A Prayer For Laborers

The want of men is the great crying want of the age, and that want is sent to us because we do not pray to God enough to send us men; we do not pray for men, when God does send them, that they may be helped as they should, and consequently much of the Church’s effort is thrown away. Beloved, I want to see something done in this London, and how is it to be done? There are thousands of Christians, tens of thousands of Christians in London, and yet the cause does not spread, or very slowly! What is the cause? Jonah shook Nineveh from end to end, and yet a hundred thousand followers of Jesus cannot do it. Paul, marching along the Appian way at Rome, marked an era in Rome’s history; and yet there are many ministers of Christ who thread our streets, and yet what are we all put together for real power? We do not seem to amount in this great city, all of us, to anything more than a mere chip in the porridge; we scarcely affect the population at all.

Oh! it is strange, it is passing strange; for it is the gospel which we preach, we know it is the gospel, and some of us do try to preach it with all our might. But if God withhold his face, what can be done? Yet, brethren, this can be done - we will cry to the Lord until he reveals his face again. We will give him no rest till he establish and make his Church a praise in the earth. O Christian men and women, if you could realize the situation! A city of three millions, not wholly given to idolatry, but still very much given to sin, and we ourselves so weak in the midst of it! if we could but realize this position, and then take hold upon the arm omnipotent, and by an overcoming faith, such as only God could give to any one of us, believe it possible for the Lord Jesus to save this city, and then go forward boldly expecting him to do it, we might see more than we have ever seen.

From a sermon entitled "God - All In All," delivered February 24, 1867. Image by Luis Argerich under Creative Commons License.