This article shows that the question that begins with, "What is the best method for…?" is the wrong question for the church to ask. God does not delight in using methods or machinery. He delights in using men of prayer.

Source: Australian Presbyterian, 2004. 2 pages.

Methodical Men Harold Lindsell offers the Secret to Success

“Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.” History has demonstrated the truth of this assertion over and over again. Is it not strange, however, that when prayer diminishes and the fruits of Christian service begin to decline, men generally do not turn to prayer; instead they feverishly speed up their activities, mistakenly thinking that more complex organisation, additional machinery, or novel approaches will make up the lack? They never do. God delights to use men, not methods and machinery.

Scripture is studded with spectacular illustrations of men whose success or failure for God turned on their own personal prayer relationship with Him without reference to armies, machinery, methods, or even personal diligence. When Judah was invaded by Moab, the children of Ammon, and Mount Seir, King Jehoshaphat had little to work with. His military might was miniscule when compared with that of the coalition formed against him. In his desperate dilemma he called for national prayer and fasting and publicly acknowledged his country’s impotence. It was prayer, without recourse to human devices, human machinery, or armed might, which pro­vided deliverance (2 Chronicles 20:1-25).

God was so jealous of His own glory that He forbade Judah to do anything which might lead anyone to conclude that the army or any human agency was responsible for the divine deliverance which was actually the direct result of prayer.

It was Hezekiah’s prayer, not his army, which brought deliverance to himself and to his people from the hands of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:14-35). Humanly speaking, the odds were all against him. His chances for victory against Assyria were nil. God used a pray­ing man, not military might. Jerusalem was delivered and Judah saved, not on the field of battle, but with the importunate king on his knees on the floor of the house of God. Hezekiah fought a good fight, to be sure, but with a strange weapon — the prayer of faith. It was Hezekiah in fervent prayer again, not the skill of the physicians with all of their drugs, useful as these things are, which secured for him an additional 15 years of life when he was on his death bed (2 Kings 20:1-11).

It was Jacob’s prayer, not methods, machinery, or the machinations at which he was so skillful, which brought him favor with his brother Esau and enabled him to return to his own land with family and goods secure (Gen. 32:9ff.).

It was God using a man, not a man using human agencies, which enabled Elijah to restore the widow’s son from death.

In a more modern era, it was God using men in prayer, not money, methods, and machinery, which made possible the rise of the great Moravian missionary movement, as these people for years maintained 24-hour-a-day unbroken prayer vigils.

It was God who used men as they prayed out 100 new missionaries to China under the China Inland Mission in 1887.

It was “Praying Hyde”, not methods and machinery, that blessed India, produced revivals, and won spiritual victories over sin and Satan.

It was a praying German pastor named Gossner, touched by God’s Spirit, who was personally responsible for sending forth 144 missionaries to the ends of the earth. It was at Gossner’s open grave that a single sentence from the final eulogy illuminated this vital truth:

He (Gossner) prayed up the walls of a hospi­tal and the hearts of nurses; he prayed mission stations into being and missionar­ies into faith; he prayed open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands.

Adoniram Judson suffered long and prayed hard, and he left behind him these imperishable words:

I was never deeply interested in any project, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came at some time — no matter how far distant the day — somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised — it came.

There are thousands of illustrations of God’s use of men rather than His use of methods, devices, and machinery. Even redeemed men prefer to search out gim­micks, devise Madison Avenue advertising techniques, or employ research teams and turn to social engineering. But God appears curiously indifferent to all of these things. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts. In His sovereign operations in the world God watches for men, obedient men, through whom to accomplish his will. Neither organisation, methods nor machinery are substitutes for such men, trained in the school of prayer.

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