Samuel Chadwick (1860-1932) was a Wesleyan Methodist minister.
The Church is the Body of Christ, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. He fills the Body, directs its movements, controls its members, inspires its wisdom, supplies it's strength. He guides into truth, sanctifies its agents, and empowers for witnessing. The Spirit has never abdicated His authority nor relegated His power.
Brains can argue, but it takes heart to comfort.
I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power.
It takes us long to learn that prayer is more important than organization, more powerful than armies, more influential than wealth and mightier than all learning.
Great grief prays with great earnestness. Prayer is not a collection of balanced phrases; it is the pouring out of the soul. What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul. In them men wrestle with principalities and powers. . . ”The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.
The one thing that is said to have surprised God is that the voice of intercession had ceased. 'And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor' (Isaiah 59:16).
It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.
We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frownLet no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified and aflame with the fire of the Holy Ghost.
Prayer is the acid test of devotion.
Confusion and impotence are the inevitable results when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit.
The Church is the Body of Christ begotten, unified, and indwelt by the Spirit, but forgetting the Spirit, men wrangle over limbs, functions, and orders. The Christian religion is hopeless without the Holy Ghost.
To pray in the name of Christ is to pray as one who is at one with Christ, whose minid is the mind of Christ, whose desires are the desires of Christ, and whose purpose is one with that of Christ.
The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.
Satan laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
There is no way of learning to pray but by praying. No reasoned philosophy of prayer ever taught a soul to pray. We know not what we should pray for as we ought, and if prayer waits for understanding it will never begin. We discover by using. We learn by practice. Though a man should have all knowledge about prayer, and though he should understand all mysteries about prayer, unless he prays he will never learn to pray.
A season of silence is the best preparation for speech with God.
The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power. Destitute of the Fire of God, nothing else counts; possessing Fire, nothing else matters.
A gift without a heart behind it is a bribe. God asks for our heart, not our gifts.
Nothing would turn the nation back to God so surely and so quickly as a Church that prayed and prevailed. The world will never believe in a religion in which there is no supernatural power. A rationalized faith, a socialized Church and a moralized gospel may gain applause, but they awaken no conviction and win no converts.
Praying solves the problems of prayer.