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Life Thoughts
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Written by Tom Zurowski
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Tuesday, 01 January 2008 00:00 |
“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor
that is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are
straying. The pulpit can be a shop window to display one’s talents; the
prayer closet allows no showing off.” (Leonard Ravenhill)
“Whole days and weeks I have spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer.” (George Whitefield)
Never
could I say that I have spent weeks prostrate on the ground in prayer
and neither can I claim the soul winning success of Whitefield. I find
these days that there is far too little emphasis placed on the need to
pray. We have workshops for everything under the sun, but where can we
take a class on prayer and intimacy with a jealous God? We have sermons
on prayer. We teach the Lord’s Prayer, but many of the people who are
teaching have soft knees and tearless eyes. Where the people of
yesteryear, who felt that they could not work, preach, teach,
evangelize or parent without fervent intimacy with their God?
Before
we can preach a convicting message on prayer, we must first be
convicted to pray. I hear preachers say that they don’t have time to
pray and that life is too demanding to spend long seasons in prayer.
They say, “My people need me!” If people want help from a prayerless
preacher than they would be better off going to a secular psychiatrist
for help (most are better qualified). The truth is that if we are not
endued with power from on high, then we have little to offer to hurting
people. Without the power of God flowing through us we are simply
professionals operating on human strength and skill. The truth is that
many of us need to repent for our prayerlessness and ask God to send us
a revival of prayer. We will never be all that we were created to be
unless we spend time with Creator Himself. Without intimacy with God,
we are on a fast track of ending in the flesh that which we began in
the spirit.
“Pastor(teacher, evangelist, missionary,
prophet), dare you face your folks and tell them that from now on you
are going to be a New Testament preacher as Paul was and do what you
are ordered to do by the Spirit; “We give ourselves continually to
prayer and the ministry of the word?” (Acts 6:4) This will
revolutionize your life.”
(Leonard Ravenhill)
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