For the church of God to accomplish His will in the world, it must have praying leaders. Praying leaders preserve the spirituality of the church, just as prayerless leaders make for unspiritual conditions. The church is not spiritual simply by the mere fact of its existence, nor by its vocation. Like the new birth, it is “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). 

The church may multiply its baptisms, and administer its sacraments innumerable times, and yet be as far from fulfilling its true mission as human conditions can make it. 

This present world’s general attitude retires prayer to insignificance and obscurity. By it, salvation and eternal life are put in the background. It cannot be too often affirmed, therefore, that the prime need of the church is not men of money nor men of brains, but men of prayer. Leaders in the realm of religious activity are to be judged by their praying habits, and not by their money or social position. 

God does not conduct His work, solely, with men of education or wealth or business capacity. Neither can He carry on His work through men of large intellects or of great culture, nor yet through men of great social eminence and influence. All these can be made to count provided they are not regarded as being primary. These men, by the simple fact of these qualities and conditions, cannot lead in God’s work nor control His cause. Men of prayer, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the Kingdom of God on earth. No other sort will fit in the scheme or do the deed. Men, great and influential in other things, but small in prayer, cannot do the work Almighty God has set out for His church to do.

In many places an alarming state of things has come to pass, in that the many who are enrolled in our churches are not praying men and women. It is greatly to be feared that much of the work of the church is being done by those who are perfect strangers to the closet. Small wonder that the work does not succeed. 

Here, then, is one reason why men do not 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” (James 5:16). We pray as we live; we live as we pray. Life will never be finer than the quality of the closet. 

In all God’s plans for human redemption, He proposes that men pray. The men are to pray in every place, in the church, in the closet, in the home, on sacred days and on secular days. All things and everything are dependent on the measure of men’s praying.  

Adapted and condensed from the book Weapon of Prayer by E.M. Bounds. Work is in the Public Domain.

E.M. Bounds (1835-1913) was trained as a lawyer before being called to the Gospel ministry, serving as a pastor and later as an editor of Christian journals. Of the 11 books he wrote, nine dealt with the necessity and urgency of prayer.  

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version.

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