Oh! yes, (the prayer meeting) is the place to meet with the Holy Ghost, and this is the way to get His mighty power. If we would have Him, we must meet in greater numbers; we must pray with greater fervency, we must watch with greater earnestness, and believe with firmer steadfastness. The prayer meeting...is the appointed place for the reception of power.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of group prayer and sincere devotion in accessing divine power.
Charles Spurgeon highlights the significance of communal prayer as a means to engage with the Holy Spirit and receive His power. He suggests that true effectiveness in prayer comes from unity, fervency, earnestness, and unwavering faith among believers, pointing to the prayer meeting as a crucial setting for spiritual empowerment.
In practice
In a church sermon, to encourage attendance at a prayer meeting.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
We pray not to inform God or instruct Him but to beseech Him closely, to be made intimate with Him, by continuance in supplication; to be humbled; to be reminded of our sins.
We cannot live, we cannot look at the truth about ourselves without letting ourselves be looked at and generated by Christ in daily Eucharistic Adoration.
God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him; He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.
Seek to be made holier every day; pray, strive, wrestle for the spirit, to make you like God. Be as much you can with God. I declare to you that I had rather be one hour with God than a thousand with the sweetest society on earth or in Heaven. All other joys are but streams; God is the fountain.
For the power Thou hast given me to lay hold of things unseen: For the strong sense I have that this is not my home:For my restless heart which nothing finite can satisfy: I give Thee thanks, O God. For the invasion of my soul by Thy Holy Spirit: For all human love and goodness that speak to me of Thee: For the fullness of Thy glory outpoured in Jesus Christ: I give Thee thanks, O God.
Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.
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