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    A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer
    A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer
    A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer

    By Compiled by Barbour Staff

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    Prayer is simply talking with God - yet even the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Since then, godly men and women have elaborated on "the Lord's prayer" to help others find union and intimacy with God - and their most insightful comments are included in A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer. Featuring the words of giants of the faith-life such as Andrew Murray, E. M. Bounds, Charles Spurgeon, and Hannah Whitall Smith, it's arranged into 12 key topics, ideal for use as a one-year prayer guide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarbour Publishing
    Release dateApr 1, 2013
    ISBN9781624160240
    A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer
    Author

    Compiled by Barbour Staff

    Barbour Publishing is a leading Christian book publisher offering bestselling books featuring exceptional value, biblical encouragement, and the highest quality. Barbour is the home of New York Times Bestselling author Wanda E. Brunstetter along with well-known fiction authors Gilbert Morris, Olivia Newport, Michelle Griep and many others. If your interest is Christian Living or Bible Reference, you’ll find excellent titles by bestselling authors Josh McDowell, Jonathan McKee, Debora Coty, and Stephen M. Miller’s The Complete Guide to the Bible.   Barbour also publishes the top classic devotionals God Calling by A.J. Russell, and Come Away My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts. With inspirational Christian books available in all genres--fiction for adults and children, Bible Promise books, devotionals, Bibles, Bible reference, puzzle books, and gift books there's something for everyone to enjoy.  

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      A 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer - Compiled by Barbour Staff

      BOUNDS

      INTRODUCTION

      The story of prayer is the story of great achievements.

      E. M. BOUNDS

      As water is to physical life, so prayer is to spiritual life. Prayer is the basic element that energizes and refreshes our spiritual life. It’s not too much to say that prayer allows our spiritual life to exist—without it, we wither and crumble inside.

      Though at its most basic level prayer is simply talking to God, the Bible contains many instructions and examples for improving this vital process. Over the centuries, godly men and women have studied and applied those biblical passages, explaining them in writing for the benefit of others. This little book contains some of their insights.

      This 12-Month Guide to Better Prayer features a chapter for each month of the year, drawn from the powerful writings of the following individuals:

      •   E. M. Bounds (1835–1913)—American minister and author of several books on prayer

      •   François Fénelon (1651–1715) and Madame Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717)—French theologians and writers

      •   Matthew Henry (1662–1714)—British clergyman and commentary writer

      •   Andrew Murray (1828–1917)—South African theologian and prayer expert

      •   Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892)—British preacher and writer

      •   R. A. Torrey (1856–1928)—American evangelist and writer

      •   George Whitefield (1714–1770)—British evangelist

      Each entry has been lightly updated for ease of reading.

      Classic Christian writings can certainly enhance your spiritual life, but should always be read in conjunction with the Bible. We suggest that you use one chapter of this book per month, reading it each day. Then, in your own copy of scripture, begin to review the verses and references in the text.

      Make each chapter the basis of a monthly Bible study, and put into practice the truths you find. By year’s end, your prayer life will undoubtedly be fresher, stronger, and more real than ever before.

      1.

      PRAYER—ITS POSSIBILITIES

      E. M. BOUNDS

      Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

      PSALM 81:10

      How vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide is its reach! What great things are accomplished by this divinely appointed means of grace! It lays its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not otherwise do if prayer was not offered. It brings things to pass which would never otherwise occur. The story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. Prayer reaches to everything, takes in all things great and small which are promised by God to the children of men. The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it (Ps. 81:10).

      The records of prayer’s achievements are encouraging to faith, cheering to the expectations of saints, and an inspiration to all who would pray and test its value.

      Prayer is no mere untried theory. It is not some strange unique scheme, concocted in the brains of men and set on foot by them, an invention which has never been tried nor put to the test. Prayer is a divine arrangement in the moral government of God, designed for the benefit of men and intended as a means for furthering the interests of His cause on earth and carrying out His gracious purposes in redemption and providence. Prayer proves itself. It is susceptible of proving its virtue by those who pray. Prayer needs no proof other than its accomplishments.

      If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine (John 7:17). If any man will know the virtue of prayer, if he will know what it will do, let him pray. Let him put prayer to the test.

      What a breadth is given to prayer! What heights it reaches! It is the breathing of a soul inflamed for God and inflamed for man. It goes as far as the gospel goes, and is as wide, compassionate, and prayerful as is that gospel.

      How much of prayer do all these unpossessed, alienated provinces of earth demand in order to enlighten them, to impress them, and to move them toward God and His Son, Jesus Christ? Had the professed disciples of Christ only have prayed in the past as they ought to have done, the centuries would not have found these provinces still bound in death, in sin, and in ignorance.

      Alas! how the unbelief of men has limited the power of God to work through prayer! What limitations have disciples of Jesus Christ put upon prayer by their prayerlessness! How the Church, with her neglect of prayer, has hedged about the gospel and shut up doors of access!

      Prayer possibilities open doors for the entrance of the gospel: meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word (Col. 4:3). Prayer opened for the apostles doors for the Word, created opportunities, and made openings to preach the gospel. The appeal by prayer was to God, because God was moved by prayer. God was thereby moved to do His own work in an enlarged way and by new ways. Prayer possibility gives not only great power, and opens doors to the gospel, but gives facility as well to the gospel. Prayer makes the gospel to go fast and to move with glorious fastness. A gospel projected by the mighty energies of prayer is neither slow, lazy, nor dull. It moves with God’s power, with God’s effulgence, and with angelic swiftness.

      Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run swiftly and be glorified (2 Thess. 3:1) is the request of the apostle Paul, whose faith reached to the possibilities of prayer for the preached Word. The gospel moves altogether too slowly, often timidly, and with feeble steps. What will make this gospel go rapidly like a race runner? What will give this gospel divine effulgence and glory, and cause it to move worthy of God and of Christ? The answer is at hand.

      Prayer, more prayer, better prayer will do the deed. This means of grace will give fast going, splendor, and divinity to the gospel.

      The possibilities of prayer reach to all things. Whatever concerns man’s highest welfare, and whatever has to do with God’s plans and purposes concerning men on earth, is a subject for prayer. In whatever you ask (John 14:13) is embraced all that concerns us or the children of men and God. And whatever is left out of whatever is left out of prayer. Where will we draw the lines which leave out or which will limit the word whatever? Define it, and search out and publish the things which the word does not include. If whatever does not include all things, then add to it the word anything. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it (John 14:14).

      What riches of grace, what blessings, spiritual and temporal, what good for time and eternity, would have been ours had we learned the possibilities of prayer and our faith had taken in the wide range of the divine promises to us to answer prayer! What blessings on our times and what furtherance to God’s cause, had we but learned how to pray with large expectations! Who will rise up in this generation and teach the Church this lesson? It is a child’s lesson in simplicity, but who has learned it well enough to put prayer to the test? It is a great lesson in its matchless and universal good. The possibilities of prayer are unspeakable, but the lesson of prayer which realizes and measures up to these possibilities, who has learned?

      In His discourse in the fifteenth chapter of John, our Lord seems to connect friendship with Him to prayer, and His choosing of His disciples seems to have been with a design that through prayer they should bear much fruit. He said, You are My friends if you do whatever I command you… . You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you (John 15:14, 16).

      Here we have again the undefined and unlimited word, whatsoever, as covering the rights and the things for which we are to pray in the

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