Praying Is Essential To God
God works on earth by prayer and we must not be too busy to pray
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 58:9, 14
Believers must never forget that God the Almighty rules overs all His creation. He is the maker and sustainer of heaven and earth; He rules over the world and even the wind and the waves obey Him!
And He rules the earth as over the Church, by prayer. This truth lesson needs to be emphasized again and again in our present day, and needs to be a reminder to those in this generation who have no vision for the eternal things of God.
Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important to man to pray. Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life. E. M. Bounds
We must understand that God helps us by prayer, that is, we get our help from God by our praying—our asking, supplications, requests, pleadings, and so on. Those who do not or will not pray are simply robbing themselves of God’s help.
According to Bounds, prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in praying. God’s great activity and actions in the world have been conditioned on and continued and fashioned by our praying.
Think of the Lord’s working to bring Israel from slavery in Egypt. It had it’s beginning in prayer, and thus praying became part of working of God upon the world. Hannah’s petition for a son began a great movement of prayer to God. And the list goes on. The movements of God through the whole of Scripture can find it’s roots in prayer.
Let us be refreshed in faith this day by the fact that—as Bounds puts it, “God holds His church for the entire world, and that God’s purposes will be fulfilled.” Be certain the prayers of God’s saints are a great factor, a supreme factor, in carrying forward God’s work.
The Lord God works through the prayers of His people, and when we fail Him along this line, we see chaos, decay, falling away, and all manner of compromise and worldliness seep into the Church.
Praying saints are His agents on earth for carrying on His work; praying agents are always the forerunners of spiritual prosperity. “Prayer carries us back to God,” says Bounds, and recognizes the Lord and brings Him into the world to work and to bless. It must not be relegated to a sometimes activity, or a secondary ministry, or attended to by a few only—it is essential for the proper carrying on of the Lord’s work!
May we not be too busy to pray and give ourselves to the ministry of praying, that we might recognize that the working of the Almighty in the Church and upon the world is dependent upon a praying people. 1
Pray For The People Of God From The Word Of God
Here are four passages we are praying from (one passage per day):
Thursday - 2 Thessalonians 3:1-3
Friday - 2 Thessalonians 3:4-5
Saturday - 2 Timothy 1:13-14
Sunday - 2 Timothy 2:15
Will you join me in praying these verses, and ask one person to join you?
Until Monday, grace and peace
Notes taken from The Weapon Of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds, Chapter 1, Prayer Essential To God, p 9, reprinted by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, copyright 1931 by Fleming H Revell Company
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