On Praying for Preachers
 
 
by E.M. Bounds  Issue #38 September/October 2003 

 

If some Christians who have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers—had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant prayers for them—they would have been much more in the way of success.

—Jonathan Edwards

Somehow the practice of praying for the preacher has fallen into disuse. Some think of it as being a public declaration of the inefficiency of the ministry. Perhaps praying for the preacher offends the pride of learning and self-sufficiency. But, these ought to be offended and rebuked if a ministry is so derelict as to allow them to exist.

Air is no more necessary to the lungs than prayer is to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for. It will take all the praying he can do, and all the praying he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities and gain the largest, truest success in his great work. The true preacher greatly covets the prayers of God's people.

Gifts, talents, education, eloquence, and God's call cannot lessen the demand of prayer, but only intensify the necessity for the preacher to pray and to be prayed for. The more the preacher's eyes are opened to the nature, responsibility, and difficulties in his work, the more he will see. He will not only feel the increasing demand to pray himself, but to call on others to help him by their prayers.

How can a man who does not get his message fresh from God in the closet expect to preach? How can he preach without having his faith quickened, his vision cleared, and his heart warmed by his closeting with God? Alas for the pulpit lips which are untouched by this closet flame! Divine truths will never come with power from such lips. As far as the real interests of Christianity are concerned, a pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing.

A preacher may preach in an official, entertaining, or learned way without prayer. But, there is an immeasurable distance between this kind of preaching and the sowing of God's precious seed with holy hands and prayerful, weeping hearts.

Paul is an illustration of these things. If any man could extend or advance the gospel by personal force, by brain power, by God's apostolic commission, by God's extraordinary call, that man was Paul. Paul exemplifies the fact that the preacher must be a man given to prayer. Paul preeminently demonstrates that the true apostolic preacher must have the prayers of other good people to give to his ministry its full quota of success. He asks, he covets, he pleads for the help of all God's saints. He knew that in the spiritual realm—as elsewhere—in union there is strength. Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance. So Paul decided to make his ministry as impressive, eternal, and irresistible as the ocean by gathering all the scattered units of prayer and precipitating them on his ministry.

The reason for Paul's prominence in labors and results, and his impact on the church and the world, may be that he was able to center more prayer on himself and his ministry than others. To his brethren at Rome he wrote: "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me" (Ro. 15:30,KJV).

To the Ephesians he says: "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:18�?9,KJV).

To the Colossians he emphasizes: "Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak" (Col. 4:3�?, kjv).

Paul's attitude illustrates his humility and his deep insight into the spiritual forces which project the gospel. More than this, it teaches a lesson for all times that if Paul was so dependent on the prayers of God's saints to give his ministry success, how much greater the necessity that the prayers of God's saints be centered on the ministry of today!

 

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About the author:
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E.M. Bounds (1835�?913) was admitted to the bar at age 21. After practicing law for three years, he began preaching in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bounds served as pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri after the Civil War. This article was excerpted from his devotional Power Through Prayer, pages 80�?05, Whitaker House, New Kensington, Pennsylvania. © 1982. Used by permission of the publisher. Available at local Christian bookstores everywhere.

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