Robert Murray Mcheyne

EARLY WILL I SEEK YOU…

I ought to pray before seeing anyone. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o’clock before I begin secret prayer.  This is a wretched system.  It is unscriptural.  Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place.  David said, “Early will I seek thee,”  and, “My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning.”  Family prayer loses much  of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me.  My conscience feels guilty, my soul unfed, my lamp not trimmed. Then, when in secret prayer, the soul is often out of tune.  I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see His face first—to get my soul near Him before it is near another.

Robert Murray McCheyne

Robert Murray McCheyne

Those who study the life of Robert Murray McCheyne know him to be a man mighty in prayer.

From E.M. Bounds collection on prayer, page 467, McCheyne addresses the topic of “The Divine Channel of Power.”

Study universal holiness of life.  Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last only an hour or two; your life preaches all week.  If Satan can make you a covetous minister, a lover of praise, of pleasure, or good eating, he has ruined your ministry.  Give yourself to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words from God.  Luther spent his best three hours in prayer.

–Robert Murray McCheyne

J. Hudson Taylor

A young man had been called to the foreign field.  He had not been in the habit of preaching, but he knew one thing, how to prevail with God; and going one day to a friend he said, I don’t see how God can use me on the field.  I have no special talent. His friend said, My brother, God wants men on the field who can pray.  There are too many preachers now and too few pray-ers. He went.  In his own room in the early dawn a voice was heard weeping and pleading for souls.  All through the day, the shut door and the hush that prevailed made you feel like walking softly, for a soul was wrestling with God.  Yet to this home, hungry souls would flock, drawn by some irresistible power.  Ah, the mystery was unlocked.  In the secret chamber lost souls were pleaded for and claimed.  The Holy Ghost knew just where they were and sent them along.

-J. Hudson Taylor, Founder of China Inland Mission, and missionary to China.

E.M. Bounds

E.M. Bounds is one of my favorite writers on the subject of prayer. I have all of his books and especially enjoy the compilation book, E.M. Bounds on Prayer. This book is a compilation of most of Bound’s works.

Today I am thinking particularly of how the modern church has put prayer in the shadows, very close to the same place it has put preaching. E.M. Bounds emphasized the importance of prayer in every area of life, especially in the life of the church.The following comes from, The Divine Channel of Power.
We are continually striving to create new methods, plans and organizations to advance the church.  We are working to provide and stimulate growth and effectiveness for the Gospel.

This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man. Or else he is lost in the workings of the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than anything else.  Men are God’s method.

The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.  …When God declares that, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).  He declares the necessity of men.  He acknowledges His dependence on them as a channel through which He can exert His power on the world.

This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget.  The forgetting of it is as detrimental to the Word of God as removing the sun from it sphere would be.  Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What the church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more and novel methods.  She needs men whom the Holy Spirit can use–men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.  The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men.  He does not come on machinery, but men.  He does not anoint plans, but men– men of prayer!

E.M. Bounds