Prayer that has no Fervor has no Heart

Tip! Let us always be aware of the fact that the power that is achieved to do the greater works that are required for Christ, is only gained through fervent prayer and faith in Jesus Christ.

PRAYER, without fervor, risks nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to endeavor. It comes with empty hands. These hands are lazy, as well as empty, which have never learned the lesson of clinging to the Cross.

Prayer that has no fervor has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Our heart, soul, and life, must have a place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of our crying out to God.

Paul was a notable example of the man who possessed a fervent spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all-consuming, centered immovably upon the object of his desire, and the God who was able to meet it.

Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that avails. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning; and dry up the springs of supplication.

It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of our soul creates an atmosphere favorable to prayer, because it is favorable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, noise. Heat is intensity -- something that glows and burns. Heaven is a very poor market for ice.

God wants warm-hearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire, to dwell in us; we are to be baptized, with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A indifferent temperament is objectionable to vital experience. If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire. To be absorbed in God's will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire is the qualifying condition of the person who would engage in effectual prayer.

Passionate Desire is the Basis of Unceasing Prayer

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Passionate desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination; no, but a strong yearning, an unquenchable love, which impregnates, glows, burns and fixes to our hearts. It is the flame of a present and active principle mounting up to God. It is enthusiasm propelled by desire that burns its way to the Throne of mercy, and obtains its plea.

This passionate desire is the belief that desire gives us triumph in the conflict, in a great struggle of prayer. It is the burden of a heavy desire that sobers, makes restless, and reduces to quietness in our soul as we just emerge from its mighty wrestling. It is the embracing character of desire which arms our prayer with a thousand pleas, and robes it with an invincible courage and an all-conquering power.

The Syrophenician woman is an object lesson in desire, settled to its consistency, but secure in its intensity and persistent boldness. The determined widow represents desire gaining its end, through obstacles impossible to feebler desires.

Prayer is not the rehearsal of a mere performance; nor is it an indefinite, widespread howl. Desire, while it kindles our soul, holds it to the object sought. Prayer is an indispensable phase of spiritual habit, but it stops to be prayer when carried on by habit alone. It is depth and intensity of spiritual desire which give intensity and depth to prayer.

Our soul cannot be listless when some great desire fires and inflames it. The urgency of our desire holds us to the thing desired with a tenacity which refuses to be lessened or loosened; it stays and pleads and persists, and refuses to let go until the blessing has been given.

"Lord, I cannot let You go, Till a blessing You bestow; Do not turn away Your face; Mine's an urgent, pressing case."