“Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer. I cannot forget this. I look at men’s lives. I believe that few pray.”
J.C. Ryle

This is an excerpt from Ryle’s book which was originally entitled, “Do you pray?”, but was later published with the title “A Call to Prayer”.

Last Sunday, we worshiped with a pastor at our summer worship service in our subdivision that we had not heard before. His pastoral prayer was a simple, heartfelt outpouring of his soul to God. It was as if it was an extension of his daily private prayer time, yet spoken out loud. No flowery language, nothing repetitious. When he finished, I knew that I had been in the presence of God. It was clear that he was someone that spends a lot of time in prayer.

Prayer in front of a congregation is not easy. It is tempting to try to impress the people, for then it becomes a act of attempting to be profound, but then it is not from the heart.

Our call to prayer is not to impress God, but to implore from the heart. He knows our sin and only wants us to be genuine with Him. That is what I heard last Sunday.

Always praying for the glory of God,