If the spirit of prayer be not with the people, the minister may preach like an angel, but he cannot expect success. If there be not the spirit of prayer in a church there may be wealth, there may be talent, there may be a measure of effort, there may be an extensive machinery, but the Lord is not there.

It is as sure evidence of the presence of God that men pray as the rising of the thermometer is an evidence of the increase of the temperature. As the Nilometer measures the rising of the water in the Nile, and so foretells the amount of harvest in Egypt; so is the prayer-meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people.

If God be near a church it must pray; and if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be slothfulness in prayer.

from thedailyspurgeon.com

The Holy Spirit has convicted me about the amount of time I have spent praying for my church, and really praying for a miracle to happen in our midst as we worship together.

I think many times we have gotten to the point that we don’t really expect God to show up any more and do something where only He could get the glory.

It takes time, dedication and concentration to get before God and get in the right frame of mind and heart to pray fervently for the needs of others. God desires to use each one of us to do His Work here on earth, but we must align our desires and hearts with His.

The church as a whole has become powerless against Satan and his methods because we do not take the time to make prayer a priority. It is easy to say short prayers here and there, but hard to really get down to the business of the kind of praying that changes lives and hearts for good.

I challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit to help you make prayer a priority in your everyday life.

I found an awesome prayer that I know can make a huge difference in your life if you will ask God for these three things each day.

Ask God to do whatever is necessary in your life so that you can be a part of His supernatural Kingdom work. He wants to use you in a mighty way to make a difference in whatever way He chooses.

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I have never done any really bad things such as breaking the law and getting caught, or things that others would look upon as being really bad. I know I wasn’t the perfect child, but I never lived in open rebellion against my parents and caused them much distress like some children have. In school, my classmates used to laughingly call me a “goody two shoes” because I was too scared to do many rebellious things. My parents have always supported me in everything I have done, and I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me.

I think if you have lived your life being a “good person” it can be very easy to not see yourself as you really are. After all, you haven’t done really bad things so you don’t think of yourself as grieving God or the Holy Spirit with the ordinary things you do each day.

I have already admitted to being a people-pleaser in my younger years, so I was devastated when I realized how much I had taken the Holy Spirit for granted in my everyday life.

I found I had started to take for granted that He would always be there and I could just ask for wisdom and direction when I needed it. How could I take God so for granted when He has and continues to do so much for me? The last thing I ever wanted to do was grieve Him in any way.

Realizing this has changed my life. I don’t ever want to forget these particular words of Charles Spurgeon, so I have copied them off and put them in a place where I will see them on a regular basis. You might want to do the same thing, especially if you see yourself and your own life in these words.

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Oh, my friends, when I think how often you and I have let the devil in, I wonder the Spirit has not withdrawn from us. The perseverance of a saint for a single day is a multitude of miracles of mercy. When you consider that the Spirit is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and yet he dwells in the heart where sin often intrudes, a heart out of which come blasphemies, and murders, and all manner of evil thoughts, what if sometimes he is grieved, and retires and leaves us to ourselves for a season?

It is a marvel that he is there at all, for he must be daily grieved with these evil guests, these false traitors, these base intruders who thrust themselves into that little temple which he had honored with his presence, the temple of the heart of man.

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I fear I have taken much too lightly what Jesus did for me when He died on the cross and rose again. By going back to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father, He made it possible for the Holy Spirit to come and reside in the heart of every person who believes in Him as their Lord and Savior.

If you have asked Jesus into your heart, you have the awesome gift of the Holy Spirit who lives inside you and wants to lead you in the right direction, but He is so much more than that. He is your comforter in time of trouble, the provider of your every need, and He always has your best interest at heart.

First thing each morning, thank the Holy Spirit for who He is and what He has done in your life. Also thank Him that you don’t have to make decisions on your own any more. It is a sad thing to live your life without His leadership and guidance because He is an awesome gift that has been given to every believer in Christ.

Please ask Him to reveal areas in your life where you need to change or grow and be obedient to His direction. Your life will truly take on new meaning.

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We use the excuse that we don’t have a degree in theology or Bible, or the Pastor is the one who is supposed to make sure we know these things. There is no possible way he can do that in a couple of hours a week. You must read and study the Word for yourself – then if you have any questions you should ask your pastor or another mature Christian to explain what you don’t understand.

If you don’t really know the truth, it will be easy for Satan to make you believe a lie. Usually he will give you just enough truth to make you think that everything he says is the truth.

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If we sometimes looked a little more to the connection of sentences, we should be kept from very dangerous errors. The Bible ought to be treated in conformity with common sense, as you would use any other book. If you took the writings of any author, however carefully he might express himself, if you picked out a sentence here and a sentence there, [you] might make the man to say what he never believed; nay, even make him to be the supporter of opinions which he abhors. So it is with the Bible: if you pay no regard to the connection and general run of the passage, you miss the mind of the Spirit of God, and rather thrust your own mind into God’s words than bring out God’s mind from the words of the Holy Ghost.

From a sermon entitled “Working Out What Is Worked In,” delivered July 12, 1868.

The Daily Spurgeon

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No matter what version of the Bible you read, you will never truly be able to understand it without the Holy Spirit opening your mind, comprehension, and ears to hear the real truth – not just the truth as you have always perceived it to be.

