The Higher Calling of Prayer

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work." 2Corinthians 9:8



Prayer can be a joy, an inspiration, a daily deep desire. Andrew Murray paints a beautiful picture of what a deeper prayer life can lead to. - Todd

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"Imagine the difference between a man whose profits are just enough to maintain his family and keep up his business, and another whose income enables him to extend the business and to help others. There can be an earnest Christian life in which there is prayer enough to keep us from backsliding, just maintaining the position we have, without much growth in spirituality or in becoming more and more like Christ. This prayer attitude is more defensive - seeking to ward off temptation - than it is aggressive - reaching our after higher attainment.

If we are to grow in strength, with some large experience of God's power to sanctify ourselves and to bring down real blessing on others, there must be more definite and persevering prayer. The Scriptures, which teach us about 'cry[ing] day and night'(Luke 18:7), 'continuing steadfastly in prayer'(Romans 12:12), 'praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints' (Ephesians 6:18), and being heard because of insistent importunity (Luke 11:8), must become our experience, in some large degree, if we are really to be intercessors.

The law of God is unchangeable; as on earth, so in our traffic with heaven, we only get as we give. Unless we are willing to pay the price and sacrifice time, attention, and what appears to be legitimate or necessary for the sake of the heavenly gifts, we need not look for a large experience of the power of the heavenly world in our work.

[It is a] fact that prayer does not have the place it should have in our ministerial and Christian life. The shortcoming is one of which all are willing to confess, and the difficulties in the way of deliverance are such as to make a return to a true and full prayer life almost impossible. Blessed be God: 'The things which are impossible with men are possible with God' (Luke 18:27). 'And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.' (2Corinthians 9:8)

Do let us believe that God's call to much prayer need not be a burden and cause of continual self condemnation. He means it to be a joy. He can make it an inspiration, giving us strength for all our work and bringing down His power to work through us in our fellowmen. Do not be afraid to fully admit to the sin that shames us and then to face it in the name of our Mighty Redeemer. The light that shows us our sin and condemns us for it will show us the way out of it into the life of liberty that is well pleasing to God. If we allow this one matter, unfaithfulness in prayer, to convict us of the lack of our Christian lives, God will use the discovery to bring us not only the power to pray that we long for, but also the joy of a new and healthy life, of which prayer is the spontaneous expression." - Andrew Murray