How They Prayed, Vol. Three: Be still, and hear what God shall say.

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The book by Edwin and Lillian Harvey, entitled How They Prayed Volume 3, quotes from the diaries, letters, and sermons of pastors and missionaries who have come to acknowledge the part prayer must play in revivals, widespread and local. “To arouse one man or woman to the tremendous power of prayer for others,” says A. J. Gordon, “is worth more than the combined activity of a score of average Christians. What David Brainerd did, others may do. God is no respecter of persons.”

“How sweet is prayer to my soul at this time,” Henry Martyn notes in his diary. “I seem as if I could never be tired, not only of spiritual joys, but of spiritual employments, since these are now the same.
“I felt as if I could never be tired with prayer. . . At night read the third and fourth chapters of the Acts; and lost much time and spirituality by indulging ideas of schemes about the Gospel, which had more of romance and pride in them than of wisdom and humiliation.”

If prayer matters then it ought not to be counted continually second in our scene of life. . . . All the time the devil is fighting our half-hour’s prayer, he never tires of fighting it. Sometimes there is a dullness which is a cloud of hell, sometimes a fiery assault.
“We know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” We pray from the ground of that certainty; not towards certainty, but from it. Is that why we have the words, ‘In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving’? We give thanks before we see. Then the thought came, “What is it that we have in this sense already received? Surely just this: that the glory of the Lord will be manifested (for is not this what we desired of Him?), and that the very best will be done from His eternal point of view, for the work committed to us.” Amy Carmichael

Not in the tumult of the rending storm,
Not in the earthquake or devouring flame,
But in the hush that could all fear transform,
The still, small whisper to the Prophet came.

O Soul, keep silence on the mount of God,
Though cares and needs throb round thee like a sea;
From supplications and desires unshod,
Be still, and hear what God shall say to thee.

O rest, in utter quietude of soul,
Abandon words, leave prayer and praise awhile,
Let thy whole being, hushed in His control,
Learn the full meaning of His voice and smile.
―Mary Rowles Jarvis.

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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