The Prayers of the Bible 4 - Prayers of the Faithful

^{The Prayers of the Bible, from the book: "Prevailing Prayer" by D. L. Moody}
Those who have left the deepest impression on this sin-cursed earth have been men and women of prayer. You will find prayer has been the mighty power that has moved not only God, but also man.

Prayers of the Faithful

Throughout history, all God’s people have been praying people. Look, for instance, at Richard Baxter.[1] He stained his study walls with praying breath, and after he was anointed with the Holy Spirit, he sent a river of living water over the city of Kidderminster in England, and converted hundreds.
Martin Luther[2] and his companions were men of such mighty pleading with God that they broke the spell of ages, and laid nations subdued at the foot of the cross. John Knox grasped all of Scotland in his strong arms of faith; his prayers terrified tyrants.
George Whitefield,[3] after much holy, faithful, closet pleading, went to the Devil’s fair, and took more than a thousand souls out of the paw of the lion in one day. Wherever there were open spaces around London and crowds gathered for entertainment and events such as the London Fair, he preached in open air, bringing the message of the gospel out of the church building and to the rowdy crowds.
See a praying John Wesley[4] turn more than ten thousand souls to the Lord! Look at the praying Charles Grandison Finney,[5] whose prayers, faith, sermons, and writings have shaken this whole country, and sent a wave of blessing through the churches on both sides of the sea.
Dr. Thomas Guthrie spoke of prayer and its necessity in The Way to Life:

The first true sign of spiritual life, prayer, is also the means of maintaining it. Man can as well live physically without breathing, as spiritually without praying. There is a class of animals – the cetaceous, neither fish nor seafowl – that inhabit the deep. It is their home; they never leave it for the shore, yet, though swimming beneath its waves, and sounding its darkest depths, they… [often must] rise to the surface that they may breathe the air.
Without that, these monarchs of the deep could not exist in the dense element in which they live, and move, and have their being. And something like what is imposed on them by a physical necessity, the Christian has to do by a spiritual one.
It is by… [often] ascending up to God, by rising through prayer into a loftier, purer region for supplies of divine grace, that he maintains his spiritual life.
Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath; prevent the Christian from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer. “Give me children,” cried Rachel, “or else I die.” “Let me breathe,” says a man gasping, “or else I die.” “Let me pray,” says the Christian, “or else I die.”[6]

When he was a student, Dr. Edward Payson wrote in his journal, which was later published as a memoir, “Since I began to beg God’s blessing on my studies, I have done more in one week than in the whole year before. Surely it is good to draw near to God at all times.”[7] Luther, when most pressed with work, said, “I have so much to do that I cannot get on without three hours a day praying.”
It isn’t only theologians who think and speak highly of prayer; men of all ranks and positions in life have also felt the same.
British General Henry Havelock[8] rose at four o’clock, if the hour for marching was six, rather than lose the precious privilege of communion with God before setting out. Sir Matthew Hale, the English legal scholar, said, “If I omit praying and reading God’s Word in the morning, nothing goes well all day.”[9]

^[1]  Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn writer, and theologian.
^[2]  Martin Luther (1483–1586) was a German professor of theology, a composer, priest, and monk, and a key leader in the Protestant Reformation.
^[3]  George Whitefield (1714–1770) was an English Anglican cleric who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.
^[4]  John Wesley (1703–1791) was an English preacher and theologian who, with his brother Charles and fellow preacher George Whitefield, founded Methodism.
^[5]  Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the nineteenth-century Protestant revival in the United States.
^[6]  Dr. Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) was one of the most popular preachers of his day in Scotland. The Way to Life was published by Robert Carter and Brothers in 1873.
^[7]  Edward Payson (1783–1827) was an American Congregational preacher. As published in A Memoir of the Rev. Edward Payson, D.D., Late of Portland, Maine, by Asa Cummings, 1830.
^[8]  Major General Sir Henry Havelock (1795–1857).
^[9]  Sir Matthew Hale (1609–1676).
^[10]  Robert Murray M’Cheyne, also spelled “McCheyne” (1813–1843).

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