Martin Wickens

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from EM Bounds book, The Necessity of Prayer.

The Necessity of Fervency

“Prayer, without fervour, stakes nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to stake.”

“Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that availeth.”

• What does fervency in prayer reveal about the petitioner?
  • A genuine emotion about the need
  • A focus on God as the only Help
  • An understanding of the promises of Christ

• Fervency in prayer reveals an individual who clings to the cross as he comes before the throne of grace. He truly believes that God hears and answers his prayer.

• What does a cold, heartless prayer reveal about the petitioner? It reveals that the petitioner
  • Does not really believe there is a need
  • Does not expect an answer from God
  • Is not focused on the Cross of Christ

Passion for God Cultivates Fervency in Prayer

“If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Spirit descends in fire. To be absorbed in God’s will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire, is the qualifying condition of the man who would engage in effectual prayer.”

“It is not in our power, perhaps, to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can pray God to implant it.”

• If we cannot create fervency at will, what can we do to encourage an environment where fervency can grow?

• Why does Bounds say effectual prayer requires fervency?
  • Because coldness is contrary to the character of God
  • Because a cold heart is more likely to harbor unconfessed sin
  • Because a cold heart is less likely to even pray
  • Because a cold heart will not see the need or will not care

“Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. ‘Men ought always to pray,’ he declares, ‘and not to faint.’ That means, that we are to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer.”

• How does fervency help us in prayer? (Luke 18:1)
  • Keeps us going instead of giving up hope
  • Keeps us focused instead of getting distracted

Adoniram Judson says, “A travailing spirit, the throes of a great burdened desire, belongs to prayer. A fervency strong enough to drive away sleep, which devotes and inflames the spirit, and which retires all earthly ties, all this belongs to wrestling, prevailing prayer. The Spirit, the power, the air, and food of prayer is in such a spirit.”

Fervency Drives Faith to Flourish as Trust

In Romans 15:30 it says “…strive together with me in your prayers to God for me;”

In Colossians 4:12 we read “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.”

The words “strive” and “fervently” are the same word and mean “to enter into a contest, to fight against adversaries, to engage with fervent zeal to endeavor to obtain.”

“These recorded instances of the exercise and reward of faith, give us easily to see that, in almost every instance, faith was blended with trust until it is not too much to say that the former was swallowed up in the latter… there is a point, beyond all peradventure, at which faith is relieved of its burden, so to speak; where trust comes along and says: ‘You have done your part, the rest is mine!’”