A Treasury of Prayer - by Leonard Ravenhill


One of the great purposes of God in His Book is to impress upon us 
indelibly the great importance, the priceless value, and the absolute 
necessity of asking God for the things we need for time and eternity. 

Our one great business is prayer, and we will never do it well unless 
we fasten to it by all binding force.  Satan has suffered so much by 
good praying that all his wily, shrewd and ensnaring devices will be 
used to cripple its performances.

Prayer is the appointed condition of getting God's aid.  This aid is 
as manifold and illimitable as God's ability. He is the wisest man who
prays the most and the best. Prayer is the condition by which all foes
are to be overcome and all the inheritance is to be possessed.

The tendency of these times is an ostentatious parade of doing, which 
enfeebles the life and dissipates the spirit of praying. Prayer is a 
thing of the heart, more of feelings than of words.

God's rule is to answer prayer by giving the specific thing asked for. 
Prayer fills man's emptiness with God's fullness. It takes prayer to 
minister.  He who is on God's mission in this world will pray. Not at 
once does God always give the full answer to prayer but rather 
progressively, step by step. 

God does his best work for the world through prayer. Prayer forms the 
godliest men. The challenge of God to us is, "Call unto me, and I will
answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest 
not." Prayer forms the very center of the heart and will of God 
concerning men. The possibilities of prayer are found in the illimitable 
promise, the willingness and the power of God to answer prayer, to answer 
all prayer, to answer every prayer, and to supply fully the illimitable 
need of man. Is there any work, higher work for the disciple to do than 
His Lord did?  Is there any loftier employment, more honorable, more 
divine, than to pray for men? 

We must never forget that God has put the conquering, inheriting, and 
expanding forces of Christ's cause in prayer.  "Ask of me, and I will
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts 
of the earth for thy possession."  

	From praying, Christ eliminates all self sufficiency, all pride 
and all spiritual values.  The poor in spirit are the praying ones.  
Beggars are God's princes. In Christ's teachings, prayer is no sterile,
vain performance, not a mere rite, a form, but a request for an answer. 
The atoning blood of Jesus gives sanctity and efficiency to our prayers. 
Prayer was the secret of His power, the law of his life, the inspiration 
of His toil, and the source of His wealth, His joy, His communion and 
strength. Jesus Christ was always a busy man, but never too busy to 
pray.  God's work must not crowd out God's praying.  He filled the day 
with working for God; He employed the night with praying to God.  The
day-working made the night-praying a necessity. The night-praying 
sanctified and made successful the day-working.

The closet has much to do with making the character, while the character 
has much to do with making the closet. He is not the best pray-er who 
has the greatest fluency, the most brilliant imagination, the richest
gifts, and the most fiery ardor, but he who has imbibed most of the 
Spirit of Christ.  God reveals himself to men's hearts, not to their 
heads. Not so much do men need light to see God as they need hearts to
feel God. Conformity, to live one with God, is a far higher and more 
divine life than to live simply in submission to God. The most powerful 
form of praying is positive, aggressive, mightily outgoing and creative. 
It molds things, and brings things to pass.  Conformity means to "stand 
perfect and complete in all the will of God."  It means to delight to
do God's will, to run with eagerness and ardor to carry out His plans.

We often end praying just where we ought to begin.  We quit praying when 
God waits and is waiting for us to really pray.  To have no plan but to 
see God's plan and carry it out, is of the essence and inspiration of
Christly praying. Faith which in its darkest and most depressed hours 
against hope believes in hope. Wait and pray- here is the key which unlocks 
every castle of despair, which opens every treasure-store of God. What
a world of natural praying there is, which is selfish, self-centered, 
self-inspired-- the Spirit when He prays through us, or helps us to meet 
the mighty "oughtness" of right praying, trims our praying down to the
will of God, and then we give heart and expression to His unutterable 
groanings. We pray, not by the precepts and the lessons He has taught,
but we pray by Him.  We pray not by the truth the Holy Spirit reveals 
to us, but we pray by the actual presence of the Holy Spirit.  He puts 
the desire in our hearts; kindles that desire by His own flame.  Prayer 
is the only element in which the Holy Spirit can live and work.

Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive.  
It purifies the air; it controls the contagion of evil.

That man is the most immortal who has done the most and best praying.

The prayers of God's saints are the capital stock in heaven by which 
Christ carries on His great work upon earth.

The mightiest successes that come to God's cause are created and carried 
on by prayer. The secret of success in Christ's kingdom is the ability
to pray.  The one who can wield the power of prayer is the strong one, 
the holy one in Christ's kingdom.  The most important lesson we can 
learn is how to pray. Prayer is the key note of the most sanctified 
life, of the holiest ministry.  He does the most for God who is highest 
skilled in prayer. Everything then as now, was possible to the men and
women who knew how to pray.  Prayer indeed, opened the limitless storehouse, 
and God's hand withheld nothing.

The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered 
prayer.  None but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God. "More 
and better praying will bring the surest and readiest triumph to God's 
cause; feeble, formal, listless praying brings decay and death."

The progress of our Lord's kingdom is dependent upon prayer, it is sad 
to think that we give so little time to  this holy exercise.  Everything 
depends upon prayer, and yet we neglect it not only to our spiritual 
hurt but also to the delay and injury of our Lord's cause upon earth. 
Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they 
do not wait long enough on God. Prayer is our most formidable weapon, 
but the one in which we are the least skilled.

We are in danger of substituting churchy work and a ceaseless round of
showy activities for prayer and holy living. Holy men have in the past
changed the whole force of affairs, revolutionized character and country 
by prayer.

Prayer itself is the greatest work.  The lazy man does not, will not, 
cannot pray, for prayer demands energy. The deep things of God are 
learned nowhere else.  Great things for God are done by great prayers.
Persistency is of the essence of true praying.  God loves the importunate 
pleader, and sends him answers that would never have been granted but 
for the persistency that refuses to let go until the petition craved 
for is granted. When its leaders are men of prayer, when prayer is the
prevailing element of worship, like the incense giving continual 
fragrance to its service, then that cause of God will be triumphant. 
Praying men are men with whom prayer is a mighty force, an energy that
moves heaven and pulls untold treasures on earth. "One night alone in 
prayer," says Spurgeon, "might make us new men." 

A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.  But 
to pray really, to pray till hell feels the ponderous stroke, to pray 
till the iron gates of difficulties are opened, till mountains of 
obstacles are removed, till the mists are exhaled and the clouds are 
lifted, and the sunshine of a cloudless day brightens- this is hard 
work, but it is God's work and man's best labor. He who is too busy to
pray will be too busy to live a holy life. One of Satan's wiliest tricks 
is to destroy the best by the good. Here is the secret of prevailing 
prayer, to pray under a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, whose 
petitions for us and through us are always according to the divine 
purpose, and hence certain of answer.  Praying in the Holy Ghost is 
but cooperating with the will of God, and such prayer is always victorious.

Prayer can do anything God can do. The object of asking is to receive.
Every revival of which we have any record has been bathed in prayer. 
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better 
men.  What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not
new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy 
Ghost can use men mighty in prayer. The messenger is, if possible, 
more than the message.  The preacher is more than the sermon.  The 
preacher makes the sermon.  Preaching is not the performance of an 
hour.  It is the outflow of a life.  Everything depends on the spiritual 
character of the preacher.  Men always preaching by holy sermons in 
the pulpit, by holy lives out of it.  These can mold a generation for 
God.  The real sermon is made in the closet. The man- God's man- is 
made in the closet.  Life-giving preaching costs the preacher much 
death to self, crucifixion to the world, the travail oh his own soul.
Crucified preaching only can give life.  Crucified preaching can come 
only from a crucified man.  Preaching that kills is prayerless preaching.  
Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher
who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life giving forces.  The character 
of our praying will determine the character of our preaching.  Light 
praying will make light preaching.  Prayer makes preaching strong, 
gives it unction, and makes it stick.  Talking to men for God is a 
great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.  The preacher 
must, by prayer, move God toward the people before he can move the 
people to God by his words. The preachers who gain mighty results for
God are the men who have prevailed in their pleadings with God ere 
venturing to plead with men.  The preachers who are the mightiest in 
their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men.  
Praying is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, 
spiritual work. The short prevailing prayer cannot be prayed by one 
who has not prevailed with God in a mightier struggle of long continuance.
 
