Every street preacher knows how to be loud in public. The question this teaching asks is whether he knows how to be alone with God in private. The history of preaching is very plain on this point: the power a man carries into the street is manufactured in the prayer closet, and nowhere else. A preacher may study his sermon, arrange his arguments, and strengthen his voice — but if he has not been with God, he will go out and make a noise. God does not anoint noise. He anoints men, and He anoints them in secret, on their knees.

This teaching first lays out what the Bible says about prayer, meditation, seeking God's face, and walking in the Spirit. Then it sets before you three men whose lives prove the teaching — Daniel, who prayed under threat of the lions' den; E. M. Bounds, who gave the first hours of every day to prayer and wrote the church's classic books on it; and George Müller, who fed thousands of orphans for sixty years without ever asking a man for a penny. It closes with a simple rule of prayer for the working street preacher.

PART ONE — THE TEACHING

1. What Prayer Is

Prayer is not reciting words into the air. Prayer is a child coming to his Father. It is talking with God — asking, thanking, confessing, pleading, listening, and waiting — in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit, according to the will of God revealed in His Word.

The Lord Jesus taught His disciples to begin, "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6:9). Prayer begins with who God is, not with what we want. And it is offered in Christ's name with Christ's promise behind it: "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13–14). It is asked in faith: "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" (Matthew 21:22). And it is asked according to His will, with full confidence: "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him" (1 John 5:14–15).

So prayer is not a religious performance. It is the most practical transaction in the Christian life: a man brings his need, his sin, his city, and his preaching to the throne of God, and God acts. "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). The throne is a throne of grace, and the word to the preacher is come boldly.

2. The Preacher's Prayer Life Is the Power Behind His Preaching

When the early church was pressed with business — good business, necessary business, the daily care of widows — the apostles refused to let it swallow their first calling. "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4). Notice the order and notice the word continually. Prayer is named first, and it is not a spare-time activity. The apostles put their prayer life and their preaching life in the same sentence, in that order, because they understood that the second draws its life from the first.

The book of Acts shows the connection again and again:

• Before the boldest preaching, they prayed. Threatened by the council and commanded not to speak, the church did not organize a protest; they prayed for boldness: "And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word" (Acts 4:29). The answer came immediately: "And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness" (Acts 4:31). Boldness in the street is a prayed-for thing, not a personality trait.
• Before men were sent out, they prayed. The first missionaries of the church were separated by the Holy Ghost in a prayer meeting: "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away" (Acts 13:2–3). Direction for ministry came while men were on their knees, not while they were drawing up plans.
• In the darkest place, they prayed. Paul and Silas, beaten and chained in the inner prison at Philippi, spent their midnight thus: they "prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them" (Acts 16:25). Prayer was not their last resort; it was their instinct.

And the Lord Jesus Himself is the pattern. If the Son of God needed the prayer closet, what preacher imagines he can do without it? "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed" (Mark 1:35). "And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed" (Luke 5:16). "And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone" (Matthew 14:23). Before He chose the twelve, "he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12). Public ministry flowed out of secret prayer, every time. It still does.

3. Meditation on the Word of God

Prayer without the Word becomes empty talking. The Word without prayer becomes cold knowledge. God joined them together, and the preacher must keep them together.

God's charge to Joshua, at the head of a great work, was not first about fighting but about meditating: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success" (Joshua 1:8). The blessed man of Psalm 1 is marked by the same habit: "But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night" (Psalm 1:2).

Meditation is not emptying the mind; it is filling it — slowly chewing on the Word, turning a verse over, asking what it says of God, what it says of sin, what it commands, what it promises, until the text gets into the man and the man gets into the text. Isaac did it in the open field: "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide" (Genesis 24:63). The psalmist did it on his bed: "When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches" (Psalm 63:6). Paul commanded Timothy to make it his practice: "Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all" (1 Timothy 4:15).

The man who meditates will find the Word becoming his own: "O how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). His eyes will be open before the day begins: "Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word" (Psalm 119:148). And his memory will be a storehouse to draw from: "I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands" (Psalm 143:5).

