A Praying Pulpit Begets a Praying Pew
November 2, 2007
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
I picked up E.M. Bounds On Prayer. It is like a million pages long and 8 font…yet every word is so rich. I’ve been doing quite an extensive study on intercession and prayer…there will be a blog soon about it. Until then, read this and get stirred up…
“Only glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the apostles get before Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling on Pentecost elevated prayer to its vital and all-commanding position in the gospel of Christ. The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit’s loudest and most exigent call. Sainthood’s piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.
Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to pray and put them at it? Do we know we are raising up a prayerless set of saints? Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God’s people to praying? Let them come to the front and do the work, and it will be the greatest work which can be done. An increase of educational facilities and a great increase of money force will be the direst curse to religion if they are not sanctified by more and better praying than we are doing. More praying will not come as a matter of course. The campaign for the twentieth or thirtieth century fund will not help our praying but hinder if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific effort from a praying leadership will avail. The chief ones must lead in the apostolic effort to radicate the vital importance and fact of prayer in the heart and life of the Church. None but praying leaders can have praying followers. Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need some body who can set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Non-praying saints are a beggarly gang of saints who have neither the ardor nor the beauty nor the power of saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles, who can set the Church to praying.
We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the Church in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied holiness, of such marked spiritual vigor and consuming zeal, that their prayers, faith, lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and aggressive form as to work spiritual revolutions which will form eras in individual and Church life.
We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices, nor those who attract by a pleasing entertainment; but men who can stir things, and work revolutions by the preaching of God’s Word and by the power of the Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of things.
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute losing of one’s self in God’s glory, and an ever-present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God — men who can set the Church ablaze for God; not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.
God can work wonders if he can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders if they can get God to lead them. The full endowment of the spirit that turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of the Church.
The Church has never been without these men; they adorn its history; they are the standing miracles of the divinity of the Church; their example and history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An increase in their number and power should be our prayer.
That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again, and be better done. This was Christ’s view. He said “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing great things for God. The Church that is dependent on its past history for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen Church.
God wants elect men — men out of whom self and the world have gone by a severe crucifixion, by a bankruptcy which has so totally ruined self and the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery; men who by this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect hearts.
Let us pray ardently that God’s promise to prayer may be more than realized.”
Wow, the selection of text from E.M. Bounds is quite powerful. The essential and elementary focus on prayer and the expansive depth of what faith in Jesus can move/change is humbling and empowering at the same time.
Do you know of any practical examples of what Bounds describes as:
“The full endowment of the spirit that turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of the Church.”
I ask this because whatever a late 1800’s Methodist preacher might give as practical examples might differ greatly from those of someone steeped in Pentecostalism. I don’t know enough about Bounds to know what examples he might have of this sort of power.
Wesley’s “God does nothing but in answer to prayer.” confounds me like much of his writing. I find absolutely nothing in scripture that even begins to assert a concept like this. It’s one thing to point out the urgent need for active and vibrant prayer lives, and that Jesus himself declared that when we ask in his name, that we will receive, and it’s an entirely different thing when someone claims that “God does NOTHING but in answer to prayers”.
Certainly, the God who spoke and caused creation to leap into existence did not need to wait for “someone” to pray for it. His desire that we be saved by his own grace and sacrifice was neither predicated on or caused simply by the prayers of a hopelessly disobedient people. Every covenant made by God was precluded by his own sovereign will, and not simply because someone was asking for it.
Praise God that we’re even allowed to speak to him and seek his face without being destroyed immediately by the contrast between his glory and our depravity. I love this focus on prayer and on seeking God FIRST in all matters big and small.I think some have gone overboard with their assertions about the role of prayer in affairs of a completely sovereign God. One thing is sure: if we seek him with our knees bent and our hearts postured upward, and we seek to bring glory and honor to his name, we’ll be blessed to hear/see/smell/feel his blessed answer.
