The Power of Prayer.

From the book, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 

1904, abridged

Written by S.D. Gordon

There is one inlet of power in the life - anybody's life - any kind of power; just one inlet: the Holy Spirit. He is power. He is in everyone who opens his door to God...To yield to his mastery, to cultivate his friendship, to give him full swing, that will result in what is called power - the Holy Spirit in control.

There are five outlets of power; five avenues through which this One within shows himself and reveals his power.

First: through the life and what we are. If we be right, the power of God will be constantly flowing out, though we be not conscious of it. It throws the keenest kind of emphasis on a man being right in his life. There will be an eager desire to serve...

Second: through the lips, what we say. It may be said stammeringly and falteringly, but if said your best with the desire to please the Master, it will be God-blessed. I have heard a man talk; he stuttered and blushed and got his grammar badly tangled, but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech; it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best and leave the rest.

Third: through our service, what we do. It may be done bunglingly and blunderingly. Your best may not be the best, but if it is your best it will bring a harvest.

Fourth: through our money, what we do not keep, but loosen out for God. Money comes nearest to omnipotence of anything we handle.

Fifth: through our prayer, what we claim in Jesus' name.

By all odds the greatest of these is the outlet through prayer...The greatest thing anyone can do for God and for man is to pray. It is not the only thing, but it is the chief thing. The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I don't mean those who talk about prayer, nor those who say they believe in prayer, nor those who can explain about prayer; I mean those who take time and pray.

They don't have time. It must be taken from something else.

There are people who put prayer first and group the other items in life's schedule around and after prayer.These are the people today who are doing the most for God; in winning souls, in solving problems, in awakening churches, in supplying both men and money for mission posts...

Man's willingness is God's channel to the earth. God never crowds nor coerces. Everything God does for man and through man He does with the man's consent. God can do nothing for the man with a shut hand and shut life. There must be an open hand and heart and life through which God can give what he longs to. An open life, an open hand, open upward, is the pipe line of communication between the heart of God and this poor befooled old world. Our prayer is God's opportunity to get into the world that would shut him out.

Jesus: The Unfallen Human, Our Brother.

S.D. Gordon wasn't a preacher. He only had a high school education, but he wrote more than 25 devotional books that were popular. He lived from 1859 to 1936. I am reading one called, "Quiet Talks About Jesus," and I'm enjoying it very much. Here are a few quotes from the book about Jesus being human and our brother.

"Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand."

"God and man used to talk together freely. But one day man went away from God. And then he went farther away. He left home. He left his native land, Eden, where he lived with God. He emigrated from God, and through going away he lost his mother-tongue."

"Jesus is God becoming man's fellow. He comes down by his side and says, 'Let's pull up together.' Jesus was a man. He was as truly human as though only human. We are apt to go at a thing from the outside. God always reaches within and fastens his hook there. He finds the solution of every problem within itself. When he would lead man back the Eden road to the old trysting place under the tree of life, he sent a man. Jesus takes his place as a man and refuses to be budged from the human level with his brothers."

In his humanity, Jesus was in the image of God, even as we are. Adam was an unfallen man. Jesus was that and more; a tested and now matured unfallen man, and by the law of growth ever growing more. Adam was an innocent, unfallen man up to the temptation. Jesus was a virtuous unfallen man. The test with Him changed innocence to virtue.

"In his experiences, his works, his temptations, his struggles, his victories, Jesus was clearly human. In his ability to read men's thoughts and know their lives without finding out by ordinary means, his knowledge ahead of coming events, his knowledge of and control over nature, he was clearly more than the type of human we know.

Yet until we know more than we seem to now of the proper powers of an unfallen man matured and growing in the use and control of those powers we cannot draw here any line between human and divine. The whole presumption is in favor of believing that in all of this Jesus was simply exercising the proper human powers which with him were not hurt by sin but ever increasing in use.

Jesus insisted on living a simple, true human life, dependent on God and upon others..."