The Power of Prayer

I wish I had some great story to justify those words as my title. The fact is, I finished reading a book called The Power of Prayer by RA Torrey, and I wanted to tell people about it as well as recommend it.

RA Torrey was the second president at Moody. Our auditorium is named after him and some guy named Gray (or maybe Grey).  It was neat to learn about the sort of prayer warrior that he was. He wrote one heck of a book as well, but really the main thing I learned about him is this: RA Torrey would hate me, and if he walked into Moody today, he would foam at the mouth. At one point in the book, he gets completely off subject and talks for half a chapter about the sins of going to the theatre, going to movies, dancing, and playing cards. I've seen all four of those things take place on this campus in the last year... Perhaps even in the last week.

I won't hold that against him too much. The point of his getting off topic in that way was to talk about obstacles to a good prayer life. People forget that the Bible's promise for answered prayers often hinge on the persons devotion to Christ, His words, and His commandments. Some promises from the Bible people often cite about how God answers any prayer, really refer to how God will answer the prayer of righteous men. In fact, the longest chapter of the book was called "Hindrances to Prayer". It was like being punched in the gut in some ways, because Torrey brought out truths about prayer that many forget. We would rather write our shortcomings in prayer off as "prayers aren't answered in the same way anymore" rather than point to our own sin as a reason for ineffective prayer.

Past that, Torrey gives many guidelines for good praying. I just wrote them out, then I was like, "Nah, they're gonna need to read it. I can't explain it well enough."

One of the most amazing features of the book was just Torrey's heart for prayer. He talked about staying up all night at one time to pray for his brother's salvation. It made me wonder if I could do that. It made me wonder if I could be focused enough. Really some things Torrey said might be discredited as "charismatic" by many professors and students at Moody. That is only because so few of us see that real heart for prayer anymore.

At one point last year, I started to get more serious about my prayer, because I had been doing such a dirt poor job up until that point. I feel like it is something that God is being forced to cultivate in me and I continue to pray for a better prayer life. It was a tough book to read, because it felt odd reading more than one chapter at a time. Like at a every point, I needed to chuck the book and start praying. It is a hard thing to communicate in a boring blog entry, but the book taught me about the importance of prayer and why my prayer life had tons of untapped potential. In the book he would talked about prayer as the most important endeavor in life, and I don't treat it like that. That's a problem.

Anyways... Read it.

I'm starting to proof-read these less and less.

-Sam