The Cinderella of the Church today is the prayer meeting.
This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with pearls
of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy, neither is she enchanting
with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is
not afraid to kneel!
The offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. That is
not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth. But in these days, efficiency and
smartness are at a premium. Prayer is conditioned to one thing alone, and that is to
spirituality. One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver
sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory,
knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined book shelves, self-confidence and a
sense of having arrived - the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the
type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects
eternity. The pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents; the closet speaks death
to display.
The tragedy of this last hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out
too many dead sermons to too many dead people. There is a strange thing that I have seen
even in the fundamentalist circles: it is preaching without unction. What is unction? I
hardly know what it is, but I know what it is not, or at least I know when it is not upon
my own soul. Preaching without unction kills instead of giving life. The unctionless
preacher is a savor of death unto death. The Word does not live unless the unction is upon
the preacher. Preacher, with all thy getting, get unction.
Brethren, we could well manage to be half as intellectual if we were twice as spiritual.
Preaching is a spiritual business. A sermon born in the head reaches the head. A sermon
born in the heart reaches the heart. A spiritual preacher will under God produce
spiritually-minded people. Unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars
outside of the preacher's soul; rather she must be pursued and won. Unction cannot be
learned, only earned by prayer. Unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who
has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing
intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet. The meeting is won or lost
before the preacher's foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like perfume. Unction is like
dynamite. Unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew
when the preacher is cast into prison. Unction will pierce and percolate. It will sweeten
and soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony
heart, unction will succeed.
What a fever of church building there is just now, yet without unctionized preachers these
altars will never see anxious penitents. Suppose that we saw fishing boats with the latest
in radar equipment and fishing gear launched month after month and put out to sea only to
return without a catch - what excuse would we take for this barrenness? Yet thousands of
churches see empty altars week after week and year after year and cover this sterile
situation by misapplying the Scripture. "My word . . . shall not return unto me
void." Incidentally, this seems to be one of the very few texts that the
dispensationalists forgot to tell us was written to the Jews!
The ugly fact is that the altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer
meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the
Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what
time they spend in prayer? Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not
worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees. Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders?
Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from
men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.
Away with palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb
instead of a womb and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. We may preach and perish
but we cannot pray and perish. If God called us to the ministry, then I contend that we
should be unctionized. With all thy getting, get unction, lest barren altars be the badge
of our unctionless intellectualism.
Reference Used: Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill
From: A Revival Source Center