Oh, How we Need to Pray

This morning as I check my email, I find again it full of new church grown methods, plans to advance the church and enlarge our congregations. However, I never find in any of these methods, plans, and ideas the need for and dependance on the LORD. 

From my understanding of Scripture and in looking at the 1st century church, it's the LORD who advances and adds to the church.  Luke said, "...And the LORD added to the church daily such as should be saved" (Acts 2:47).  What I also find in this chapter is a model - a Scriptural model that should be followed as cloesely as possible in the 21st century. 

Within that model in Acts, I find that God used people.  The church today has tended to lose sight of the man God uses for His plan.  Preachers today are not so concerned about themselves as they are about what new method to adopt that will guarantee their success. 

However, E.M. Bounds states that "God's plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God's method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looing for better men" (Bounds, "Power Through Prayer).  God is looking throughout the whole earth to show himself strong, however these people are to have a heart for God and His glory and not their own (see 1 Chron. 16:9). 

This means that the man matters to God.  The character of the preacher matters to God.  Again, Bonds states in a very convincing and convicting matter, "It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it" (Bonds, p12). "And every man that has this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3).

So how is our churces going to grow?  God is going to add to the church and he is going to do it through men who are active in the sanctification process, allowing the Holy Spirit of God to mold them into the image of his Son Jesus Christ.  That means I must be dependent upon Him and the best way to know if you or I are dependent upon God is how often we are on bended knee. 

Misemployment of time is injurious to the mind. In illness I have looked back with self-reproach on days spent in my study; I was wading through history and poetry and monthly journals, but I was in my study! Another man's trifling is notorious to all observers, but what am I doing? Nothing, perhaps, that has reference to the spiritual good of my congregation. Be much in retirement and prayer. Study the honor and glory of your Master."
                                       - Richard Cecil