R. A. Torrey
(1) Prayer promotes our spiritual growth and true prayer and true Bible study go hand in hand.
It is through prayer that my sin is brought to light, my most hidden sin. As I kneel before God and pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me.” (Ps.139:23,24)
God shoots the rays of His light into the my heart, and the sins I never suspected are brought to view. In answer to prayer, God washes me from mine iniquity and cleanses me from my sin (Ps. 51:2). In answer to prayer my eyes are opened to behold wondrous things out of God’s Word (Ps. 119:18). In answer to prayer I get wisdom to know God’s way (Jas. 1:5) and strength to walk in it. As I meet God in prayer and gaze into His face, I am changed into His own image from glory to glory ( 2 Cor.3:18).
Each day of true prayer life finds me likened to my glorious Lord. John Welch, son-in-law to John Knox, was one of the most faithful men of prayer this world ever saw. He counted that day ill-spent in which seven or eight hours were not used alone with God in prayer and the study of His Word. An old man speaking of him after his death said, “He was a type of Christ.” How came he to be so like his Master? His prayer life explains the mystery.
(2) Prayer brings power into our work.
If we wish power for any work to which God calls us, be it preaching, teaching, personal work, or the rearing of our children, we can get it by earnest prayer. A woman with a badly behaved little boy once came to me in desperation and said:
“What shall I do with him?”
I asked, “Have you ever tried prayer?”
She said that she had prayed for him, she thought. I asked if she had made his conversion and his character a matter of definite, expectant prayer. She replied that she hadn’t. She began that day, and at once there was a marked change in the child, and he grew up into Christian manhood.
How many a Sunday-school teacher has taught for months and years, and seen no real fruit from his labours, and then has learned the secret of intercession, and by earnest pleading with God, has seen his
scholars brought one by one to Christ! How many a poor preacher has become a mighty man of God by casting away his confidence in his own ability and gifts, and giving himself up to God to wait upon Him for the power that comes from on high!
John Livingstone spent a night, with some others likeminded, in prayer to God and religious conversation, and when he preached next day in the Kirk of Shotts five hundred people were converted, or dated some definite uplift in their life to that occasion. Prayer and power are inseparable.
(3) Prayer avails for the conversion of others.
Few are converted in this world unless in connection with some one’s prayers. I formerly thought that no human being had anything to do with my own conversion, for I was not converted in church or Sunday-school, or in personal conversation with any one.
I was converted in the middle of the night. As far as I can remember I had not the slightest thought of being converted when I went to bed and fell asleep; but I was awakened in the middle of the night and converted probably inside of five minutes. A few minutes before I was about as near eternal perdition as one gets. I had one foot over the brink and was trying to get the other one over. I say I thought no human being had anything to do with it, but I had forgotten my mother’s prayers, and I afterward learned that one of my college classmates had chosen me as one to pray for until I was saved.
Prayer often avails where everything else fails. By prayer the bitterest enemies of the Gospel have become its most valiant defenders, the greatest scoundrels the truest sons of God, and the vilest women the purest saints. Oh, the power of prayer to reach down, where hope itself seems vain, and lift sinners up into fellowship with and likeness to God. It is simply wonderful! How little we appreciate this marvellous weapon!
(4) Prayer brings blessings to the church.
The history of the church has always been a history of grave difficulties to overcome. The devil hates the church and seeks in every way to block its progress by false doctrine, by division, again by inward corruption of life. But by prayer, a clear way can be made through everything. Prayer will root out heresy, allay misunderstanding, sweep away jealousies and animosities, obliterate immoralities, and bring in the full tide of God’s reviving grace.
History proves this. In the darkest hour, when the case of the church has seemed beyond hope, believing men and women have met together and cried to God and the answer has come. It was so in the days of Knox, Wesley and Whitfield, the days of Edwards and Brainerd, the days of Finney, the days of the great revival of 1857 in this country and of 1859 in Ireland, and it will be so again in your day and mine.
Satan has marshalled his forces. The world, the flesh and the devil are holding high carnival. It is now a dark day, BUT—now “it is time for Thee, Lord, to work; for they have made void Thy law.” (Ps. 119:126). He is ready to work, and He is listening for the voice of prayer. Will He hear it from you? Will He hear it from the church as a body? I believe He will.
Andrew Murray
What is needed to live a life of prayer? The first thing is undoubtedly the entire sacrifice of the life to God’s kingdom and glory. He who seeks to pray without ceasing because he wants to be very pious and good will never attain it. It is the forgetting of self and yielding ourselves to live for God and His honour that enlarge the heart, that teach us to regard everything in the light of God and His will, and that instinctively recognise in everything around us the need of God’s help and blessing, an opportunity for His being glorified.
Everything is weighed and tested by the one thing that fills the heart, the glory of God. Since the soul has learned that only what is of God can really be to Him and His glory, the whole life becomes a looking up, a crying from the inmost heart for God to prove His power and love and so show forth His glory.
LIFE ON THE ALTAR 