The reality of prayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
The reality of prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Jesus Christ -- Prayers; Prayer -- Christianity
_During the great Welsh Revival a minister was said to be very
successful in winning souls by one sermon that he preached—hundreds
were converted. Far away in a valley news reached a brother minister
of the marvelous success of this sermon. He desired to find out the
secret of the man’s great success.—He walked the long way, and came
to the minister’s poor cottage, and the first thing he said was:
“Brother, where did you get that sermon?” He was taken into a poorly
furnished room and pointed to a spot where the carpet was worn
threadbare, near a window that looked out upon the everlasting hills
and solemn mountains and said, “Brother, there is where I got that
sermon. My heart was heavy for men. One night I knelt there—and
cried for power as I never preached before. The hours passed until
midnight struck, and the stars looked down on a sleeping world, but
the answer came not. I prayed on until I saw a faint streak of grey
shoot up, then it was silver—silver became purple and gold. Then the
sermon came and the power came and men fell under the influence of
the Holy Spirit.”_—G. H. MORGAN.
The Gospel without the Holy Spirit would be vain and nugatory. The gift
of the Holy Spirit was vital to the work of Jesus Christ in the
atonement. As Jesus did not begin His work on earth till He was anointed
by the Holy Spirit, so the same Holy Spirit is necessary to carry
forward and make effective the atoning work of the Son of God. As His
anointing by the Holy Ghost at His baptism was an era in His life, so
also is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost a great era in the
work of redemption in making effective the work of Christ’s Church.
The Holy Spirit is not only the bright lamp of the Christian
Dispensation, its Teacher and Guide, but is the Divine Helper.
He is the enabling agent in God’s new dispensation of doing. As the
pilot takes his stand at the wheel to guide the vessel, so the Holy
Ghost takes up His abode in the heart to guide and empower all its
efforts. The Holy Ghost executes the whole gospel through the man by His
presence and control of the spirit of the man.
In the execution of the atoning work of Jesus Christ, in its general and
more comprehensive operation, or in its minute and personal application,
the Holy Spirit is the one efficient Agent, absolute and indispensable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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