The Necessity of Prayer

I have just recently been reading books on prayer and intercession, and this is something that the Lord had broken me over. This is the greatest call of the hour in the church today. The 2 that I am working on right now are E.M Bound's The Weapon of Prayer and Leonard Ravenhill's Why Revival Tarries. I have come to a basic conclusion. Today Christians struggle with all types and kinds of sin, the one answer for this is prayer. No self help group, or home group is going to help us, we must begin to come before God's throne of grace and pray.

E.M Bounds states:
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

The church today lacks power. This is the key reason. Preachers and teachers must begin to lock them self up in the closet and weep over the perverse world. Many of us do not recall the last time we have spent hours on end in the presence of the Almighty. George Whitefield said, "Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer." We know Whitefield as one of the great evangelists during the Great Awakening and here we see his source of power and authority.

When was the last time we have weeped in a spirit of prayer for the 315 million Muslims in the world. Is that fact even phasing the reader? Where has our burden for the lost disappeared to. We must begin to confront these issues alone with God. We must replace our material things which we are so consumed in, with sending intercession up to Gods throne, and wrestling in the secret place.

Ravenhill states, "Someone now will warn us that we are to heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use. The brutal, soul-shaking truth is that we are so earthly minded that we are of no heavenly use." This, beloved, is the truth. We must let the Holy Spirit change our western mindset and focus us in on eternity. This life is truly but a second in comparison to eternity.

Begin to ponder Genesis 1, "In the Beginning God..." God was in the beginning. This must fry our brains. Our maker is an uncreated God. He was always there. "Behold, you are good, and we do not know you!" We have no clue who we are dealing with when it comes to God. A.W Tozer states that if all the problems of heaven and earth were to confront us at once it would be nothing compared to our biggest problem of God. We need to come to a revelation of the knowledge of God. He is so far above is. It says in Revelation 4:10 that, ".. the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne..." When was the last time we fell down before God. They did not bow down, the script says that they fell down. Gods glory was so powerful that they were knocked over.

This my friend is the highest call of the hour, that we would begin to get revelation of God in the context of prayer and intercession.