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by
E.M. Bounds
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June 8, 2020 - March 2, 2021
It is only human to cry out against the pain, the terror, and desolation of that hour. It is Divine to cry out to God in that hour, even while shrinking and sinking down, "For this cause came I unto this hour." Shall I fail through the weakness of the flesh? No. "Father, glorify thy name." How strong it makes us, and how true, to have one pole star to guide us to the glory of God!
Intercessions combine with prayers and supplications. The word does not mean necessarily prayer in relation to others. It means a coming together, a falling in with a most intimate friend for free, unrestrained communion. It implies prayer, free, familiar and bold.
In addition, it is the Church called together in a concert of prayer in order to repair the waste and friction ensuing upon the cutting off of a Church offender.
Church purity must precede the Church's prayers. The unity of discipline in the Church precedes the unity of prayers by the Church.
The work of the Church is not alone to seek members but it is to watch over and guard them after they have entered the Church.
It is not the mere presence of disorderly persons in a Church which merits the displeasure of God. It is when they are tolerated under the mistaken plea of "bearing with them," and no steps are taken either to cure them of their evil practices or exclude them from the fellowship of the Church.
The idea now is quantity in membership, not quality. The purity of the Church is put in the background in the craze to secure numbers, and to pad the Church rolls and make large figures in statistical columns.
What seems harshness is obedience to God, is for the welfare of the Church, and is wise in the extreme.
Prayer goes everywhere and lays its hand upon everything.
Prayer is intended for all men, because all men need God and need what God has and what prayer only can secure.
As men are called upon to pray everywhere, by consequence all men must pray for men are everywhere.
As there is no difference in the state of sin in which men are found, and all men need the saving grace of God which only can bless them, and as this saving grace is obtained only in answer to prayer, therefore all men are called on to pray because of their very needs.
Prayer belongs to all men because all men are redeemed in Christ.
"Come all the world, come, sinner thou, All things in Christ are ready now."
"Then, my soul, in every strait, To Thy Father come and wait; He will answer every prayer; God is present everywhere."
While we are to pray everywhere, it unquestionably means that we are not to frequent places where we cannot pray.
To pray everywhere is to preserve the spirit of prayer in places of business, in our intercourse with men, and in the privacy of the home amid all of its domestic cares.
All men everywhere are to be prayed for.
But lastly, and more at length, prayer has a universal side in that all things which concern us are to be prayed about, while all things which are for our good, physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, and eternal, are subjects of prayer.
Rulers are to be prayed for. They are not out of the reach and the control of prayer, because they are not out of the reach and control of God.
Christian lips are to breathe prayers for the cruel and infamous rulers in state as well as for the righteous and the benign governors and princes.
Humanity is to burden our hearts as we pray, and all men are to engage our thoughts in approaching a throne of grace.
Prayer comes from a big heart, filled with thoughts about all men and with sympathies for all men.
Prayer reaches up to heaven, and brings heaven down to earth.
Prayer has in its hands a double blessing. It rewards him who prays, and blesses him who is prayed for.
"Your guides and brethren bear Forever on your mind; Extend the arms of mighty prayer In grasping all mankind."
Missions mean the giving of the Gospel to those of Adam's fallen race who have never heard of Christ and his atoning death.
The life and spirit of missions are the life and spirit of prayer.
The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the spirit of missions.
The missionary movement is the Church of Jesus Christ marching in militant array, with the design of possessing the whole world of mankind for Christ.
So that anti-missionary Churches are dead Churches, just as anti-missionary Christians are dead Christians.
The trophies won by our Lord in heathen lands will be won by praying missionaries, not by professional workers in foreign lands. More especially will this success be won by saintly praying in the churches at home.
The praying church wins the contest.
Prayerless giving breeds barrenness and death.
Prayerless giving is the secret of all crises in the missionary movements of the day, and is the occasion of the accumulation of debts in missionary boards.
Prayer can make even poverty in the missionary cause move on amidst difficulties and hindrances.
All our plans and devices drive to the one end of raising money, not to quicken faith and promote prayer.
They who truly pray will be moved to give.
Emphasising the material to the neglect of the spiritual, by an inexorable law retires and discounts the spiritual.
The grace of giving is nowhere cultured to a richer growth than in the closet.
The on-going of Christ's kingdom is locked up in the closet of prayer by Christ Himself, and not in the contribution box.
The missionary movement in the Apostolic Church was born in an atmosphere of fasting and prayer.
God calls men not only to the ministry but to be missionaries.
Missionary work is God's work.
The religion to which the heathen world is to be converted is a religion of prayer, and a religion of prayer to the true God.
Above everything else, the primary qualification for every missionary is prayer.
But mighty prayer--this is the one great spiritual force which will enable the Lord Jesus Christ to enter into full possession of His kingdom, and secure for Him the heathen as His inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for His possession.
A person who can pray is the mightiest instrument Christ has in this world. A praying Church is stronger than all the gates of hell.
"The nations call! From sea to sea Extends the thrilling cry, Come over, Christians, if there be, And help us, ere we die.' "Our hearts, O Lord, the summons feel; Let hand with heart combine, And answer to the world's appeal, By giving that is thine.'"
Our Lord's plan for securing workers in the foreign missionary field is the same plan He set on foot for obtaining preachers. It is by the process of praying.
