Berean Baptist Church: Refuge Blog

A voice from the past with a message for today!

(Mat 6:6) But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

We just finished up talking about the need to inhabit a secret place in order to have meaningful and powerful prayer. Can you imagine how different the world might be if Christians were to follow the advice of Jesus Himself? I hope you have found your place if not, get busy.

I want to share with you some more words from E.M. Bounds who was a powerful man of prayer, and a strong pastor who passed from this life in the early 1900's. I want you to think of his words from the past and see how they relate to us today.

He said of the days in which he lived...

"This is not a praying age; it is an age of great activity, of great movements, but one in which the tendency is very strong to stress the seen and the material, and to neglect and discount the unseen and the spiritual. Prayer is the greatest of all forces because it honors God and brings Him into active aid... we cannot run our spiritual operations on the prayers of the past generations. Many people believe in the efficacy of prayer, but not many people pray. Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things. It is the simplest and the most sublime, the weakest and the most powerful. Its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they limited only by the omnipotence of God...Prayer and a holy life are one. They mutually act and react. Neither can survive alone, for the absence of the one is the absence of the other. The hindrances of prayer are the hindrances in a holy life; and the conditions of praying are the conditions of righteousness, holiness, and salvation... We are all in danger of substituting church work and a ceaseless round of showy activities for prayer and holy living. A holy life does not live in the closet, but it cannot live without the prayer closet. If, by any chance, a person should establish a prayer chamber but not have an accompanying holy life, it would be a chamber without the presence of God in it."

Amen! What a word of caution and encouragement for us today. We need to pray, we need to commune with God in secret and then anticipate Him answering in a very public, life-changing and world-shaking way.

Have a great one!

Jeff

Published on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 @ 4:24 PM CDT
1 comments

Pray without ceasing!

"Pray without ceasing." I Thessalonians 5:17

How can something so big be packed into so few words. Prayer, what is it? What is the correct way to pray? Should I stand or kneel? Why should I pray? It seems like such a waste of time, is it? Maybe you have struggled with questions like these in your own life. We are going to begin our next LCG series on this very topic, Prayer!

There are so many things, topics, preferences and convictions that we seem to spend so much time debating and talking about, but what about prayer? It is such an essential and rerwarding spiritual discipline yet it usually is the most neglected. Why do we not spend more time as individuals, as family members and as church members in prayer? We will search out different methods of building His churches, new and innovative ways of spreading the Gospel, we will study and search the scriptures so that we can better defend our faith and yet we still neglect prayer. Why is that? I know that we need to do all those things, but we cannot forget the necessity of prayer.

What do we really need? What does this country need, what do our ministries need? Well for sure they need prayer, listen to this quote from a mighty man of prayer, E.M. Bounds...

“What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.” Over the next several weeks we are going to talk about prayer, challenge about prayer, and we are going to pray together and individually every day and be accountable for it.

So get ready for an exciting series on prayer and get ready now to pray without ceasing. Here is a quote from Charles Spurgeon that I think explains the idea of "praying without ceasing" quite well. Just something to ponder on...

"Like the old knights, always in warfare, not always on their steeds dashing forward with their lances in rest to unhorse an adversary, but always wearing their weapons where they could readily reach them, and always ready to encounter wounds or death for the sake of the cause which they championed. Those grim warriors often slept in their armour; so even when we sleep, we are still to be in the spirit of prayer, so that if perchance we wake in the night we may still be with God. Our soul, having received the divine centripetal influence which makes it seek its heavenly centre, should be evermore naturally rising towards God Himself. Our heart is to be like those beacons and watchtowers which are prepared along the coast of England when the invasion of the Armada was hourly expected, not always blazing, but with the wood always dry, and the match always there, the whole pile being ready to blaze up at the appointed moment. Our souls should be in such a condition that ejaculatory prayer should be very frequent with us. No need to pause in business and leave the counter, and fall down upon the knees; the spirit should send up its silent, short, swift petitions to the throne of grace...

A Christian should carry the weapon of all-prayer like a drawn sword in his hand. We should never sheathe our supplications. Never may our hearts be like an unlimbered gun, with everything to be done to it before it can thunder on the foe, but it should be like a piece of cannon, loaded and primed, only requiring the fire that it may be discharged. The soul should be not always in the exercise of prayer, but always in the energy of prayer; not always actually praying, but always intentionally praying." (The Parables of Our Lord [Grand Rapids: Baker, reprint 1979], 434-35).

I want to challenge you as we prepare to begin this series, to ask the Lord to help you get your prayer life to where it should be, a life and heart that is always in the spirit and attitude of prayer.

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