul was said to be God-enamoured. He was with God before the clock struck three every morning. Bishop Asbu…
388 wordsSECTION 14Viii
_The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer._—COLERIDGE. Bishop Wilson says: "In H. Martyn's journal the spirit of prayer, the t…
709 wordsSECTION 15Ix
Is it true that prayer is simply the compliance with habit, dull and mechanical? A petty performance into which we are trained till tameness, shortness, superficiality are its chief elements? "Is it true that prayer is, as is assumed, little else than the half-passive play of sentiment which flows languidly on through …
651 wordsSECTION 16Ix
It is not simply the getting up that puts men to the front and makes them captain generals in God's hosts, but it is the ardent desire which stirs and breaks all self-indulgent chains. But the getting up gives vent, increase, and strength to the desire. If they had lain in bed and indulged themselves, the desire would …
279 wordsSECTION 17X
_There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of the present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of others. I am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, manœuvering temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out more than is expedient to meet one man's taste …
847 wordsSECTION 18Xi
Never did the cause of God need perfect illustrations of the possibilities of prayer more than in this age. No age, no person, will be ensamples of the gospel power except the ages or persons of deep and earnest prayer. A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. Prayerless hearts will never rise to th…
834 wordsSECTION 19Xi
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 …
632 wordsSECTION 20Xii
_For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart, or pierces the conscience but what comes from a living conscience._—WILLIAM PENN. _In the morning was more engaged in preparing the head than the heart. This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt the evil of it, especially in prayer. Reform i…
791 wordsSECTION 21Xii
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the divine and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles. It was this which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labours in the history of humanity. Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He who has pray…
296 wordsSECTION 22Xiii
_Study not to be a fine preacher. Jerichos are blown down with rams' horns. Look simply unto Jesus for preaching food; and what is wanted will be given, and what is given will be blessed, whether it be a barley grain or a wheaten loaf, a crust or a crumb. Your mouth will be a flowing stream or a fountain sealed, ac…
709 wordsSECTION 23Xiv
_One bright benison which private prayer brings down upon the ministry is an indescribable and inimitable something—an unction from the Holy One.... If the anointing which we bear come not from the Lord of hosts, we are deceivers, since only in prayer can we obtain it. Let us continue instant, constant, fervent in …
725 wordsSECTION 24Xv
_Speak for eternity. Above all things, cultivate your own spirit. A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin. Remember that God, and not man, must have the glory. If the veil of the world's machinery were lifted off, …
743 wordsSECTION 25Xv
What of unction? It is the indefinable in preaching which makes it preaching. It is that which distinguishes and separates preaching from all mere human addresses. It is the divine in preaching. It makes the preaching sharp to those who need sharpness. It distils as the dew to those who need to be refreshed. It is well…
336 wordsSECTION 26Xvi
_All the minister's efforts will be vanity or worse than vanity if he have not unction. Unction must come down from heaven and spread a savour and feeling and relish over his ministry; and among the other means of qualifying himself for his office, the Bible must hold the first place, and the last also must be give…
699 wordsSECTION 27Xvi
It is the presence of this unction on the preacher that creates the stir and friction in many a congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of the letter, but no ruffle has been seen, no pain or pulsation felt. All is quiet as a graveyard. Another preacher comes, and this mysterious influence is on h…
330 wordsSECTION 28Xvii
_Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer_.—JOHN WESLEY. The apostles knew the necessity …
829 wordsSECTION 29Xvii
Prayer is one of the eminent characteristics of strong spiritual leadership. Men of mighty prayer are men of might and mould things. Their power with God has the conquering tread. How can a man preach who does not get his message fresh from God in the closet? How can he preach without having his faith quickened, his v…
356 wordsSECTION 30Xviii
_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 i…
955 wordsSECTION 31Xviii
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…
401 wordsSECTION 32Xix
_This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours! I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc. Hence I am lean and cold and hard. I had better all…
773 wordsSECTION 33Xix
More time and early hours for prayer would act like magic to revive and invigorate many a decayed spiritual life. More time and early hours for prayer would be manifest in holy living. A holy life would not be so rare or so difficult a thing if our devotions were not so short and hurried. A Christly temper in its sweet…
600 wordsSECTION 34Xx
_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.…
664 wordsSECTION 35*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Power Through Prayer ***
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 a…
369 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.