The Prayers of a Leader

The key to influencing men is influencing God

The Prayers of a Leader

The key to influencing men is influencing God.

BY J. OSWALD SANDERS

In nothing should the leader be ahead of his followers more than in the realm of prayer.

And yet the most advanced Christian is conscious of the possibility of endless development in his prayer life. Nor does he ever feel he has "already attained."

Dean C. J. Vaughan once said: “If l wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers. I know nothing to compare with this topic for its sorrowful self-confessions."

Prayer is the most ancient, most universal, most intense expression of the religious instinct. It touches infinite extremes, for it is at once the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try and the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.

It is indeed the Christian's vital breath and native air. But, strange paradox, most of us are plagued with a subtle aversion to praying. We do not naturally delight in drawing near to God. We pay lip service to the delight and potency and value of prayer.

We assert that it is an indispensable adjunct of mature spiritual life. We know that it is constantly enjoined and exemplified in the Scriptures. But in spite of all this, too often we fail to pray.

Let us take encouragement from the lives of men of like passions with our selves who have conquered their natural reluctance and become mighty men of prayer.

The biographer of Samuel Chadwick wrote: “He was essentially a man of prayer. Every morning he would be astir shortly after six o'clock, and he kept a little room which was his private sanctum for his quiet hour before breakfast. He was mighty in public prayer because he was constant in private devotion....

When he prayed he expected God to do something. "I wish I had prayed more,” he wrote toward the end of h is life, "even if I had worked less; and from the bottom of my heart I wish I had prayed better."