“Practice what you preach!” That is an expression we have often heard; but are we heeding it? If we make prayer a priority, then it will be a passion in our practice and our preaching.
Prayer is caught before it is taught. People need to see a sermon before we share the sermon. If, however, prayer is a priority in our practice, it will claim a place in our preaching. People need to be inspired to pray and instructed in prayer.
Andrew Murray put it this way:
“He sends His servants out to call them. Let ministers make this a part of their duty. Let them make their church a training school of intercession. Give the people definite objects for prayer. Encourage them to devote a definite amount of time to it, even if it is only ten minutes every day. Help them to understand the boldness they may use with God. Teach them to expect and look out for answers. Show them what it is first to pray and get an answer in secret, and then carry the answer and impart the blessing. Tell everyone who is master of his own time that he is as the angels, free to tarry before the throne and then go out and minister to the heirs of salvation. Sound out the blessed tidings that this honor is for all God’s people. There is no difference. That servant girl, this laborer, that bedridden invalid, this daughter in her mother’s home, these men and young men in business – all are called and all are needed.
God seeks intercessors. …As ministers take up the work of finding and training intercessors, they will feel the urge to pray even more themselves. Christ gave Paul to be a pattern of His grace before He made him a preacher of it. It has been well said, “The first duty of a clergyman is humbly to beg of God that all he would have done in his people may be first truly and fully done in himself.” The effort to bring this message of God may cause much heart-searching and humiliation. All the better. The best practice in doing a thing is helping others to do it. O ye servants of Christ, set as watchmen to cry to God day and night, let us awake to our holy calling. Let us believe in the power of intercession. Let us practice it. Let us seek on behalf of our people to get from God Himself the Spirit and the life we preach. With our spirit and life given up to God in intercession, the Spirit and life that God gives them through us cannot fail to be the life of intercession too.” (The Ministry of Intercession, pp. 123-124, Kindle Edition)
Preacher—be the spark that ignites a flame of intercessory prayer!
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