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Text Sermons : ~Other Speakers M-R : Old Paths Magazine - Issue 17 : Edward Payson by David Smithers

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E.M. BOUNDS IN HIS CLASSIC little book "Power Through Prayer", wrote, "What the Church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use - men of prayer, men mighty in prayer." Edward Payson was just such a man; a man mighty in prayer. "He prayed without ceasing and felt safe nowhere but at the throne of grace.”

He may be said to have studied theology on his knees. Much of his time he spent literally prostrated with his Bible open before him pleading the promise; "I will send the comforter and when He, The Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth." Payson's advice to his fellow ministers was, "prayer is the first thing, the second thing and the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray then my dear brother, pray, pray." It has been well said that the secret of Edward Payson's ministry was that he prayed much in secret. The scars on his bedroom floor testify to this fact. Next to Payson's bed were deep grooves in the hardwood floor where his knees had pressed repeatedly in times of travail. On January 4, 1807, he wrote, "I was favored with a spirit of prayer beyond all my former experience. I was in great agony and wrestled both for myself and others with great power. God seemed to bow the heavens and come down and open all His treasures, bidding me, take what I would." 

January 29th, "I never felt such longings after God or such a desire to depart to be with Christ. My soul thirsted for more full communion with my God and Savior. I do not now feel satisfied as I used to with the manifestations of the divine presence, but still feel hungry and craving." February 18, "I was enabled to lie at Jesus' feet and to wash them with the tears of contrition. No pleasure I have ever found in the Christian life is superior to this." February 28, "I was favored with great enlargement in prayer. I seemed to be carried out of myself into the presence of God."





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