Martin Luther's motto was: "He that has prayed well has studied well."
Adoniram Judson said: "Consider that thy time is short, and that business 
and company must not be allowed to rob thee of thy God." Holiness energizing 
the souls, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith,
more prayer, more zeal, more consecration- this is the secret of power.  
Wrestling with God in secret and travailing in birth with unutterable
groans and agonies, until Christ was formed in the hearts of the people 
to whom he was sent. 

We have emphasized sermon preparation until we have lost sight of the 
important thing to be prepared- the heart.  A prepared heart is much 
better than a prepared sermon.  It is the heart not the head which 
makes God' great preachers. What makes unction?  It is the indefinable 
in preaching which makes it reaching.  It is that which distinguishes
and separates preaching from all mere human addresses.  It is divine 
in preaching.  It makes the preaching sharp to those who need sharpness.  
It distills as the dew to those who need to be refreshed.  This unction 
comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet.  This unction 
is not the gift of genius.  It is the gift of God- the signet set to 
His own messengers. Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching 
unction; prayer, much prayer, is the one sole condition of keeping 
this unction.  Without unceasing prayer, the unction never comes to 
the preacher.  Without perseverance in prayer, the unction, like the 
manna over-kept, breeds worms.

Apostolic praying makes apostolic saints and keeps apostolic times of
purity and power in the Church.  Preachers are pre-eminently God's 
leaders.  They are primarily responsible for the condition of the 
Church.  They shape its character, give tone and direction to its 
life.  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. Short devotions deplete spiritual vigor, arrest spiritual 
progress, sap spiritual foundations, blight the root and bloom of 
spiritual life.  They are the prolific source off backsliding, the 
sure indication of a superficial piety; they deceive, blight, rot the
seed, and impoverish the soil. 

To be little with God is to be little for God. He must, out of sheer 
helplessness, stretch forth hands of faith.  Prayer is simply faith, 
claiming its natural yet marvelous prerogatives- faith taking possession 
of its illimitable inheritance. Faith does not grow disheartened 
because prayer is not immediately honored; it takes God at His Word 
and lets Him take what time He chooses in fulfilling His purposes.  
Faith accepts the conditions and regards such delays as times of 
testing.  Genuine, authentic faith must be definite and free of doubt.
 As the faith is specific, so the answer likewise will be definite: 
"He shall have whatsoever he saith." Faith must be definite; specific;
an unqualified, unmistakable request for the things asked for.  Faith 
is an operation of God, a divine illumination, a holy energy implanted 
by the Word of God and the Spirit in the human soul- a spiritual, 
divine principle which takes of the supernatural and makes it a thing 
apprehensible by the faculties of time and sense. The lack of faith 
lies at the root of all poor praying, feeble praying, little praying,
unanswered praying.

Faith is increased by exercise, by being put to use. It is nourished 
by sore trials.  Faith grows by reading and meditating upon the Word 
of God.  Most, and best of all, faith thrives in an atmosphere of prayer. 
Faith must assert itself and bid these foes to prayer depart.  An 
earth-bound, earth satisfied spirit cannot pray.

Trust sees God doing things here and now looking into the invisible 
and the eternal realizes that God has done things, and regards them 
as being already done. When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer 
is simply the outstretched hand, ready to receive.

Prayer is the oral expression of desire. Praying with no heart, no 
feeling, no real desire accompanying it, is to be shunned like pestilence. 
True prayer must be aflame.  Nothing short of being red hot for God 
can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts.  The early Methodists had 
no heating apparatus in their churches.  And they declared that the 
flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must suffice to keep them 
warm. Prayer must be red hot.  It is the fervent prayer that is 
effectual and that availeth. It is the expression of a relation to 
God, a yearning for divine communion. He prays not at all who does not
press his plea. Importunate praying has patience to wait and strength 
to continue.  It never prepares itself to quit praying, and declines 
to rise from its knees till an answer is received.

