The Secret of the Apostles

Secret

Provoking Thoughts on Prayer

The secret of the success of the apostles lay not in what they did and said, but in the presence of Christ in them and with them. They saw with the eyes of Christ, felt with His heart, and worked with His energies. They were nothing: Christ was everything. Christ was living, breathing, and triumphing in their personal lives. Their entire nature being replete with His life, their spirits bathed in His light, and their souls kindled with the fires of His love, they moved in the midst of men as embodiments of supernatural power…Brethren, this is what we must be, if this mighty empire (China) is to be moved through us. But to be this, the throne of grace must be our refuge, the secret place of prayer before the Most high must be our daily and hourly habitation.

Griffith John

Who was Griffith John?
Griffith John served in China for 55 years. He was among the first to begin Christian missionary work in there. He set up schools, hospitals and training colleges, with a permanent base at Hankou (now part of Wuhan city) in Hubei. In 1861 he went from Shanghai through the provinces of central China, and established over 100 mission stations. During a career spanning 60 years John left China only three times. He became fluent in Chinese. He fought the opium trade and established one of the first major thrusts to address its impact on Chinese culture.

What is the Greatest Talent a Man or Woman May Possess?

Talent


Provoking Thoughts on Prayer

The greatest and best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best payment of interest that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world, is a life of prayer. And those servants best put their money “to the exchangers” (Matt. 25:27) who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and every following after greater and better methods of prayer and every forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer, until they literally “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17); and until they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and achievements, and new enrichments.

None can believe ow powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience.

E. M. Bounds

Do You Really Believe in the Boundless Possibilities of Prayer?

Unlimited

Do You Really Believe the Boundless
Possibilities of Prayer?

The scripture reveals the possibilities of prayer to be as great as the boundless measure of redemptive grace. The unsparing God places no limit on our praying because there is no limit placed on His giving. If we believe that Christ was sacrificed to save us to the uttermost, we must likewise believe that He is able to supply our needs to the uttermost.

The lamentable fact is we have been exceedingly slow to comprehend the unlimited possibilities of prayer revealed in Christ’s plain words. When we fully understand His instructions about praying and grasp the promises by faith, we will not find it difficult to pray the effectual fervent prayer of achieving faith.

T. M. Anderson

If You Could Ask Anything of the Lord to Start This Year

Anything


If You Could Ask Anything of the Father to Start This Year

Provoking Thoughts on Prayer

If we are to have fellowship with Jesus Christ in His present work, we must spend much time in prayer; we must give ourselves to earnest, constant, persistent, sleepless, overcoming prayer. I know of nothing that has so impressed me with a sense of the importance of praying at all seasons, being much and constantly in prayer, as the thought that that is the principal occupation at present of my risen Lord. I want to have fellowship with Him, and to that end I have asked the Father that whatever else He may make me, to make me at all events an intercessor, to make me a man who knows how to pray, and who spends much time in prayer.

R. A. Torrey

This is Intercession Friday 30 December

Praying

Provoking Thoughts on Prayer

This is Intercession

When we pray for others the Spirit of God works in the unconscious domain of their being that we know nothing about, and the one we are praying for knows nothing about, but after the passing of time the conscious life of the one prayed for begins to show sigs of unrest and disquiet. We may have spoken until we are worn out, but have never come anywhere near, and we have given up in despair. But if we have been praying, we find on meeting them one day that there is the beginning of a softening in an inquiry and a desire to know something.

It is that kind of intercession that does the most damage to Satan’s kingdom. It is so slight, so feeble in its initial stages that if reason is not wedded to the light of the Holy Spirit, we will never obey it, and yet it is that kind of intercession that the New Testament places most emphasis on.

Oswald Chambers