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Importance of Prayer

【Prayer】For the Christian, praying should be like breathing. Just as breathing is the response of physical life to the presence of air, so prayer should be the response of spiritual life to the presence of God.

【Prayer】The brother of a seminary student came to visit him one day. Unsure of directions, he turned to the first person who passed by and asked, “Is this Davidson Hall?” One hearing the man described later, the seminary student asked his brother if he had realized that he had been talking to a world-famous theologian. The brother couldn’t believe it. He had the opportunity to ask any question—and he asked only where a building was.

Unfortunately that’s how many of us pray. We talk to God and ask for inane little thing that are really insignificant.

【Prayer】Prayer is much like a check to be countersigned by two parties. I sign the check and send it up to heaven. If Jesus Christ also signs it, it does not matter how large it is—it will be honored.

【Answer to Prayer】Shortly after Dallas Seminary was founded in 1924, it came to the point of bankruptcy. All the creditors were going to foreclose at noon on a particular day. That morning, the founders of the school met in the president’s office to pray that God would provide. In that prayer meeting was Harry Ironside. When it was his turn to pray, he prayed in his characteristically refreshing manner: “Lord, we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are thine. Please sell some of them and send us the money.”

While they were pray9ing, a tall Texan came into the business office and said, “I just sold two carloads of cattle in Fort Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal go through and it won’t work, and I feel that God is compelling me to give this money to the Seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check.”

A secretary took the check and, knowing something of the financial seriousness of the hour, went to the door of the prayer meeting and timidly tapped. When she finally got a response, Dr. Lewis Chafer took the check out of her hand, and it was for the exact amount of the debt. When he looked at the signature, he recognized the name of the cattle rancher. Turning to Dr. Ironside, he said, “Harry, God sold the cattle!”

【Importance of Prayer】D.E. Host, the man who took over for Hudson Taylor, wrote a book titled Behind the Ranges. He was trying to analyze a problem he had seen while working in two different villages in China. The people with whom he lived and worked were not doing very well. But the people in the other village across the ranges were doing great! He visited them only now and then, but they were always doing fine, so he began to ask the Lord what was going on. How could those across the ranges be doing better than those with whom he lived and worked? The Lord showed Host the answer. Although he was spending much time counseling, preaching, and teaching with those with whom he lived, he spent much more time in prayer for those across the ranges. He concluded that there were four basic elements in making disciples: (1) prayer, (2) prayer, (3) prayer, (4) the Word-in that order and in about that proportion.

【Importance of Prayer】I have so much to do that I must spend the first three hours of each day in prayer.—Martin Luther

【Importance of Prayer】The church has many organizers, but few agonizers; many who pay, but few who pray; many resters, but few wrestlers; many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding. People who are not praying and praying. The secret of praying is praying in secret. A worldly Christian will stop praying and a praying Christian will stop worldliness. Tithes may build a church, but tears will give it life. That is the difference between the modern church and the early church. In the matter of effective praying, never have so many left so much to so few. Brethren, let us pray.—Leonard Ravenhill

【Need for Prayer】Many view God only as a kind of heavenly genie, ready when you rub the lamp of prayer to appear and say, “Yes, master; what do you want me to do?” But God is not like that. God is sovereign. God moves according to his own purposes, and he does not play games with us. He is not to be mollified and placated by a temporary return to him when we get into difficulty.

【Need for Prayer】Do you ever play the game “how far”? Its rules are really simple-you fill up your gas tank and then drive to see how far you can go before you fill up again. You watch the gauge nervously as it falls closer and closer to the beg E.

What about your spiritual gas tank-do you play “how far” with it, too, trying to see how far you can get on a single fill-up?

【Need for Prayer】A four-year-old boy once saw a picture of Christ praying and asked what Jesus was doing in that picture. When he was told that Jesus was praying, the youngster responded by asking who Jesus was praying to. After being told that Jesus was praying to God, the young boy replied, “But Jesus IS God!”

This same thought was captured well by St. Cyprian who said, “If He prayed who was without sin, how much more it becomes a sinner to pray.”

【Power of Prayer】Prayer moves the hand that moves the world!

【Power of Prayer】Prayer is the only omnipotence God grants to us.

【Power of Prayer】Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer.—John Wesley