Woe to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich incense of prayer, whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their unhappy heritage.
It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.
Man's access in prayer to God opens everything and makes his impoverishment his wealth. All things are his through prayer.
Faith can make no appeal to reason or the fitness of things; its appeal is to the Word of God, and whatever is therein revealed, faith accepts as true.
Christianity is not rationalism, but faith in God's revelation. A conspicuous, all-important item in that revelation is the resurrection of the body.
The transfiguration of Jesus is one of the typical facts of the resurrection of the body; not only of the glorious change, but of the renewed life of the body and of the general judgment day.
The glorified will not be pilgrims, transient visitors, or tenants at will, but settled, permanent, walled, established by title, through eternity by warrantee deed, signed, sealed, recorded, possession given. No renters, no lessees of Heaven, but all property and home owners.
The houses of Heaven are God-built and are as enduring and incorruptible as their builder. We will have bodies after the resurrection; transfigured they will be after the model of Christ's glorious body.
Safety is in Heaven. Put your values there only; put your heart there. No tears are there to flood your heart, no sorrows there to break it, no losses there to grieve and embitter.
God's plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God's method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men - men of prayer.
The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.
Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows.
We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's presence in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The preachers who gain mighty results for God are the men who have prevailed in their pleadings with God ere venturing to plead with men.
Prayer is a specific divine appointment, an ordinance of Heaven, whereby God purposes to carry out His gracious designs on earth and to execute and make efficient the plan of salvation.
When we say that prayer puts God to work, it is simply to say that man has it in his power by prayer to move God to work in His own way among men, in which way He would not work if prayer was not made.
If prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules God out of the world's affairs and prevents Him from working.
Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important to man to pray.
The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom and fruitage in prayer.
