Prayer sweeps the battlefield, slays the enemy, and buries the bones.
Interpretation
Prayer is a powerful tool that can bring about change and resolution in difficult situations.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the transformative and powerful nature of prayer, suggesting that it has the capacity to alter circumstances, defeat opposition, and provide closure. The imagery of sweeping a battlefield indicates that prayer can be a means of gaining victory over challenges and finding peace after conflict.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might invoke this quote to inspire a group facing challenges.
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.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.
When you look at traditions closely, examine what they really are, you realize they're made up of layers and layers of deferrals, delays, indecisions, tomorrows and long lunches.
The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
One of the problems with the kill-or-capture metric is that it has often been to the exclusion of having a deeper, richer understanding of the movement, its origins, and our adversaries' mindset. The nuances are absolutely critical. Our adversaries are wedded to the ideology that informs and fuels their struggle, and, by not paying attention, we risk not knowing our enemy.
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