Pastor Clint and his family

Air is no more necessary to the lungs than prayer is to the pastor. It is absolutely necessary for the pastor to pray and be prayed for. To meet his responsibilities and gain true success in his great work takes abundant prayer, both by and for him. The Godly pastor greatly covets the prayers of God's people.

Paul is an illustration of this. If any man could advance the gospel by personal force, by brainpower, by God's commission, and by God's extraordinary call, that man was Paul. Paul preeminently demonstrates that the pastor must have the prayers of others to give his ministry its full success. He asks, covets, and pleads for the help of all God's saints. He says that in the spiritual realm, in union there is strength. Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean to defy resistance. Paul made his ministry as impressive, eternal, and irresistible as the ocean by gathering all the scattered units of prayer and precipitating them onto his ministry.

The reason for Paul's prominence and his impact on the church and the world may be that he was able to center such a wealth of prayer on himself and his ministry. To the believers in Rome he wrote:

Paul teaches a lesson for all times that if he was so dependent on the prayers of God's saints to give his ministry success, how much greater is the need today for the prayers of God's saints to be centered on the ministry.

As a congregation we want to pray for our pastors today and thank God for them, their families and their sacrificial giving to the body. Let them know during this month of Clergy Appreciation that they are appreciated!

E.M. BOUNDS (1835-1913) this article was adapted from his devotional Power Through Prayer.