God has given us a powerful weapon - prayer. Thus we have the privilege of teaming up with him as He transforms the kingdom of this world into the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. An unbelievable and humbling (and strangely neglected) privilege!
Tumultous Times
February 12, 2009
Private prayer was fundamentally a matter of devotion, but public prayer was "a social action with religious and ecclesiastical implications."
Edwards was persuaded that praying Christians could exert a powerful influence upon the fortunes of the church and the world. In prayer, the most universal act of worship, divine favor is asked for by the Church, and at the same time the reality of the divine being is affirmed.
Boy, could we use that!
In the introduction to THE MINISTRY OF INTERCESSION, Andrew Murray talks about why he wrote THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER....
"Our Lord continually spoke of prayer as a means of obtaining what we desire, and how He seeks in every possible way to waken in us the confident expectation of an answer."
"I was led to see how prayer, in which a man could enter into the mind of God, could assert the royal power of a renewed will, and bring down to earth what without prayer would not have been given, is the highest proof of our having been made in the likeness of God's Son."
"We are found worthy of entering into fellowship with Him, not only in adoration and worship, but in having our will actually taken up into the rule of the world, and becoming the intelligent channel through which God can fulfill His eternal purpose.,,,the blessing of prayer is that you can ask and receive what you will: the highest exercise and the glory of prayer is that persevering importunity can prevail and obtain what God at first could not and would not give."