A Treasury Of Prayer: The Best Of E.M. BoundsShembull

The Weapon of Prayer

Prayer cannot be retired as a secondary force in this world. To do so is to retire God from the movement. It is to make God secondary. The prayer ministry is an all-engaging force. It must be so, to be a force at all. Prayer is the sense of God’s need and the call for God’s help to supply that need. The estimate and place of prayer is the estimate and place of God. To give prayer the secondary place is to make God secondary in life’s affairs. To substitute other forces for prayer retires God and materializes the whole movement.

Whatever affects the intensity of our praying affects the value of our work. “Too busy to pray” is not only the keynote to backsliding, but it mars even the work done. Nothing is well done without prayer for the simple reason that it leaves God out of the account. It is so easy to be seduced by the good to the neglect of the best, until both the good and the best perish. How easily may men, even leaders in Zion, be led by the insidious wiles of Satan to cut short our praying in the interests of the world. How easy to neglect prayer or abbreviate our praying simply by the plea that we have church work on our hands. Satan has effectively disarmed us when he can keep us too busy doing things to stop and pray.

Apostolic preaching cannot be carried on unless there be apostolic praying. Alas, that this plain truth has been so easily forgotten by those who minister in holy things! How easy to slip away from the closet! Even the apostles had to guard themselves at that point. How much do we need to watch ourselves at that same place! Things legitimate and right may become wrong when they take the place of prayer. It is not only the sinful things which hurt prayer. It is not alone questionable things which are to be guarded against. But it is things which are right in their places but which are allowed to sidetrack prayer and shut the closet door, often with the self-comforting plea that “we are too busy to pray.” The apostles drove directly at this point and determined that even church business should not affect their praying habits. Prayer must come first.