Importance of Prayer by Walter Wynn

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 2, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 34.

Importance of Prayer

By Walter Wynn

Walter Wynn, in New York “Christian Herald”

PRAYER is a wonderful power in private life. When Luther was in the throes of the Reformation, he used to say he could not get on without three hours a day in prayer. Abraham Lincoln once said: “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that around me seemed insufficient for the day.” When Jesus was in agony in the garden, we are told that “He prayed the more earnestly.” I have tried to preach on these words, but they choked me.

Some texts in the Bible unfold the infinite, especially those that refer to prayer. We are told that when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up into the mountain to pray, as He prayed, “the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment was white and glistering.” That was a natural result. Prayer is the most transforming influence in the world. I beg of you to try it in your homes.

I heard Mr. Moody once say that he never failed to pray one prayer: “Lord, help me.” That prayer is earnest, brief, to the point, with its arms outstretching to the Infinite. Pray short, aim at something, work with God to realize your own prayers, and during the blackest night never lose faith. God is not dead. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. O, if you would only pray in secret, your homes would become palaces of the Most High! To pray will not lower your dignity, altho it is to be feared that the masses of working men in this country regard prayer with indifference. The greatest men and women have prayed,—Cromwell, Grant, Lincoln, Gladstone. Prayer is spiritual ozone. It fills the home with the music of the heavenly spheres.