Guard the Power to Pray

People who have discovered the value of prayer know that they will be assailed from every quarter and in every quarter, and they know it to be worthwhile to guard their power to pray more than anything else. How easy it is to lose the spirit of prayer! The Holy Spirit of God is so easily checked and grieved on our part that sometimes without our knowing it, our ability to pray is gone. We may not know it until we kneel to pray or are faced with some situation demanding immediate dealing with God, but such powerlessness soon reveals itself.

The thing to remember is that the devil is probably more concerned with hindering prayer than anything else. Therefore he schemes to get us to take ever so little a step “out of the Spirit.” A wrong look, a feeling of resentment, a hasty word, some apparently trifling thing, and the line of communication is interrupted. A relatively little thing can rob us of our power to pray and our ability to believe.