490

From “Praying Men Are God’s Mightiest Leaders”

EDWARD MCKENDREE BOUNDS

Praying men are the men who spend much time with God. Praying men always feel a great need and desire to be alone with God. Though very busy men, they always stop at some appointed time for communion with God. They have spent much time alone with Him and have found that the secret of wise and powerful leadership for God is in these seasons of special access and grace.

Praying men are men of the single eye. They have been so much alone with God, have seen so much of His glory, have learned so much of His will, have been fashioned so strongly after His image that He fixes and fills their gaze. All else is too insignificant to engage their attention, too little to catch their eye. A double vision—one for self, and the other for God—mightily hinders prayer. Praying men are men of one book; they feed on God’s Word; it lives in them in vitalizing force and abides in them in full authority and faith. They are Bible men. The Bible inspires their prayers and quickens their faith. They rest on its promises as on a globe of granite.

Praying men are the only productive workers for God. True prayer is a working force, a divine energy that must come out, that is too strong to be still. The work of praying men achieves the best results because it is done by God’s energy. Praying men have His direction and do His work for His glory, under the full and cheering beam of His presence, His Word, and His Spirit.

Praying men are the men who have done so much for God in the past. They are the ones who have won the victories for God and spoiled His foes. They are the ones who have set up His kingdom in the very camps of His enemies. There are no other conditions for success today. This century has not suspended the necessity or force of prayer. There is no substitute by which its gracious ends can be secured.

Only praying hands can build for God. Men of prayer are God’s mighty ones on earth, His master builders. They may be destitute of all else, but with the wrestlings and prevailings of a simple-hearted faith they are mighty—the mightiest for God. Church leaders may be gifted in all else, but without this greatest of gifts they are as Samson shorn of his locks, or as the altars of the temple where heavenly flame has died without the divine presence.