For the preacher this is not optional decoration. Meditation is where sermons are born, where the text for the street corner is found, and where the Word that must abide in him — the very condition of prevailing prayer, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7) — takes up its lodging.

4. Seeking the Face of God

There is a difference between seeking God's hand — His gifts, His help, His answers — and seeking God's face — Himself. The preacher needs both, but the face must come first, or his prayer life will be a shopping list instead of a fellowship.

God issues the invitation Himself: "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8). The command is repeated as the standing duty of God's people: "Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore" (Psalm 105:4); "Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually" (1 Chronicles 16:11). David's one great desire was wrapped up in the presence of God: "One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple" (Psalm 27:4).

Seeking God's face means drawing near for God's own sake — to behold Him, to worship Him, to have the soul satisfied with Him: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" (Psalm 42:1–2). "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is" (Psalm 63:1).

It also carries God's great condition and promise for a backsliding people: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14). And the search is guaranteed to succeed when it is whole-hearted: "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God rewards seekers: "for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Hebrews 11:6).

The preacher who seeks God's face in the morning will not have to manufacture God's presence in the afternoon. He will carry it with him.

5. Being Led by the Holy Spirit

Prayer is a two-way street. In prayer we speak to God; in prayer God also directs us, and the agent of that direction is the Holy Spirit, who lives in every believer.

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14). The Christian life is a led life. The commands are plain: "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16); "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). A street preacher above all men must be led — where to preach, when to stop, what text to lift up, which heckler to answer and which to let pass, which single soul in the crowd is under conviction. These things are not learned from a manual. They are learned on the knees, in a praying, listening walk with God.

The Spirit also helps the praying itself: "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26–27). When you do not know what to pray for your city, the Spirit does, and He prays it through you. This is why Paul commands the church's warfare prayer to be done "with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints" (Ephesians 6:18).

And the Spirit gives the preacher his marching orders in prayer, as He did at Antioch (Acts 13:2–3, above). The man who will not pray will not be led; he will only be driven — by circumstances, by feelings, by the crowd. The man of prayer is a led man, and a led man can be trusted in the street.

6. Secret Prayer and Public Ministry

The Lord Jesus drew a bright line between the closet and the corner: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" (Matthew 6:6).

There is a public praying — in the assembly, at the preaching, with the brethren — and it is right and commanded. But the foundation of a man's prayer life is secret: a shut door, a Father who sees in secret, and a reward that shows itself openly in due time. The open reward of the praying man is power, calm, answers, and a life God visibly blesses. The man who prays only in public is an actor; the man who prays in secret is a son.

Notice also the warning against empty form: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking" (Matthew 6:7). God is not impressed by volume or length. He looks for reality — a real man, with a real burden, talking to a real Father.

The secret place is also the place of preparation against temptation in the public place: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41). Every preacher who has lost his temper at a heckler, or his purity in a private hour, knows the price of a neglected closet. The battle of the afternoon is won or lost in the morning.

7. Prevailing Prayer and Intercession for the Lost

Prayer is not finished when we have prayed for ourselves. The preacher is called to stand between God and a lost city, and plead.

The Lord's own parable was spoken "to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1). Paul's command matches it: "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17); "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving" (Colossians 4:2). Prevailing prayer is prayer that does not quit — prayer that keeps coming back, in faith, until God answers. It is what James describes: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit" (James 5:16–18). Elijah was not a different species of man. He was a man like us, who prayed like he meant it.

Intercession — praying for others — is the preacher's solemn duty. God's rebuke of a prayerless generation was framed in exactly these terms: "And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:30). Samuel counted it a sin to stop interceding: "Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you" (1 Samuel 12:23). Paul orders it as the church's first business: "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men" (1 Timothy 2:1), and describes the church's praying men: "I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting" (1 Timothy 2:8). Epaphras is held up as the model — "always labouring fervently for you in prayers" (Colossians 4:12). And God's watchmen are commanded a holy stubbornness: "ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence, And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth" (Isaiah 62:6–7).

