Magnificent Prayer #178

Evan Roberts says he had the “call” to prayer in Newcastle Emlyn in the autumn of 1904, but unexpectedly he found himself on a tide carrying him into public ministry, and the call to prayer for the time being sunk into abeyance.

It did not return as a definite call demanding attention until sometime in the spring of 1907. He was then in Leicester, in the weakness of a breakdown in health, which had kept him aside from public work since the beginning of 1906.

Even during this time of weakness there had been many indications of his power in prayer, and some very extraordinary answers to prayer had been given.

The call to prayer came back suddenly one day in the spring of 1907. The Lord’s servant had been for two hours or more, with another, dealing exhaustively in prayer with the needs of the moment. The “time of prayer” was over, and he was occupied with some other thing, when a “draw” to prayer came again, and he said to himself, “If I obey this, I shall be always ‘praying.’”

He dropped the matter at hand, and followed the draw to prayer, when he discovered a spring opened, as it were, in his spirit out of which came a prayer “stream” full of unction, just as other Spirit-taught believers find God opens the Word to them for the ministry of teaching or preaching.

Evan Roberts’s prayer work lasted for seven years. He said that he fell asleep each night praying and awoke in the morning with his “spirit and mind alert for dealing with God” (The Overcomer, December 1914).

Pray About It: The above episode from the life of Evan Roberts illustrates the way God worked in his life. Not everyone will have so dramatic an experience. But God does lead us to pray and expects that we will follow. If we don’t, our hesitation may impede the work God would have for us. Listen if God calls you to more prayer.