The Power of Prayer

R. A. Torrey, a great minister of years gone by, once told this story: “Up in a little town in Maine, things were pretty dead some years ago. The churches were not accomplishing anything. “There were a few godly men in the churches, and they said, “Here we are, only uneducated laymen, but something must be done. Let us form a praying band. We will all center our prayers on one man. Who shall it be?” “They picked out one of the hardest men in town, a hopeless drunkard, and centered all their prayers upon him. In a week he was converted. “Then they took up another, and another, until within a year, two or three hundred were brought to God, and the fire spread out into all the surrounding country.” Dr. Torrey went on to say: “Definite prayer for those in the prison-house of sin is the need of the hour.”

God hasn’t changed one iota since then, or ever for that matter. Why is it then we don’t see people saved and communities reached and churches ablaze like we once did, like in the story that Dr. Torrey told? Because we don’t plead to God like the men and women of previous generations did. Our prayers can be just as effective as their’s were if we will put the supplication into them that they did.