Since we have been talking about prayer, I wanted to share with you a portion of a recent chapter on prayer that I came across in John Miller's Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless (pp. 60-64).
Miller says:
"God provides a means for us to appropriate the Spirit's power in our lives and a means for non-Christians to be prepared to receive the Word. That means is prayer.
"Here is an amazing paradox: we who have the Holy Spirit must constantly seek His presence and His control of our lives by fervent prayer (Luke 11:5-13). Without this heavenly anointing, there is only an earthly work. Our words have no power unless the Spirit speaks through us, and they have no effect unless the Spirit applies them to men's hearts. John Piper says, 'God has made the spread of his fame hang on the preaching of his Word; and he has made the preaching of his Word hang on the prayers of the saints.'
"Christians...have missed the exciting link between prayer and God's purposes in the world. It is, simply, that prayer starts the promises of God on their way to fulfillment. Here is God's battle plan for our time. In prayer, God allows us to lay hold of His purposes as these are expressed in His promises....By claiming God's promises as we petition Him in prayer, we set God's work in motion.
"...coldness and timidity in evangelism in the church c[an] only be cured by a commitment to corporate prayer. According to J. Edwin Orr, a major student of revivals, this 'concert of prayer' became the dynamic source of boldness in evangelism and missionary endeavor for the U.S. right up to the mighty spiritual explosion of 1858. He says, 'The concert of prayer remained the significant factor in the recurring revivals of religion and the extraordinary out-thrust of missions for a full fifty years, so commonplace it was taken for granted by the Churches.'"
Let us pray down heaven!
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