A Consecrated Life of Prayer

I like what Donald Gray Barnhouse used to say, The man who is the thunder in the court of Pharaoh, With an imperious thus saith the Lord, Must first stand barefooted before the burning bush. My message today, friends, is on prayer. I fear many in our churches today don't know how to pray, Because we don't need to have corporate prayer anymore.

The weekly prayer meeting was kicked out of the church years ago and replaced with self-help groups or meeting to read the latest so-called best-selling Christian book. The consequence of this is a powerless church. How can any church rise up to the battlefield of our world today without power impacting prayers? How can we push back the darkness in our communities today without prevailing power in prayer? This void in our churches explains the rise in crime and vice and immorality in our towns and cities across the land.

If the church has no voice of authority, who will want to listen? Power and authority all begin in prayer. Stephen Offord used to say, We are only as tall in the pulpit as we are on our knees in the study. There have been Trump's toy servants of God, of whom it can be said they lived a consecrated life of prayer, men like Praying Hyde and E.M. Bounds, whose desperate lives of prayer startled the attention of heaven's throne room and gained the ear of a holy God.

A consecrated life of prayer is a life of power unto God. A praying Christian is a powerful weapon in the hands of God. In the book of James we read, The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Years ago, when I was studying to preach under the tutelage of my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Offord, he made each one of his students prepare a sermon and then preach it before the other pastors with Stephen Offord sitting on the front row. Well, I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and before it was my time to preach, I went over to Dr. Offord and told him how nervous I was, and I asked him to pray for me. He laid his two hands on my shoulders as he lifted his voice up unto God, and all my fears dissipated like clouds in the sun.

But Stephen Offord was a man of prayer. He made it a priority in his life to be consecrated to God in prayer. He taught me the power a man can have through a consecrated life of prayer.

It was Stephen Offord who taught me how to have a vital, daily quiet time with God in prayer. I often would hear him pray right before he entered the pulpit. Anoint me with your Spirit, Lord, for this strategic hour, that I may preach your holy word with consecrated power.

Let me read you, friends, the words of E.M. Bounce on prayer. The apostles were preeminently men of prayer. They gave themselves to prayer.

They made praying their chief business. God never has and he never will commit the weighty interests of his kingdom to prayerless men. But I fear, friends, that's where we are today.

A prayerless church is a powerless church. A prayerless church has no influence upon society because she lacks the authority from on high. A consecrated life of prayer can be like the apostle says, it availeth much.

What we need in this land today, in this critical hour, are men and women of prayer. Where are our Hannahs? Where are our Elijahs? What we need today is God's man who will stand in the gap between heaven and earth, between mortal man and almighty God. A holy man who is so wholly sold out to God, so intoxicated with Christ and so consumed with eternity that his very footprints leave a smoky trail of the lingering fire of God.

A man whose desperate life of prayer has left fingerprints on the horns of the altar in glory. A man whose emboldened faith and Enoch-like walk with God moves mountains of resistance and proves that the God of the Bible is alive and interested in the most minute requests of man. God will always raise up an Elijah whose prayers impact a sleeping nation.

The church and each generation has had individuals who live upon their knees, whose prayers reach heaven with a holy violence. India had her pray and hide. China her Hudson Taylor.

England her Puritans. Scotland her Covenanters. America her fiery E.M. Bounds.

Voices which gained the attention of the throne room, startled angels, and shook the gates of hell, making even the demons quake and tremble with their desperate prayers. What we need today, friends, is a man, a woman, a church on fire for God in a life of consecrated prayer. Great God, raise up such today.