E. M. Bounds
Chapter 5
Prayer and Enthusiasm
St. Teresa rose off her deathbed to finish her work. She inspected, with all her quickness of eye and love of order, the whole house where she had been carried to die. She saw everything put in its proper place and everyone answering to their proper order. After that she attended to the divine offices of the day. Then she went back to her bed, summoned her daughter around her … and, with David’s penitential prayers on her tongue, Teresa of Avila went forth to meet her Bridegroom. – Alexander Whyte
Prayer without burning enthusiasm stakes nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to stake. It comes with empty hands. These hands are listless, empty, and have never learned the lesson of clinging to the cross.
Prayer without enthusiasm has no heart in it.It is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life must find a place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.
Paul was a notable example of the man who possesses a fervent spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all-consuming. It 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 effective and profitable. Coldness of spirit hinders praying. It takes fire to make prayers go. A warm soul creates a favorable atmosphere to prayer because it is favorable to fervency. Prayer ascends to heaven by fire. Yet, fire is not fuss, heat, or noise. Heat is intensity — something that glows and burns.
God wants warmhearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire to dwell in us. We are to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (See Luke 3:16.) Fervency is warmth of soul. A phlegmatic temperature is detestable to vital experience. If our faith 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 and to be so in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire are the qualifying conditions of the man who would engage in effective prayer.
Our Lord wants us against feeble praying. “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1), said Christ to His disciples. This means that we are to possess enough enthusiasm to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer. Fire makes one alert, vigilant, and brings him out more than a conqueror. The atmosphere about us is too heavily charged with resisting forces for limp and languid prayers to make headway. It takes heat, fervency, and meteoric fire to push through to the upper heavens where God dwells with His saints in light.
Many of the great Bible characters were notable examples of fervency of spirit when they were seeking God. The psalmist declared with great earnestness, “My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgement at all times” (Ps 119:20). what strong heart desires are here! What earnest soul longings there are for the Word of the living God! An even greater fervency is expressed by him in another place:
As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? (Ps 42:1-2)
This is the word of a man who lived in a state of grace and had been deeply and supernaturally fulfilled in his soul.
Fervency before God counts in the hour of prayer and finds a speedy and rich reward at His hands. The psalmist gave us this statement of what God had done for the king, as his heart turned toward his Lord: “Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips” (Ps 21:2).
At another time, he expressed himself directly to God in making his request: “Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee” (Ps 38:9). What a cheerful thought! Our inward groaning, our secret desires, our heart longings are not hidden from the eyes of Him with whom we deal in prayer.
The incentive to fervency of spirit before God is precisely the same as it is for continued and earnest prayer. While fervency is not prayer, yet it comes out of an earnest soul and is precious in the sight of God. Fervency in prayer is the forerunner of what God will do by way of an answer. When we seek His face in prayer, God stands pledged to give us the desire of our hearts in proportion to the fervency of spirit we exhibit.
Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain or intellectual faculties of the mind. Fervency, therefore, is not an expression of the intellect. Fervency of spirit is something far above poetical fancy or sentimental imagery. It is something besides preference which contrasts likes with dislikes. Fervency is the pulse and movement of the emotional nature.
It is not our job to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can ask God to implant it. Then, it is ours to nourish and cherish, guard against extinction, and prevent its lessening or decline. The process of personal salvation is not just to pray and express our desires to God. But it is to acquire a fervent spirit and seek to cultivate it. It is never wrong to ask God to create in us and keep alive the spirit of fervent prayer.
Fervency has to do with God, just as prayer has to do with Him. Desire always has an objective. If we desire it all, we desire something. The degree of enthusiasm with which we form our spiritual desires will always serve to determine the earnestness of our praying. In this relation, Adoniram Judson has said,
A travailing spirit, the throes of a great burdened desire, belongs to prayer. A fervency strong enough to drive away sleep, which devotes and inflames the spirit and which retires all earthly ties, all this belongs to wrestling, prevailing prayer. The Spirit, the power, the air, and food of prayer is in such a spirit.
Prayer must be clothed with fervency, strength, and power. It is the force that, centered on God, determines the amount of Himself given out for earthly good. Men who are fervent in spirit are bent on attaining righteousness, truth, grace, and all other sublime, powerful graces that adorn the character of the authentic, unquestioned child of God.
God once declared the following message by the mouth of the prophet Hanani to Asa. Asa, at one time, had been true to God. But, through success and material prosperity, he lost his faith.
The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars. (2 Chron 16:9)
God had heard Asa’s prayer in early life; but because he had given up the life of prayer and simple faith, disaster and trouble came to him.
In Romans 15:30 we have the word strive in the request that Paul made for prayerful cooperation. In Colossians 4:12 we have the same word, but translated differently: “Epaphras … always laboring fervently for you in prayers.” Paul charged the Romans to strive together with him in prayer, that is, to help him with his struggle in prayer. The word strive means “to enter into a contest, to fight against adversaries.” It also means “to engage with fervent zeal to endeavor to obtain.”
These recorded instances of the exercise and reward of faith allows us to see that, in almost every instance, faith was blended with trust until the former was swallowed up in the latter. It is hard to properly distinguish the specific activities of these two qualities, faith and trust. But there is a point at which faith is relieved of its burden, so to speak, and trust comes along and says, You have done your part. The rest is mine!”
In the incident of the barren fig tree, our Lord transfers the marvelous power of faith to His disciples.
To their exclamation, “How soon is the fig tree withered away!” (Matt 21:20), He said,
If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. (Matt 21:21-22)
When a believer achieves these magnificent proportions of faith, he steps into the realm of absolute trust. He stands without a tremor at the height of his spiritual outreaching. He has attained faith’s top step, which is unswerving, unalterable, unquestionable trust in the power of the living God.
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