4 - Outline for praying by E. M. Bounds
TENDENCIES TO BE AVOIDED
Let us often look
at Brainerd in the woods of America pouring out his very soul before
God for the perishing heathen without whose salvation nothing could
make him happy. Prayer—secret fervent believing prayer—lies at the root
of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the language where
a missionary lives, a mild and winning temper, a heart given up to God
in closet religion—these, these are the attainments which, more than
all knowledge, or all other gifts, will fit us to become the
instruments of God in the great work of human redemption.—Carrey’s
Brotherhood, Serampore
There are two
extreme tendencies in the ministry. The one is to shut itself out from
intercourse with the people. The monk, the hermit were illustrations of
this; they shut themselves out from men to be more with God. They
failed, of course. Our being with God is of use only as we expend its
priceless benefits on men. This age, neither with preacher nor with
people, is much intent on God. Our hankering is not that way. We shut
ourselves to our study, we become students, bookworms, Bible worms,
sermon makers, noted for literature, thought, and sermons; but the
people and God, where are they? Out of heart, out of mind. Preachers
who are great thinkers, great students must be the greatest of prayers,
or else they will be the greatest of backsliders, heartless
professionals, rationalistic, less than the least of preachers in God’s
estimate.
The other tendency
is to thoroughly popularize the ministry. He is no longer God’s man,
but a man of affairs, of the people. He prays not, because his mission
is to the people. If he can move the people, create an interest, a
sensation in favor of religion, an interest in Church work—he is
satisfied. His personal relation to God is no factor in his work.
Prayer has little or no place in his plans. The disaster and ruin of
such a ministry cannot be computed by earthly arithmetic. What the
preacher is in prayer to God, for himself, for his people, so is his
power for real good to men, so is his true fruitfulness, his true
fidelity to God, to man, for time, for eternity.
It is impossible
for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature
of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher by dint of
duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the ministry can
keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even
sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or
as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by
neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The
preacher may lose God in his sermon.
Prayer freshens
the heart of the preacher, keeps it in tune with God and in sympathy
with the people, lifts his ministry out of the chilly air of a
profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility
and power of a divine unction.
Mr.
Spurgeon says: “Of course the preacher is above all others
distinguished as a man of prayer. He prays as an ordinary Christian,
else he were a hypocrite. He prays more than ordinary Christians, else
he were disqualified for the office he has undertaken. If you as
ministers are not very prayerful, you are to be pitied. If you become
lax in sacred devotion, not only will you need to be pitied but your
people also, and the day cometh in which you shall be ashamed and
confounded. All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared
with our closets. Our seasons of fasting and prayer at the Tabernacle
have been high days indeed; never has heaven’s gate stood wider; never
have our hearts been nearer the central Glory.”
The praying
which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put in as we
put flavor to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must be in the
body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty, put into a
corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments of time
which have been snatched from business and other engagements of life;
but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and
strength must be given. It does not mean the closet absorbed in the
study or swallowed up in the activities of ministerial duties; but it
means the closet first, the study and activities second, both study and
activities freshened and made efficient by the closet. Prayer that
affects one’s ministry must give tone to one’s life. The praying which
gives color and bent to character is no pleasant, hurried pastime. It
must enter as strongly into the heart and life as Christ’s “strong
crying and tears” did; must draw out the soul into an agony of desire
as Paul’s did; must be an inwrought fire and force like the “effectual,
fervent prayer” of James; must be of that quality which, when put into
the golden censer and incensed before God, works mighty spiritual
throes and revolutions.
Prayer is not a
little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our mother’s apron
strings; neither is it a little decent quarter of a minute’s grace said
over an hour’s dinner, but it is a most serious work of our most
serious years. It engages more of time and appetite than our longest
dinings or richest feasts. The prayer that makes much of our preaching
must be made much of. The character of our praying will determine the
character of our preaching. Light praying will make light preaching.
Prayer makes preaching strong, gives it unction, and makes it stick. In
every ministry weighty for good, prayer has always been a serious
business.
The preacher must
be preeminently a man of prayer. His heart must graduate in the school
of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the heart learn to preach.
No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no
diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.
Talking to men for
God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still. He
will never talk well and with real success to men for God who has not
learned well how to talk to God for men. More than this, prayerless
words in the pulpit and out of it are deadening words.
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