The Practice of Prayer by Rev. G. Campbell Morgan teaches us about Christian prayer from a man who has studied and taught the Bible by the power of the Holy Spirit for many years in the early 20th Century in England and America. The ideas in this book capture my heart and mind and spirit. Please read these quotes, and listen to God speaking to you through this preacher of God's word.
"God has been reached always through His Son, Jesus Christ. Not that men have always understood this, not that we perfectly understand it to-day, but the fact remains that fallen man has always found his way to God in prayer through
the mystery of the mediation of Christ."
Speaking about John 1:18 regarding the bosom of the Father, Morgan explains:
"I am bruised and broken upon life's highway but there is no help for me in the inscrutable might and mind of which I am conscious. But
out of the infinite spaces there comes to me a great love song. Out of the bosom of the Father there comes a message of tenderness and compassion. Immediately, bruised and broken as I am, I want to pray. I desire to speak out of my sense of sin and sorrow to the heart behind force and intelligence concerning my need. Agony can sob itself upon a heart. Impotence can trust love. A sinner can turn his face back towards a Father....When my finite heart finds the infinite heart of God I am able to trust my finite strength to His infinite strength, and my finite mind to His infinite intelligence. This then is the first fact in the platform of prayer, that the God of the universe has a bosom, a heart, and that the Son has spoken to men out of it."
"It is when I stand in the presence of
God as love that I realize for the first time the real meaning of sin, and I am silent."
"Sanctification is the imparting of Christ to me, grace for grace. That is to say, every grace which is in Him, is in Him for me, and my responsibility is that I appropriate day by day what He communicates in order that He may reproduce Himself in me. When in order that I may be more perfectly conformed to His image, the indwelling Christ calls me to some new duty, some new sacrifice, some new enterprise, I must answer with ready consent. If I do, prayer prevails. If I refuse, prayer becomes impossible."
"In the matter of prayer this is of supreme importance. To pray with prevailing prayer, there must be the vision of the morning breaking in the Eastern sky. It is the man who sees the coming glory who knows what it is to put blood and sacrifice into the business of establishing that Kingdom here. In order to pray prevailingly,
I must live in the power of the hope that maketh not ashamed, having my face ever lifted towards the light while I yet look at the sorrow around me, and serve diligently the will of my King."
"The indwelling Spirit knows the will of God and interprets it to the soul in whom He abides. This He does by unveiling Christ, who is the revelation of the will of God to me."
"The frailest bird dying of summer heat or winter cold is not alone. It dies in the company of God."
"Love for the oppressed create anger with the oppressor for evermore....It is the wrath of the Lamb which is terrible, the wrath of One whose very heart and nature are love and gentleness.
Wrath kindled by love is the fiercest flame that burns."
"It is the hungry man the devil attacks. If that be true physically, it is preeminently true spiritually. My brother see to it that when morning breaks you go to God for sustenance for your spiritual life. That will make you strong against the allurements of the devil."
"There is nothing God loves and the devil hates more than a man who can forgive."
