Purpose in PrayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
Purpose in Prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Prayer -- Christianity
Men of McCheyne’s stamp are needed to-day—praying men, who know how to
give themselves to the greatest task demanding their time and their
attention; men who can give their whole heart to the holy task of
intercession, men who can pray through. God’s cause is committed to men;
God commits Himself to men. Praying men are the vicegerents of God; they
do His work and carry out His plans.
We are obliged to pray if we be citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Prayerlessness is expatriation, or worse, from God’s Kingdom. It is
outlawry, a high crime, a constitutional breach. The Christian who
relegates prayer to a subordinate place in his life soon loses whatever
spiritual zeal he may have once possessed, and the Church that makes
little of prayer cannot maintain vital piety, and is powerless to
advance the Gospel. The Gospel cannot live, fight, conquer without
prayer—prayer unceasing, instant and ardent.
Little prayer is the characteristic of a backslidden age and of a
backslidden Church. Whenever there is little praying in the pulpit or in
the pew, spiritual bankruptcy is imminent and inevitable.
The cause of God has no commercial age, no cultured age, no age of
education, no age of money. But it has one golden age, and that is the
age of prayer. When its leaders are men of prayer, when prayer is the
prevailing element of worship, like the incense giving continual
fragrance to its service, then the cause of God will be triumphant.
Better praying and more of it, that is what we need. We need holier men,
and more of them, holier women, and more of them to pray—women like
Hannah, who, out of their greatest griefs and temptations brewed their
greatest prayers. Through prayer Hannah found her relief. Everywhere the
Church was backslidden and apostate, her foes were victorious. Hannah
gave herself to prayer, and in sorrow she multiplied her praying. She
saw a great revival born of her praying. When the whole nation was
oppressed, prophet and priest, Samuel was born to establish a new line
of priesthood, and her praying warmed into life a new life for God.
Everywhere religion revived and flourished. God, true to His promise,
“_Ask of Me_,” though the praying came from a woman’s broken heart,
heard and answered, sending a new day of holy gladness to revive His
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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