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No learning can make up for the failure to pray.
Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.
He will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men.
The preacher’s study ought to be a closet, a Bethel, an altar, a vision, and a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went manward; that every part of the sermon might be scented by the air of
heaven and made serious, because God was in the study.
As the engine never moves until the fire is kindled, so preaching, with all its machinery, perfection, and polish, is at a dead standstill, as far as spiritual results are concerne...
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The preacher must, by prayer, move God toward the people before he can move the people to God by his words.
prayer which is born of vital oneness with Christ and the fullness of the Holy Ghost, which springs from the deep, overflowing fountains of tender compassion, deathless solicitude for man’s eternal good; a consuming zeal for the glory of God; a thorough conviction of the preacher’s difficult and delicate work and of the imperative need of God’s mightiest help.
The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men.
Praying is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work.
Prayer is humbling work.
It is easier not to pray than to bear them. So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no praying.
The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we give to it.
To men who think praying their main business and devote time to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit the keys of his kingdom, and by them does he work his spiritual wonders in this world.
Great praying is the sign and seal of God’s great leaders and the earnest of the conquering forces with which God will crown their labors.
The preacher is commissioned to pray as well as to preach. His mission is incomplete if...
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I have long since learned that if ever I was to be a minister faith and prayer must make me one.
When I can find my heart in frame and liberty for prayer, everything else is comparatively easy.
no ministry can be a spiritual one, securing holiness in
the preacher and in his people, without prayer being made an evident and controlling force.
A prayerful ministry is the only ministry that brings the preacher into sympathy with the people.
Colleges, learning, books, theology, preaching cannot make a preacher, but praying does.
The superficial results of many a ministry, the deadness of others, are to be found in the lack of praying.
No ministry can succeed without much praying, and this praying must be fundamental, ever-abiding, ever-increasing.
God’s true preachers have been distinguished by one great feature: they were men of prayer.
God to them was the center of attraction, and prayer was the path that led to God.
they so prayed that their prayers entered into and shaped their characters;
Our short prayers owe their point and efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them.
God does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty comers and goers.
Much with God alone is the secret of knowing him and of influence with him.
We would not have any think that the value of their prayers is to be measured by the clock, but our purpose is to impress on our minds the necessity of being much alone with God;
“Arrange thy affairs, if possible, so that thou canst leisurely devote two or three hours every day not merely to devotional exercises but to the very act of secret prayer and communion with God.
Let the hour of opening dawn find thee at the same work. Let the hours of nine, twelve, three, six, and nine at night witness the same.
No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.
The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees.
If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully.
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 streng...
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Our laziness after God is our crying sin.
No man gets God who does not follow hard after him, and no soul follows hard after God who is not after him in early morn.
The leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a devotional habit.
No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration—this
this is the secret of power.
Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion.
The spirit of devotion is the spirit of prayer.
The preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion.
He is not a professional man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion.
The preacher’s relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his ministry.