Colin…I believe strongly that in God’s sovereignty, since the creation of man, God does nothing on earth but in answer to prayers. Not because of necessity but because of desire. In my next blog I’ll be going into this quite a bit.
I’m curious to see how you substantiate this. Before you spill a ton of ink, realize that my biggest gripe with that statement is the extent that Wesley (and you) use. To say that God does NOTHING on earth but in answer to prayers is much different than to say that much of his plan has and continues to unfold as a consequence of him choosing to answer some prayers. If you aren’t saying that God has not and does not do anything unless someone prays for it, then I think we generally agree. The power of prayer, as shown in scripture, is much greater than any of us realizes. God has even, at times, answered the prayer of his people even when their prayer directly contradicted what he wanted for them (See: 1Sam 8: Israel asking God for an earthly king like the other surrounding nations, even though God wanted them to have Judges and for HIM to be their king.)To say, however, that God does absolutely NOTHING unless it’s an answer to someone’s prayer is an oversimplification of how he carries out his purpose on earth.
Isaiah 46 details a pretty huge and basic characteristic of God that exists throughout all of Scripture:
The idols of Babylon were man-made creations that had no power. God has the power to do anything he wants. If it is his purpose to do something, he does it. Sometimes that is a direct response to the prayers of his people, and sometimes it’s despite a lack of prayer about what he wants to do.
Our heavenly Father did not receive a prayer that asked for him to curse Adam and all his offspring as a result of his sin. God placed Joseph in Egypt (Gen 37) through the sin (not prayer) of his brothers. The myriad of details of Jesus’ life that were prophesied about in the OT were not all specifically an answer to prayer (though of course the coming of a Messiah was certainly an answer to prayer!). God had in mind us Gentiles in setting the trajectory from Abraham (Gen 12) on so that we, too, would one day be offered the Good News (Acts 10). He preempted this before anyone prayed for it, and certainly didn’t wait to finally open it up (starting with Cornelius) until someone prayed for it. It was an absolutely SCANDALOUS affair that God ever opened up the Gospel to a Samaritan let alone a Gentile. Show me the man or woman who prayed for that to occur. Show me the man or woman that prayed for Jesus, our Lord and King, to be hung up on a cross. Instead of coming into human history and taking political control and then domination, he came clothed in flesh as a humble servant. Show me the man or woman who prayed for Jesus to take such a temporarily humble, and overpowered form. MUCH of this comes as a direct opposition to what people prayed for, and were looking for in their Messiah.
Sure, people prayed for the coming of the Messiah. God did MANY details within answering this prayer that nobody asked for. I don’t think it’s just the details that God autonomously does without being initiated. Many of the calamities that he has poured out on humanity were not the result of prayer (Gen 6, for starters). Satan challenged God to let him strike Job with calamity, that wasn’t because someone prayed for Job to be struck. It wasn’t even because we see someone praying for Job that he would have constant prosperity and God in his disagreement let Satan strike him.
You are wise to make the distinction between God being forced by people’s prayers to do something, as opposed to having a desire answer the prayers. While Wesley’s comment has clearly been a point of inspiration of many believers to pray as if God won’t do anything in our lives if we don’t pray for it. To literally say that He doesn’t, won’t, and has never done anything unless it was an answer to prayer is, I think, an oversimplification that puts humanity in the driver’s seat and God in the business of vetoing the prayers he doesn’t want to go with and granting the one’s that he does, nothing else. Surely, the image we have of humanity in scripture is not one that is capable of crafting such a beautiful story as the one God has been doing with all of creation. If what we have around us, and the salvation we have been given freely is the result of the culmination of all of humankind’s good prayers combined, and this narrative can be found in scripture, I’m willing to accept it.
You’re jumping to conclusions.
Hebrews 7:25 states that Jesus is an intercessor forever. Romans 8:26-27 states that the Spirit makes intercession for us.
I restate: God does nothing but in answer to prayer.
more to come.