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We have the same permission to go to God and ask the fire from heaven to come down and consume our lusts and passions – to burn up our impurities and let Christ shine through us.
Scripture is full of examples. Elisha prayed, and a dead child came back to life. Some of us have children who are spiritually dead in sin and who have wandered from God’s truth. We can do as Elisha did by asking God to raise them up from spiritual death in answer to our prayers.
I never noticed until a few years ago that Christ was praying at his baptism. Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove (Luke 3:21-22).
And while He was praying, the appearance of His face became different, and His clothing became white and gleaming (Luke 9:28-29).
If our sermons and messages are going to reach the hearts and consciences of the people, we must spend a considerable amount of time in prayer to God, that there may be power with the words we deliver.
The reason we so often fail in moving our friends is that we try to win them without first getting power with God. Jesus was in communion with his Father, and so he could be assured that his prayers were heard.
have often said that I would rather know how to pray like Daniel than to preach like Gabriel. If you get love into your soul, so that the grace of God may come down in answer to prayer, there will be no trouble reaching the people. It is not by eloquent sermons that perishing souls are going to be reached; we need the power of God in order that the blessing may come down.
My experience is that those who pray most in their closets generally make short prayers in public.
If you go through the Scriptures, you will find that the prayers that brought immediate answers were generally brief. Let our prayers be to the point, just telling God what we want.
Christ’s last prayer on the cross was a short one: Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). I believe that prayer was answered. We find that right there in front of the cross, a Roman centurion was converted. It was probably in answer to the Savior’s prayer. The conversion of the thief, I believe, was also in answer to that prayer of our blessed Lord.
Look, for instance, at Richard Baxter.1 He stained his study walls with praying breath,
“Give me children,” cried Rachel, “or else I die.” “Let me breathe,” says a man gasping, “or else I die.” “Let me pray,” says the Christian, “or else I die.”
Thomas Brooks, that grand old Puritan writer, said, “A person of real holiness is much affected and taken up in the admiration of the holiness of God. Unholy persons may be somewhat affected and taken with the other excellences of God; it is only holy souls that are taken and affected with his holiness.”
What we want in these days is a true and deep revival in the church of God. I have little sympathy with the idea that God is going to reach the masses by a cold and formal church.
You notice that when Daniel got that wonderful answer to prayer recorded in the ninth chapter, he was confessing his sin. That is one of the best chapters on prayer in the whole Bible.
“With men it is, confess, and have execution, but with God, confess, and have mercy.
Unconfessed sin is unforgiven sin, and unforgiven sin is the darkest, foulest thing on this sin-cursed earth.
Isaac Ambrose, in his essay on self-trial, said we should ask our heart two questions now and then. The first is, “Heart, how dost thou?
The second question Ambrose said we should ask is, “Heart, what wilt thou do? Or, heart, what do you think will become of you and me? As that dying Roman once said, ‘Poor, wretched, miserable soul, whither art thou and I going, and what will become of thee, when thou and I shall part?’”
I do not fear pagan lectures half so much as the cold and dead formalism in the professing church at the present time. One prayer meeting like the one the disciples had on the day of Pentecost would shake the whole nonbelieving fraternity.
We want to “move the arm that moves the world.” To do that, we must be clear and right before God.
If we have done wrong to someone, we should never ask God to forgive us until we are willing to make restitution. If I have done any man a great injustice and can make it good, I do not need to ask God to forgive me until I am willing to forgive first.
What hath God that he withholds from you?
No sin-offering is imposed under the gospel; thank offerings are all he looks for.”
John Newton: Since all that I meet shall work for my good, The bitter is sweet, the medicine food; Though painful at present, ‘twill cease before long, And then - oh, how pleasant! - the conqueror’s song.
be careful for nothing, prayerful for everything, and thankful for anything.
A farmer was once found kneeling at a soldier’s grave near Nashville. Someone came to him and said, “Why do you pay so much attention to this grave? Was your son buried here?” “No,” he said. “During the war my family were all sick; I knew not how to leave them. I was drafted. One of my neighbors came over and said, ‘I will go for you; I have no family.’ He went off. He was wounded at Chickamauga. He was carried to the hospital, and there died. And, sir, I have come a great many miles, that I might write over his grave these words, ‘He died for me.’”
The voice of sin may be loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.
William Jenkyn,36 in his commentary on the epistle of Jude, said: The partakers of a “common salvation,” who here agree in one way to heaven, and who expect to be hereafter in one heaven, should be of one heart.
We are not told that Jesus ever taught his disciples how to preach, but he taught them how to pray. He wanted them to have power with God; then he knew they would have power with man.
Oh that Christians would chide themselves out of their cold prayers, and chide themselves into a better and warmer frame of spirit, when they make their supplications to the Lord!
Archbishop Robert Leighton
Everyone can say, “Lord, help me!” We all need help. As Christians, don’t we need more grace, more love, more purity of life, more righteousness? Then let’s make this prayer today.
It is well to bear always in mind that the object of faith is not the creature, but the Creator; not the instrument, but the hand that wields it.
Sweet is the precious gift of prayer, To bow before a throne of grace; To leave our every burden there, And gain new strength to run our race; To gird our heavenly armor on, Depending on the Lord alone.
“Jesus cannot be expected to answer runaway knocks. He has never promised it. I mean to keep knocking, knocking, until he cannot help opening the door.”
Prayer is hardly ever mentioned alone in the Bible; it is prayer and earnestness, prayer and watchfulness, prayer and thanksgiving. It is useful to note that throughout Scripture, prayer is always linked with something else. Bartimaeus was in earnest, and the Lord heard his cry.
We cannot be too frequent in our requests; God will not weary of his children’s prayers.
Moses wished to enter the Promised Land, but because of his earlier transgression, the Lord had something else in store for him. As someone has said, “God kissed away his soul, and took him home to himself.” God buried him – perhaps the greatest honor ever paid to mortal man. And then fifteen hundred years later, God answered the prayer of Moses; he allowed him to go into the Promised Land, and to get a glimpse of the coming glory. On the Mount of Transfiguration, with Elijah, the great prophet, and with Peter, James, and John, Moses heard the voice come from the throne of God, then a voice
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A friend of mine was shaving one morning, and his little boy, not four years old, asked him for his razor, and said he wanted to whittle with it. When he found he could not get it, he began to cry as if his heart would break. I am afraid that there are a great many of us who are praying for razors.
God had one Son without sin, but he never had any without sorrow. Fiery trials make golden Christians; sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.”
He was once told by Henry Varley, a British evangelist, “Moody, the world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him.” Moody later said, “By God’s help, I aim to be that man.”
Moody once said, “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.
