We Must Pray!

There is a sweet spirit in our church as of late. However, it's presence is not without many burdens, struggles, strongholds, and outright sin. There is a war that is waging for the hearts and minds of so many people and I sense that we are having more casualties than victories.

This spiritual warfare has of late overwhelmed my soul and caused my mind to race with inability to focus and comprehend on all the specific individual needs and struggles within my congregation.  How am I to meet these needs.  How am I to help those whom I don't even know the battle that their facing.  How am I to help the person who doesn't even recognize their sin and coolness to the things of God? What can I do?

As these questions pounded in my mind, it was answered very distintly with one word - pray. What can I do? ...I can pray. The fact is, I can do nothing outside the power of the Spirit of God. Only He can open the eyes that are blinded. Only He can heal the broken hearted. Only He can reveal and convict people of their sin. Only He can give the power to overcome struggles and strongholds. Only He can give me the strength to carry the burdens.

It is not even the amount of words that I pray, but the atitude of prayer. I see in Scripture how the great men of prayer had few words that were put on the printed page, but their wrestling with God was long. They were successful with few words but victory came in patience and in most instances a long wait. They prayed to God with fastings and mighty cries both day and night. 

In reading E.M. Bounds "The Power of Prayer" I read this quote that really spoke to my heart and drove me to my knees, knowing what can and will make the difference.

"This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours! I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc. two hours or an hour and a half daily. I have been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half hour in morning to myself. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean. But all may be done through prayer - almighty prayer, I am ready to say - and why not? for that it is almighty is only through the gracious ordination of the God of love and truth, O then, pray, pray, pray!"  
                                                                - William Wilberforce