{"id":3965,"date":"2009-02-07T22:27:20","date_gmt":"2009-02-08T03:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/ch-spurgeon\/luke-181"},"modified":"2009-02-07T22:27:20","modified_gmt":"2009-02-08T03:27:20","slug":"luke-181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/2009\/02\/07\/luke-181\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke 18:1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“Men ought always to pray.” 
              — Luke 18:1 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If men ought always to pray and not to faint, much more Christian men.
Jesus has sent his church into the world on the same errand upon which
he himself came, and this mission includes intercession. What if I say
that the church is the world’s priest? Creation is dumb, but the church
is to find a mouth for it. It is the church’s high privilege to pray
with acceptance. The door of grace is always open for her petitions,
and they never return empty-handed. The veil was rent for her, the
blood was sprinkled upon the altar for her, God constantly invites her
to ask what she wills. Will she refuse the privilege which angels might
envy her? Is she not the bride of Christ? May she not go in unto her
King at every hour? Shall she allow the precious privilege to be
unused? The church always has need for prayer. There are always some in
her midst who are declining, or falling into open sin. There are lambs
to be prayed for, that they may be carried in Christ’s bosom? the
strong, lest they grow presumptuous; and the weak, lest they become
despairing. If we kept up prayer-meetings four-and-twenty hours in the
day, all the days in the year, we might never be without a special
subject for supplication. Are we ever without the sick and the poor,
the afflicted and the wavering? Are we ever without those who seek the
conversion of relatives, the reclaiming of back-sliders, or the
salvation of the depraved? Nay, with congregations constantly
gathering, with ministers always preaching, with millions of sinners
lying dead in trespasses and sins; in a country over which the darkness
of Romanism is certainly descending; in a world full of idols,
cruelties, devilries, if the church doth not pray, how shall she excuse
her base neglect of the commission of her loving Lord? Let the church
be constant in supplication, let every private believer cast his mite
of prayer into the treasury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Men ought always to pray.”                — Luke 18:1 If men ought always to pray and not to faint, much more Christian men.Jesus has sent his church into the world on the same errand upon whichhe himself came, and this mission includes intercession. What if I saythat the church is the world’s priest? Creation is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}