If you hear a tinkling cymbal when your pastor preaches, you can bet God has not heard struggle in prayer.
Pastors are much more than their sermons or programs. Sermons are the outflow of your life, just as God’s Word is the outflow of His being. Programs are the outflow of your heart, just as the practices of God are the outflow of His heart. Prayer connects the Heart of a pastor with the heart of God.
Long after the words of the sermon have been forgotten, the touch from the heart of the pastor lives on.
Fleshly pastors produce fleshly people, and the flesh is death to God (Rom 8:13)
God does not come into the pastor’s work simply because he is a pastor. God comes by prayer and an expression of need.
That God is found of us in the day we seek Him with our whole heart is as true of the pastor as of the repentant.
A prayerful ministry is the only ministry that brings the pastor into communion with both God and the needs of his people.
Prayer unites the pastor’s heart as much with his people as it does with His Abba, Father.
Timid, men-pleasing pastors are transformed into fearless prophets through prayer. Pastors of Prayer are met with fear by fleshly people. (1 Sam 16:4)
Pastors are not made in the seminary. Pastors are made in the prayer closet.
Great learning makes a proud pastor. Great praying makes a pastor a man of God.
The sweetest spirit by the slightest perversion may bear the bitterest fruit. So the sweetest pastor by lack of prayer may bear the most shallow ministry.
The pastor must be God-touched, God-enabled and God-made. (2 Cor 3:5-6)
Prayer gives the preaching of the pastor life, life as the springs give life. Prayer is the conduit for the spring of living water.
Prayer keeps the pastor thirsting for the life-giving power of God.
Without prayer, the life-giving spring of a pastor’s life becomes a trickle of apathy and insignificance.
Tears produced by Spiritless preaching are but summer’s breath on a snow man, nothing but surface slush.
A pastor’s sermon may appear to be heart-felt and earnest, but without the power of prayer, it is the emotion of an actor and the earnestness of an attorney.
The sermon may glow with the intelligence and verbal skill of a well-trained pastor, but without the Holy Spirit, the glow and glitter will be as barren as a field sown with thistles.
A Prayerless pastor exalts self in the Holy of Holies.
A Prayerless pastor has been disconnected from the divine current.
Prayerlessness violates and defames the power of the Holy of Holies in the church of God.
A life-giving pastor costs much – death to self, crucifixion to the world and travail of soul in prayer.
Without the life of the Spirit, beautiful words of a sermon are but the beautiful flowers surrounding the coffin.
Prayer transforms the pastor into the pastor God needs him to be.
Prayerless pastors are death to a Spirit-filled church.
The pastor feeble in prayer is feeble in the Life-giving Spirit!
Fleshly pastors can draw people to themselves and to his church, but the church will be a graveyard, not an embattled army.
Fleshly pastors advance sin, not holiness, and populate hell, not heaven.
Prayerless preaching is life-sucking.
Apart from prayer, pastors tend to a dead flock.
Feeble sheep follow prayerless pastors.
Unless the pastor is the greatest of prayers, he will become the greatest of backsliders.
It is impossible for a pastor to keep his spirit in harmony with the heart of God without much prayer.
The work of the ministry will harden the pastor’s heart if devoid of prayer.
Pastors weak in prayer are to be pitied by their people.
Prayerless pastors build prayerless churches.
Powerful ministry is not flavored by prayer, but embodied by prayer.
Effectual prayer builds an effectual ministry.
Prayer that is made much of produces sermons that are made much of.
Minor prayers make minor pastors.
Life-giving pastors are graduates of the school of prayer.
Talking to men for God can be done by anyone. Talking to God for men is done by few.
Pastors coat their sermons with prayer, but God wants us to bathe them in prayer.
Powerful sermons flow from prayer; dead sermons are bookended by it.
The pastor’s study must become a closet, and altar, a ladder, that every thought ascend God-ward before it goes man-ward.
Sermons are scented by God through prayer.
Sermons are lifeless and still until prayer provides the energy of life
A Pastor must move God toward his people before he can move his people to God.
Access to God through prayer gives a pastor access to the hearts of his people
True praying is born of oneness with Christ and fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Pastors empowered by true praying carry the true seeds of eternal life to their people.
Popular pastors are often prayerless pastors.
Prayerless pastors see no urgent need for the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pastors who are mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men.
Pastors weak in prayer preach as tinkling cymbals
Today’s pastor feels pressured to focus on man’s methods and plans for advancing his church. Instead, he should feel pressure to seek the heart of God through prayer. It is God who gives the increase.
God gives His increase not through methods and machines, but through men whose hearts are fully committed to Him.
Advancing the church is not a matter of methods, but a matter of the hearts of your people. Prayer changes the hearts of men.
With inspiration from E.M. Bounds and his book “The Preacher and Prayer” http://temcat.com/08A-Prayer-Prom/Preach-Prayer.PDF
Loving the Word with the MudPreacher 