Living Seed is a workshop open to anyone who hungers to know the Truth.If you have any questions, or would like to join us, please leave a comment, or email me at behwangish@gmail.com
Worshippers of God are made during dark stormy nights. And how we respond to our storms determines just what kind of worshippers we are.
In heaven there will be no praying. All the faith we exercise must be exercised here. All the praying must be done here, for heaven will not be a place to make up a pitiable backlog of unfinished praying.
"Rend your hearts" (Joel 2:13). We rend our hearts by godly consideration and self-examination; by the conviction of the Holy Spirit; by recognition of our failure to pray; by confessing that we have more appetite for material food than for spiritual; by acknowledging that we like the company of men more than the company of God; by abhorring ourselves because we love to play more than pray.
Men who prayed most accomplished the most. Lasting prayers bring lasting revivals. Prayer does not condition God; prayer conditions us. Prayer does not win God to our view; it reveals God's view to us. Prayer is not merit, so that by withdrawing from the world we of necessity gain special favors of God. Prayer is not purchasing things from God.
Prayer is another way to telling God that we have all confidence in Him but no confidence in our own native powers.
No man is greater than his prayer life.
Prayer is taxing. Prayer is exacting. Prayer means enduring. prayer means denying self, a daily dying by choice. But someone says, "There's nothing wrong in going fishing for a couple of hours." Maybe not if you are prayed up. Yet there is something wrong when we go fishing or do some other thing without the Spirit's leading. It is wrong when instead of praying we do things just to please others. There cannot be two operators of the Christian's life. We are either Spirit led in everything or self led.
We will have to sacrifice precious things in our lives if we are going learn the great art of intercession... Affection can play havoc with devotional life. I believe it is but simple logic to say that a Christian is backslidden if he spends more time with a member of the opposite sex than he does in prayer and in the Word.
No one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil; not that he practices it, but he suffers from it. (Guy H. King)
Once again I say that at God's judgment bar we believers are going to be embarrassed, for as Dr. A.W. Tozer mentioned recently, "We are not only going to be judged for what we have done; we are going to be judged for what we could have done." That hurts. Oh what we could have done! Oh the sacrifice we could have made, the prayers we could have offered, the tears for the lost we could have shed, the souls we could have won to Christ! There are resources in God that we believers have never touched; there is wealth, spiritual wealth in God that we have never discovered; there is power in God that we have left untapped - all because we have been faithless and unbelieving.
The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it... Every church without a prayer meeting condemns us; every Bible daily unopened condemns us; every promise of God unused condemns us; every lost neighbor condemns us; every lost heathen condemns us; every dry eye among us condemns us; every unclaimed opportunity for God condemns us. Next year is not ours. Tomorrow may be too late. Unless we repent now, unless we return and fire the prayer altars now,unless we fast and weep now, woe unto us at the judgment!
Often we hear the prayer, "Lord, Thou art able to do this." That prayer is very good and may build up confidence in the pray-er [that is to say, the one who is offering up the prayer]. But - and this is important - to say "God is able" is not faith... But - and here is where I fail - I do not have the faith to believe that God will [do what I believe He is able to do]. My theology says that God can do it, but on the faith end I fail. I have said before that one of these days someone will read the Bible for the first time, believe it, and act on it with a daring, simple faith. Then we long-time believers will bow in shame, crying, "Lord, help our unbelief."
One day in the course of his [Ravenhill's father] hospital visitation, a sick man listened to my father's testimony, then jabbed back at him feelingly with, "I have prayed to God and He did not hear me. Why?"
Dad answered the man this way: "Suppose the king of our country [Great Britain] came into this room right now, and I asked him for five pounds (equal to twenty dollars then), would the king give it to me? After all, I am a loyal subject to the crown."
The man thought for a moment and then replied, "I don't suppose that he would give it."
"Well then," Father said, "suppose that after I had asked the king and had been refused, the Prince of Wales had come into the room. Would he [the Prince] get the money he asked for?"
"Oh yes," answered the man, "but then, he's the king's son."
"Exactly right!" Father said. "Relationship makes all the difference."
...There is an article by Bakht Singh. This dear Christian leader in India says, "The indigenous churches in India have a great burden for American just now... and are praying that God will visit your country with revival... You feel sorry for us in India because of our poverty in material things. We who know the Lord in India feel sorry for you in America because of your spiritual poverty. We pray that God may give you gold tried in the fire which He had promised to those who know the power of His resurrection... In our churches we spend four or five or six hours in prayer and worship, and frequently our people wait on the Lord in prayer all night; but in America after you have been in church for one hour, you begin to look at your watches. We pray that god may open your eyes to the true meaning of worship... To attract people to meetings, you have a great dependence on posters, on advertising, on promotion, and on the build-up of a human being; in India we have nothing more than the Lord Himself and we find that He is sufficient. Before a Christian meeting in India we never announce who the speaker will be. When the people come, they come to seek the Lord and not a human being or to hear some special favorite speaking to them. We have had as many as 12,000 people come together just to worship the Lord and to have fellowship together. We are praying that the people in America might also come to church with a hunger for God and not merely a hunger to see some form of amusement or hear choirs or the voice of any man."