I’ve quoted E.M. Bounds many times on this site, perhaps because his words have always been so challenging for me. Once again today, the words of Bounds pierce my soul a bit as I’m working on a sermon to preach this coming Sunday:
The real sermon is made in the prayer closet. The man, God’s man, is made in the closet. His life and his profoundest conviction were born in his secret communion with God. With the burdened and tearful agony of his spirit, he received his weightiest and sweetest messages when alone with God. Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.
The pulpit today is weak in praying. The pride of learning is against the dependent humility of prayer. Prayer in the pulpit is too often only formality – a performance for the routine of the service. In the modern pulpit, prayer is not the mighty force it was in Paul’s life or Paul’s ministry. Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God’s work and powerless to project God’s cause in this world.*
God, make me a praying man. Amen.
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*E. M. Bounds, Pastor and Prayer: Why and How Pastors Ought to Pray (p. 8). Aneko Press. Kindle Edition.