The office of prayer is to change the character and conduct of men.  
Prayer produces cleanliness of heart and purity of life.  Unrighteous 
conduct is born of prayerlessness.  Prayer and sinning cannot keep 
company with each other.  Get men to pray, and they will quit sinning,
because prayer creates a distaste for sinning. Prayer is based on 
character.  What we are with God gauges our influence with Him.  It 
is not so much our words as what we really are which weighs with God.

We pray feebly because we live feebly. If any should complain that 
humanity, under the Fall, is too weak and helpless to obey these high 
commands of God, the reply is in order that through the Atonement of 
Christ, man is enabled to obey. Through prayer and faith, man's nature 
is changed and made partaker of the divine nature.

God loves importunate prayer so much that He will not give us much 
blessing without it. Holiness is wholeness, and so God wants holy men,
men whole-hearted and true, for His service and for the work of praying. 
To be humble is to have a low estimate of one's self.  It is to be 
modest, lowly, with a disposition to seek obscurity.  Humility retires 
itself from the public gaze. That which brings the praying soul near
to God is humility of heart.  That which gives wings to prayer is 
lowliness of mind.  Humility is an inseparable condition of effectual
praying. Humility springs from a lowly estimate of ourselves and of 
our deservings. 

Prayer thrives in the atmosphere of true devotion.  God dwells where 
the spirit of devotion resides. To be too busy with God's work to 
commune with God, to be busy doing church work without taking time to 
talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many 
people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls.

Praise is so distinctly and definitely wedded to prayer, so inseparably 
joined, that they cannot be divorced.  Praise is dependent on prayer 
for its full volume and it sweetest melody.

Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind.
But it is likewise all important to man to pray.  Failure to pray is 
failure along the whole line of life.  He who does not pray, therefore, 
robs himself of God's help and places God where He cannot help men. 
Prayer always carries us back to God. Nothing is well done without 
prayer. Satan has effectively disarmed us when he can keep us too busy 
doing things to stop and pray. Apostolic preaching cannot be carried 
on unless there be apostolic praying. Things legitimate and right may 
become wrong when they take the place of prayer.  Prayer must come 
first. Prayer lays hold upon God and influences Him to work. Without 
prayer, the gospel can neither be preached effectively, promulgated 
faithfully, experienced in the heart, nor be practiced in the life.  
By leaving prayer out of the catalogue of religious duties, we leave 
God out. God's secrets, councils and cause have never been committed 
to prayerless men.  Prayerless men are a hindrance to Him. Praying men
are the only men who have influence with God.  The Holy Spirit and 
prayer go hand-in-hand. The Holy Spirit never descends upon prayerless 
men.  He never fills them; He never empowers them.  The Spirit dwells 
only in a prayer atmosphere.  In doing God's work there is no substitute 
or praying. 

We pray as we live; we live as we pray.  Life will never be finer than
the quality of the closet.  Here, then, is one reason why men don't 
pray.  They are too worldly in heart and too secular in life to enter 
the closet; and even though they enter there, they cannot offer the 
effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man, [which] availeth much.

Men must walk in upright fashion in order to be able to pray well.
Prayer must be broad in its scope- it must plead for others. Intercession 
for others is the hallmark of all true prayer. Prayer does not originate 
in the realms of the carnal mind. It is the real praying which makes 
eternal things real, close and tangible. The thing far above all other
things in the equipment of the preacher is prayer.  Prayer must be the
main plank in the platform of the man who goes forth to preach the 
unsearchable riches of Christ to a lost and hungry world. Jesus was 
above all else, a man of prayer.  If, in true leadership, prayer had 
been dispensable, then certainly Jesus could have dispensed with it. 
All ability to talk to men is measured by the ability with which a 
preacher can talk to God for men.  He "who plows not in his closet, 
will never reap in his pulpit." Holiness is obtained only by secret 
prayer. A prayerless missionary is a failure before he goes out.  
Real heart-praying, live-praying, praying by the power of the Spirit, 
direct, specific, ardent, simple praying- this is the kind which 
legitimately belongs to the pulpit.  Good pulpit praying follows 
from good secret praying.

