One accord

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The unanimous, the concerted and concordant prayer aims at expressing a corporate burden, a corporate testimony of the heart of God.

A burden received from Him who operates world affairs by prayer is not an isolated issue – something which stands by itself – but reveals the brokenness of God, the crucified God. A burden apprehended and admitted from this eternal source causes much aggravation and agony, but holds final fullness at its core. The accepting of a calling to priestly ministry to be expressed corporately, to be expressed as concordant prayer will accomplish much according to the purpose of God.

Remember; one man alone, or woman – lonely as she might be, standing with God in his burden is of greatest significance in the developments towards God’s ends.

Lars W.

Distractions i Prayer

Lord! I cannot pray,
My fancy is not free;
Unmannerly distractions come,
And force my thoughts from Thee.

The world that looks so dull all day
Glows bright on me at prayer,
And plans that ask no thought but then
Wake up and meet me there.

All nature one full fountain seems
Of dreamy sight and sound,
Which, when I kneel, breaks up its deeps,
And makes a deluge round.

Old voices murmur in my ear,
New hopes start to life,
And past and future gaily blend
In one bewitching strife.

My very flesh has restless fits;
My changeful limbs conspire
With all these phantoms of the mind
My inner self to tire.

I cannot pray; yet, Lord! Thou knowst
The pain it is to me
To have my vainly struggling thoughts
Thus torn away from Thee.

Sweet Jesus! teach me how to prize
These tedious hours when I,
Foolish and mute before Thy Face,
In helpless worship lie.

Prayer was not meant for luxury,
Or selfish pastime sweet;
It is the prostrate creature’s place
At his Creator’s Feet.

Had I, dear Lord! no pleasure found
But in the thought of Thee,
Prayer would have come unsought, and been
A truer liberty.

Yet Thou art oft most present, Lord!
In weak distracted prayer:
A sinner out of heart with self
Most often finds Thee there.

For prayer that humbles sets the soul
From all illusions free,
And teaches it how utterly,
Dear Lord! it hangs on Thee.

The heart, that on self-sacrifice
Is covetously bent,
Will bless Thy chastening hand that makes
Its prayer its punishment.

My Saviour! why should I complain
And why fear aught but sin?
Distractions are but outward things;
Thy peace dwells far within.

These surface-troubles come and go,
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but Thee.

Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863

Men – God’s method

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Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

 

The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget.

 

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 men – men of prayer.

 

E. M. Bounds

Power through Prayer

Prayer is not saying words

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The true content of prayer is not expressed in what is said, whence, among other things, the great mistake of analyzing prayer on the basis of the apparent content of the discourse, and the distinction between the prayer of petition, of praise, of intercession, etc. That sort of thing can be useful from the pedagogical point of view, but it falsifies the true nature of prayer.
Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement. The latter (verbalization) can only be the secondary expression of the relationship with God, an overflow from the encounter between the living God and the living person.

Prayer is not to be analyzed like a language. It has none of that form or content, for it receives its content, not from what I have to say, but from the One to whom it is spoken. For prayer to be what it is meant to be, it depends on Him and not on me, still less on my ability to speak the adequate language. Of course, I can pronounce a discourse supposedly addressed to God. I can arrange the sentences, but it is neither the harmony of the form, nor the elevation of the content, nor the fullness of the information which turns it into a prayer. Insofar as it remains a discourse, it is in fact subject to the language analysis with which we are familiar, but that is always as discourse, that is to say, as “nonprayer.”

It becomes prayer by the decision of God to whom it is addressed. A transformation takes place whereby it is a prayer of Christ or a prayer of the Holy Spirit. That is how we should understand the famous statement of Paul, in which he says that in the last analysis we do not know what the content of our prayer should be (Romans 8:26, 27), but that the Holy Spirit himself “intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” This phrase has too often been interpreted as though the Holy Spirit added a little something to our prayer. That is quite incorrect. It is the entire prayer which is the prayer of the Holy Spirit. Only when the Holy Spirit intercedes, and in a way which cannot be expressed, that is, which transcends all verbalizing, all language, then is the prayer prayer, and it is a relationship with God. Prayer is a gift from God, and its reality depends upon Him alone.

Jacques Ellul

From: Prayer and Modern Man. New York: Seabury Press. 1970.

Hungry men

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God-hungry men find God. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so the souls of the Upper-Room crowd panted for the living God. Spiritually naked, they fled to Him that they might be clothed upon with the blessed Spirit. Empty, they craved to be filled. Powerless, they tarried until they were endued. Bankrupt and beggar-like, they pled the riches of His grace. Then this fear-filled crowd became fire-filled messengers. Though swordless; these soldiers of Christ fought the might of imperial Rome and won. Though without ecclesiastical prestige, they opposed the frozen orthodoxy of sterile Judaism and pierced it to the heart. Unlettered, they unblushingly declared the whole counsel of God and eventually staggered the intellectual Greeks.

 

The common offer of evangelists these days is this: “You need power; come to the altar and get it.” This has no more moral appeal than taking a car for gas and saying to the attendant, “Fill her up.” This shibboleth brings no moral change or spiritual enduement that would make a sin-sick world and a flabby faltering Church know that the Almighty has visited His people. Obviously He has not.

 

In this evil hour of aggressive, atheistic philosophy and passive Christianity (so-called), we need a Mordecai with a broken heart but a resolute will to lead us all in sackcloth and ashes. God pity us that we have swung from the Upper Room with its fire to the church with the supper room and its smoke.

 

Leonard Ravenhill

Meat for Men