“For Without Me, You Can Do Nothing!”

“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)

I cannot 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 on prayer have soft knees and tearless eyes. Where are 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 for long seasons of prayer. They say, “My people need me!” If people want help from a prayerless preacher then they would be better off going to a secular psychiatrist for help.

The truth is, that if we are not endued with power from on high, then we have little to offer to anyone. Without the power of God flowing through us we are simply professionals operating on human strength and skill. Without intimacy with God, we are on a fast track of ending in the flesh that which we began in the spirit.

Remember…? “For without Me, you can do nothing!” (John 15:5)

“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)

By Tom Zurowski