How They Prayed, Vol. Three: “Pray-er Preachers!”

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D. L. Moody said: “Next to the wonder of seeing my Savior will be, I think, the wonder that I have made so little of the power of prayer.” This statement was uttered by D. L. Moody and quoted in the book by Edwin and Lillian Harvey entitled How They Prayed Volume 3. A further quotation by R. A. Torrey reveals the fact that Mr. Moody was a man of prayer in the deepest and most meaningful sense:


“D. L. Moody certainly was a wonderful preacher; taking it all in all. . . . But out of a very intimate acquaintance with him I wish to testify that he was a far great pray-er than he was preacher. Time and time again, he was confronted by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way to overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. He knew and believed in the deepest depths of his soul that ‘nothing was too hard for the Lord’ and that prayer could do anything that God could do.”
“In regard to my own experience,” said the revivalist, “I will say that unless I had the spirit of prayer I could do nothing. If even for a day or an hour I lost the spirit of grace and supplication, I found myself unable to preach with power and efficiency, or to win souls by personal conversation.”

Mr. Finney was also a praying man. A student of Oberlin College, forty-five years later, has this to say about his professor: “The class in Theology in 1838, met to hear one of the last lectures of the course. Our teacher, as usual, knelt with us in offering the opening prayer. But the burden on his soul for us, for Zion, for a lost world, could not be thrown off in a few petitions. He ‘stood in the gap’ and wrestled for the blessing. For a whole hour he led us up to God. We then arose and went in profound silence to our rooms. There was no lecture on that day. That prayer, never can we forget it!”

These quotations have been taken from How They Prayed Volume Three which is published by Harvey Christian Publishers and is available in their Online Christian Bookstore.

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