If you don’t read the Bible with the determination that you want to know the truth, your mind will filter the parts that make you uncomfortable, telling you that the changes you need to make are far beyond your grasp or helping you justify why you don’t need to change.

*  If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, make it a point to read the Bible for a few minutes each morning. You can start out with 5 or 10 minutes, asking the Holy Spirit to show you truths that you have never seen before. It won’t take long for you to look at the Bible differently. It will change your life to the point that you will never want to go back to where you were before.

Don’t let Satan make you believe the lie that the Bible is boring or just an old fashioned irrelevant book that is out of date for today’s times. Its Words are life, health, and well-being for the one who reads it and applies its words to their life.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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The Christians of the early ages sacrificed themselves continually upon the altar of Christ with joy and alacrity. Wherever they were they bore testimony against the evil customs which surrounded them. They counted it foul scorn for a Christian to be as others were; they would not conform themselves to the world: they could not, for they were transformed by the renewing of their minds; their love to Christ compelled them to bear their witness against everything which dishonored Christ by being contrary to truth, and righteousness, and love. They were innovators, reformers, image-breakers, everywhere; they could not be quiet and let others do as they pleased, whilst they followed out their own views, but their protest was continual, incessant, annoying to the foe, but acceptable to God. In every place the Christian was a speckled bird, because love to Jesus would not allow him to disguise his convictions; he was everywhere a stranger and an alien, because the very language of his everyday life differed from that of his neighbors.

Where others blasphemed, he adored; where others used oaths habitually, his “yea” was yea, and his “nay,” nay; where others girt on the sword, he resisted not evil; where others were each man seeking his own and not his brother’s welfare, the Christian was known as being one whose treasure was in heaven, and who had set his affections upon things above.

From a sermon by Charles Spurgeon entitled “More Than Conquerors,” delivered May 19, 1867.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living - practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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We never find Adam afraid of God, nor of any manifestation of Deity while he was in Paradise an obedient creature, but no sooner had he touched the fatal fruit than he found that he was naked, and hid himself. When he heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, Adam was afraid and hid himself from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

Sin makes miserable cowards of us all. See the man who once could hold delightful converse with his Maker, now dreading to hear his Maker’s voice and skulking in the grove like a felon, who knows his guilt, and is afraid to meet the officers of justice. Beloved, in order to remove this dread nightmare of slavish fear from the breast of humanity, where its horrible influence represses all the noblest aspirations of the soul, our Lord Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

From a sermon entitled “God Incarnate, The End Of Fear,” delivered December 23, 1866.

The Daily Spurgeon

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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Faith is the Christian’s strength; he who doubts not staggers not. Unbelief is the source of our chief weakness. As soon as we begin to distrust our feet begin to slide. Hence, Satan, knowing this, injects that cruel and wicked suspicion, “If – if thou be the Son of God.”

Notice the point of attack: it was our Lord’s sonship. Satan knows that if he can make any of us doubt our interest in the Father’s love, doubt our regeneration and adoption, then he will have us very much in his power. How can I pray, “Our Father which art in heaven,” if I do not know him to be my Father? If the dark suspicion crosses my mind that I am no child of his, I cannot say with the prodigal, “I will arise and go unto my Father,” for I do not know that I have a Father to go to.

Having a Father, I feel sure that he will pity my infirmities, that he will feel for my wants, redress my wrongs, protect me in the hour of danger, and succor me in the moment of peril; but if, if I have no Father in heaven, if I be not his child, then, miserable orphan! what shall I do – whither shall I flee?

Standing on a pinnacle as God’s child I shall stand there erect, though every wind should seek to whirl me from my foothold; but if he be not my Father, and I am upon a pinnacle, then my destruction is inevitable, and my ruin will be swift and total. “If thou be the Son of God.” Oh, dear friends, beware of unbelief…

From a sermon entitled “Temptations on the Pinnacle,” delivered May 6, 1866.    The Daily Spurgeon

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Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – Practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

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Joshua might have gone from city to city exterminating the nations, as they justly deserved to be, but Achan had taken of the accursed thing and hidden it in his tent, therefore no victory could be won by Israel till his theft and sacrilege had been put away. Beloved, this is symbolic of the Christian Church. We might go from victory to victory; our home mission operations might be successful, and our foreign agencies might be crowned with triumph, if it were not that we have Achans in the camp at home.

When Churches have no conversions, it is more than probable that hypocrites concealed among them have turned away the Lord’s blessing. You who are inconsistent, who make the profession of religion the means of getting wealth, you who unite yourselves with God’s people, but at the same time covet the goodly Babylonish garment, and the wedge of gold, you are those who cut the sinews of Zion’s strength; you prevent the Israel of God from going forth to victory. Ah! little do we know, beloved, how Satan has hindered us. We, as a Church, have had much reason to thank God, but how many more might within these walls have been added to the number of this Church if it had not been for the coldness of some, the indifference of others, the inconsistency of a few, and the worldliness of many more! Satan hinders us not merely by direct opposition, but by sending Achans into the midst of our camp.

From a sermon entitled “Satanic Hindrances,” delivered October 29, 1865.

http://www.thedailyspurgeon.com

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living - Practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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