The gospel of Jesus has neither relish nor life in it when spoken by 
prayerless lips or handled by prayerless hands.  Without prayer the 
doctrines of Christ degenerate into dead orthodoxy.  Preaching them 
without the aid of the Spirit of God, who comes into the preacher's 
message only by prayer. The character of our praying will determine 
the character of our praying.  Prayer makes preaching strong, gives 
it unction and makes it stick.  Talking to men for God may be a great 
thing, and may be very commendable.  But talking to God for men is far
more valuable and commendable. Whatever of human gift, talent or force 
a preacher may possess, it is not to be made paramount, or even 
conspicuous.  It must be hidden, lost, overshadowed, by this "power 
from on high."  Even when lacking the other equipment  but having this 
"power from on high," a preacher cannot but succeed. This "unction of
the Holy One" delivers from dryness, saves from superficiality, and 
gives authority to preaching.

If prayerless men be found in the pew, then it hurts the preacher, 
robs him of invaluable help, and interferes seriously with the success 
of his work.

Someone said that "God had to get a woman before He could get a man." 
This woman He got in Hannah precisely by delaying the answer to her 
prayer, for out of the discipline of those weeks and months and years 
there came a woman with a vision like God's, with tempered soul and 
gentle spirit and a seasoned will prepared to be the kind of a mother
for the kind of a man God knew the nation needed. 

The promises of God, their realization, the possibility and condition 
of that realization, are based on prayer.  Prayer makes way for and 
brings into practical realization the promises of God.

Marvelous purposes need marvelous praying to execute them.  Miracle-making 
promises need miracle-making prayer to realize them.  Only divine 
praying can operate divine promises or carry out divine purposes. The
only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to 
fulfill those promises. Prayer needs no proof other than its accomplishments.  
If any man will know the virtue of prayer, if he will know what it will 
do, let him pray.  Let him put prayer to the test. Alas!  How the 
unbelief of men has limited the power of God to work through prayer! 
What limitations have disciples of Jesus Christ put upon prayer by their 
prayerlessness! Whatever concerns man's highest welfare, and whatever 
has to do with God's plans and purposes concerning men on earth, is a 
subject for prayer.

Prayer is asking, seeking and knocking at a door for something we have
not, which we desire, and which God has promised to us.

Prayer affects men by affecting God.  Prayer moves men because it move
God to move men. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.

The possibilities of prayer are the possibilities of faith.  Faith is 
always praying.  Prayer is always believing. Prayer is the tongue of 
faith.  Prayer is the hand of faith stretched out to receive.  Faith 
must give prayer the wings to fly and soar. Prayer asks.  Faith lays 
its hands on the thing asked for.  Failure to pray entails losses far 
beyond the person who neglects it.  

The whole life is a preparation for and the result of prayer.  Prayer 
is the sum of religion.  Prayer is the lungs through which holiness 
breathes. He who has the spirit of prayer has the highest interest in 
the court of heaven.  And the only way to retain it is to keep it in 
constant employment.  Apostasy begins in the closet.  No man ever 
backslid from the life and power of Christianity who continued constant 
and fervent in private prayer.

Satan dreads nothing but prayer.  The one concern of the devil is to 
keep the saints from prayer.  He fears nothing from prayerless studies, 
prayerless work, prayerless religion.  He laughs at our toil, mocks at
our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. If Christians prayed as 
Christians ought, with strong commanding faith, with earnestness and 
sincerity, men, God called men, God-empowered men everywhere, would 
be burning to go and spread the gospel world-wide.

His giving His Son is the assurance and guarantee that He will freely 
give all things to him who believes and prays.  God has ruled the 
world by prayer and God still rules the world by the same divinely 
ordained means. There must be no half-hearted praying, no abridging 
its nature, and no abating its force, if we would receive the rich 
fruit of that peace which passeth all understanding. The ability of 
God to do for man is the measure of the possibility of prayer.
The answer to prayer is the part of prayer which glorifies God.
  








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