Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact LeadersSample

Prayer Is the Determining Factor

The more I study spiritual leadership and see how it works in daily life, the more I’m convinced prayer is the determining factor. The difference between mild stirrings and deep breakthroughs is prayer. The difference between a temporary inclination and a lasting change is often prayer. The difference between mediocrity and greatness is frequently prayer.

The more we pray, the more God works. The more God works, the better everything will ultimately be. We fail to recognize the astounding way our omnipotent God has linked His activity to our prayers.

The prophet Ezekiel showed how the prayers of a single intercessor would have been the determining factor in delivering Israel from the Babylonian captivity:

"I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD." (Ezekiel 22:30, 31)

Read those verses again, slowly. Think about the fact that one single gap-stander could have stopped the Babylonian captivity. But the last four words of verse 30 tell the sad story—“but I found none.”

Through the years I have found I am not alone in my belief that prayer was the determining factor. This truth is echoed from one end of the theological scale to the other. On one pole of the theological continuum, we have John Wesley (1703–1791), who wrote, “God will do nothing on earth, except in answer to believing prayer.” On the other pole we have John Calvin (1509–1564), who in his Institutes of the Christian Religion states, “Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is . . . while God never slumbers or sleeps He is inactive, as if forgetting us, when He sees us idle and mute.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) has observed, “Today the world is being carried on a rushing torrent of history. There is but one power available to redeem the course of events, and that is the power of prayer. . . .”

Others have agreed. Slowly read their words:

When we pray we are working with God to determine the future. Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.—Richard Foster

When God finds a person who will place as his priority a life of intimate, personal, dynamic fellowship with Him, He directs His power, guidance, and wisdom into and through that person. God has found a man through whom He can change the world.—LeRoy Eims

You and I can help decide which of these two things—blessing or cursing—happens on earth. We determine whether God’s goodness is released toward a specific situation or whether the sower of sin and Satan is permitted to prevail. Prayer is the determining factor . . . If we don’t, He won’t.—Jack Hayford

God has of His own motion placed Himself under the law of prayer, and has obligated Himself to answer the prayers of men. He has ordained prayer as a means whereby He will do things through men as they pray, which He would not otherwise do . . . man has it in his power to by prayer, move God to work in His own way among men, in which way He would not work if prayer was not made.—E. M. Bounds

I don’t fully understand it, but I know that the more we pray, the more God works. The more God works, the better things end up being. On many levels prayer is the determining factor of spiritual leadership.