In response to this Sunday's message on
1 Peter 5, I got an e-mail from someone in the congregation who
shared the following quote from R.A. Torrey:
I came across the following from American evangelist R.A. Torrey
(early 1900's) This is from a message on prayer. His text was, "You
have not because you ask not."
We do not live in a praying age. We live in an age of hustle and
bustle, of man's efforts and man's determination, of man's
confidence in himself and in his own power to achieve things, an
age of human organization and human machinery, human push and human
scheming, and human achievement, which in the things of God means
no real achievement at all. [wow - wonder what he'd say if he was
writing in 2008?]
I think it would be perfectly safe to say that the church of
Christ was never in all its history so . . . perfectly organized as
it is today. Our machinery is wonderful; . . . but, alas, it is
machinery without power; and when things do not go right, instead
of going to the real source of our failure, our neglect to depend
on God and look to God for power, we look around to see if there is
not some new organization we can get up, some new wheel that we can
add to our machinery.
We have altogether too many wheels already. What we need is not
so much some new organization, some new wheel, but "the Spirit of
the living creature in the wheels" we already possess.
I believe that the devil stands and looks at the church today
and laughs in his sleeve as he sees how its members depend on their
own scheming and powers of organization and skillfully devised
machinery. . .
But when the devil sees a man or woman who really
believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does
pray, and, above all, when he [Satan] sees a whole church on its
face before God in prayer, "he trembles" . . ., for he knows that
his day in that church or community is at an end.
Just another challenge for us and a reminder that any resistance
that we have against our enemy must begin on our knees in
impassioned, desperate, battle-minded prayer.