Compiled by Edwin and Lillian Harvey
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Immersing Ourselves in Prayer Thus
saith the Lord... Seek ye Me, and ye shall live Seek the Lord, and ye shall live (Amos 5: 6). I am as certain as I am standing here,
that the secret of much mischief to our own souls, and to the souls of
others, lies in the way that we stint, and starve, and scamp our prayers
by hurrying over them. Prayer worth calling prayer: prayer that God will
call true prayer and will treat as true prayer, takes far more time, by
the clock, than one man in a thousand thinks. Take good care lest you take your
salvation far too softly and far too cheaply. If you find your life of
prayer to be always so short, and so easy, and so spiritual, as to be
without cost and strain and sweat to you, you may depend upon it, you are
not yet begun to pray. As sure as you sit there, and I stand here, it is
just in this matter of time in prayer that so many of us are making
shipwreck of our own souls, and the souls of others. Were some of us shut up in prison like
Paul, I believe we have grace enough to become in that sequestered life
men of great and prevailing prayer. And, perhaps, when we are sufficiently
old and set free from business, and are sick tired of spending our late
nights eating and drinking and talking: when both the church and the world
are sick tired of us and leave us alone and forget us, we may find time
for prayer and may get back the years of prayer those cankerworms have
eaten. —Alexander Wh |
Hurried
prayers and muttered Litanies can never produce souls mighty in prayer.
Learners give hours regularly each day that they may become proficient in
art and mechanism. All praying saints have spent hours every day in
prayer. ... In these days there is no time to pray; but without time, and
a lot of it, we shall never learn to pray. It ought to be possible to give
God one hour out of twenty-four all to Himself." *
It was not easy for this busy man, Samuel Chadwick, to
make time for prayer. A glimpse into his personal prayer life is given in
the following: "I went apart three times a day and prayed in spirit
all the time between. The habit of three times a day was not easy. The
dinner hour was short, the family was large, and the house small, but I
managed."
Charles Kingsley tells of Turner, the greatest
Nature-painter of any age. He spent hours upon hours in mere contemplation
of Nature without using his pencil at all. "It is said of him that he
was known to spend a whole day sitting upon a rock, and throwing pebbles
into a lake; and, when at evening his fellow-painters showed him their
day's sketches, and rallied him upon having done nothing, he answered
them, 'I have done this at least—I have learned how a lake looks when
pebbles are thrown into it.'" Henry Martyn, a brilliant scholar, linguist, and missionary to India sensed a real danger in giving too little time to prayer: "May the Lord, in mercy, save me from setting up an idol of any sort in His room, as I do by preferring a work professedly for Him to communion with Him. How obstinate the reluctance of the natural heart to God. But, O my soul, be not deceived, the chief work on earth is to obtain sanctification and to walk with God." *From The Path of Prayer by Samuel Chadwick. (London: Hodder & Stoughton). Copyright 1951 by Samuel Chadwick. Copyright 1956 by Hodder & Stoughton Limited. |
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Kneeling We Triumph is a storehouse of precious nuggets on the subject of prayer, compiled from the writings of godly men and women of the past. Consisting of sixty two-page readings, this book will stimulate you to the tremendous possibilities of prayer. Some chapter titles are "Waiting, a Proof of our Faith," "Hush My Heart to Listen," and "When Prayer is a Cry." From the authors' Forward : "Like many other Christian workers who have been anxious to be successful in labor for God, we have been forced to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit alone can effect lasting results. During these past years of heart-searching study, we have gathered together similar conclusions from many God-honored ministers and missionaries who have discovered the secret that the Holy Spirit comes to our aid when, wearied with self-effort, we ask, seek, and knock. We long very much to share with God's children some of these readings and to spread them as widely as possible."
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