A Joyous Necessity

So I'm reading through a book for Leadership team with CRU called "Spiritual Leadership" by J. Oswald Sanders. Really great book, I highly recommend it. Last night I was doing some of the reading for this week and came across a chapter that really hit me. It may be because God has put the passion of prayer on my heart and every time I see something that is about or associated with prayer I get excited, but nevertheless, the chapter I read last night was Prayer and Leadership.

Because of the amazing wording of this book and the fact that I may not get the point across as strongly in my own words, I want to simply quote some statements that really stuck out to me while reading.

"Prayer is the most ancient, most universal, and most intensive expression of the religious instinct. It includes the simplest speech of infant lips, and the sublime entreaties of older age. All reach the Majesty on high. Prayer is indeed the Christian's vital breath and native air."

It then goes on to talk about how one can understand prayer and the power behind it. The simple fact is, we can only know from experience. "We cannot learn about prayer except by praying."

And then of course the importance of prayer..."If prayer is silly or unnecessary, Jesus would not have wasted His time at it. But wait! Prayer was the dominant feature of His life and a recurring part of His teaching. Prayer kept His moral vision sharp and clear. Prayer gave Him courage to endure the perfect but painful will of His Father. Prayer paved the way for transfiguration. To Jesus, prayer was not a hasty add-on, but a joyous necessity."

Then it talks about how it's not our power in prayer that does the work, but the influence our prayer has on God to do the work.

Prayer moves the arm

That moves the world

To bring deliverance down.

The final statement: "Great leaders of the Bible were great at prayer. They were not leaders because of brilliancy of thought, because they were exhaustless in resources, because of their magnificent culture or native endowment, but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God."