Who can calculate the dimensions of God's power? Scientists calculate the total weight of the globe, Bible scholars come to decipher the measurements of the Celestial City, astronomers count the stars in the sky, others measure the speed of lightning and say precisely when the sun rises and It puts, however, it is impossible to estimate the power of prayer.
Prayer is as wide as God himself, because it is he who is behind it. Prayer is as powerful as God, because he promised to answer it. May God have compassion for us, for being so gaudy and vacillating in what is the noblest activity of the tongue and spirit of man. If God does not enlighten us in our private enclosure of prayer, we will walk in darkness. In the judgment seat of Christ, the most shameful act that the Christian will face will be the poverty of his life of prayer.
Read this majestic section of the illustrious preacher of the fourth century, Chrysostom: "The immense power of prayer already subjected the force of fire, which has become one of the oldest in the history of mankind, and which has become In one of the oldest destruction in the world, the sun stopped in its course, and prevented the advance of the destructive beam.
"Prayer is a panoply (armor) against all evil, a treasure that never diminishes, a mine that can never be exhausted, a sky without any cloud obstruction, a horizon undisturbed by storms." It is the root, the source, the mother, of innumerable blessings.
These words are mere rhetoric, trying to give a superlative appearance to something common? The Bible knows no such human devices.
Oh, for an Elijah!
Elijah was a man experienced in the art of prayer, who altered the course of nature, strangled the economy of a nation, prayed and fire fell, prayed and the people fell, prayed and the rain fell. We need rain, rain and more rain today! The churches are so parched that the seed can not germinate. Our altars are dry, without hot tears of penitent supplicants.
Oh, for an Elijah! When Israel cried out for water, a man struck the rock and that huge stone fortress was transformed into a mother, who gave birth to a spring of water to give life. "Do God is something too difficult?" (Genesis 18:14) May God send us someone who can hurt that rock!
Let us be sure of one thing: The prayer room is no place to simply deliver a list of urgent requests to the Lord. Can prayer change things? Certainly, but above all, prayer changes men. Prayer not only took Ana's dishonor, but changed - she changed her barren fruit to woman with a sad person in someone full of joy (1 Samuel 1:10 and 2: 1); in fact, becoming his "dance in tears" (Ps 30,11).
Who knows, we are praying to dance when we still do not learn to regret! We are looking for a mantle of joy when God said: "... and we give to all who mourn ... the mantle of joy instead of a weak spirit" (es 61.3, NIV). If we want to reap the same order, it is given: "The one who weeps while sowing, with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves" (Ps 126,6).
It took a man with a broken heart, who deeply lamented, like Moses, to be able to say: Oh God, this "people committed a great sin ... Now, forgive the sin, or, if not, erase, I pray, the you have written "(Exodus 32.31,32). Only a man who felt a deep burden of pain, like Paul, could say: "... I have great sadness and incessant pain in my heart, because I wished I was separated from Christ by my brothers, my relatives according to the flesh" ( Romans 9.2.3).
If John Knox had prayed: "Give me success!", We would never have heard of him again. But he made an expurgated prayer of personal desires: "Give me Scotland, if I do not die!", And thus marked the pages of history. If David Livingstone had prayed for the opening of the African continent, as proof of his indomitable spirit and skill with the sextant, his prayer would have died with the wind of the forest; but his prayer was: "Lord, when will the wound of the sin of this world be healed?" Livingstone lived in prayer and literally died on his knees in prayer.
The solution for this insatiable world for sin is an insatiable church by prayer. Again we must explore the "precious and great promises" of God (2 Peter 1.4). On that great day, the fire of judgment will have to prove the type, and not the quantity, of the work we did. What was born in prayer will pass through the test.
In prayer, we deal with God and things happen. In prayer, the hunger to win souls is generated; When there is hunger to win souls, more prayer is generated. The heart that has understanding prays; the praying heart acquires understanding. The praying heart, recognizing its own weakness, receives supernatural strength from the Lord. Oh, that we were people of prayer, just like Elijah - that he was a man subject to the same feelings as us! Lord, help us pray!