Bring your city into that sentence. Give Him no rest concerning your streets, your campuses, your waterfronts and stadiums, until He makes them a praise in the earth. Nobody else may be praying for the people you preach to. If the street preacher does not stand in the gap for them, who will?

PART TWO — THE MEN OF PRAYER

Doctrine is proved by lives. Here are three men — one from the Bible itself, two from the history of the church — whose prayer lives are a matter of record. Study them. God has not changed, and what He did for them He will do for the preacher who will pay the same price in the same currency: time on his knees.

1. Daniel — The Bible's Own Man of Prayer

Daniel was carried to Babylon as a teenage captive and served pagan kings for some seventy years, through the whole captivity. He rose to the highest offices of two empires. And through it all, in every season of his life, Daniel is found doing one thing: praying.

He prayed as a young man, with his friends. When Nebuchadnezzar demanded the impossible — tell me my dream and its meaning, or die — Daniel's first move was not panic but a prayer meeting: "Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions: That they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon" (Daniel 2:17–18). God answered, and Daniel's first recorded prayer in the book is a hymn of praise: "Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his... I thank thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we desired of thee" (Daniel 2:20, 23). The preacher's lesson is here at the start: young men, pray together; and when God answers, be as quick to thank as you were to ask.

He prayed as an old man, on a schedule, in the open. Daniel 6 is the great chapter. His enemies, unable to find any fault in his work — for he was faithful in the king's business — attacked the one thing they knew he would not bend: his prayer life. A decree was signed: pray to any god or man but the king for thirty days, and you go to the lions. Daniel's response is one of the most instructive verses in the Bible:

"Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime." (Daniel 6:10)

Mark five things. He knew — this was no ignorance; he counted the cost with open eyes. His windows being open — he did not close them, hide, or rearrange his devotion to avoid offence; his prayer life stayed public in its place because it had always been so. Toward Jerusalem — his heart faced home, and faced the promises of God. He kneeled upon his knees — the posture of a subject before a King, even though Daniel himself was the empire's second man. Three times a day — a settled habit, "as he did aforetime": the crisis did not create Daniel's prayer life; it only revealed it. David had sung the same pattern: "Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice" (Psalm 55:17).

His enemies "found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God" (Daniel 6:11) — exactly where they knew they would find him. He was thrown to the lions, and God shut their mouths: "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt" (Daniel 6:22). The heathen king himself became the witness, crying out to know whether Daniel's God, "whom thou servest continually," was able to deliver him (Daniel 6:20). A public, unashamed, unbroken prayer life made an empire's king ask after God. Preacher, that is what your faithfulness does in a hostile city: it forces the watching world to ask whether your God is real.

He prayed in confession, on the basis of the Book. Daniel 9 is one of the greatest prayers in Scripture, and it was born out of reading: "I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem" (Daniel 9:2). Meditation lit the fire; then: "And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes" (Daniel 9:3). Though Daniel himself was righteous, he confessed as one of the guilty: "We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments" (Daniel 9:5). He pleaded not his own merit but God's mercy: "for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name" (Daniel 9:18–19). Heaven's answer outran his words: "Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel... touched me... At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved" (Daniel 9:21, 23). Greatly beloved — that is God's own description of a man of prayer.

He prayed and fasted three weeks for understanding, and was heard from day one. In Daniel 10, the aged prophet mourned and fasted — "I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled" (Daniel 10:3) — until the answer came with this word: "Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words" (Daniel 10:12). The delay in the answer was not indifference in heaven. The prayer was heard the first day; the man who will not quit praying receives what the man who quits never sees.

Daniel's lessons for the street preacher:

1. Build the habit in peacetime; you will not invent it under fire.
2. Pray on a schedule — set times, kept times. Daniel's three appointments with God held an empire's schedule together.
3. Do not hide your devotion to save your skin. Unashamed prayer is itself a sermon.
4. Let the Book drive your praying. Daniel read Jeremiah and prayed the promises back to God.
5. Confess your people's sins as your own, and plead mercy, not merit.
6. Expect to be "greatly beloved" business in heaven: prayer is not shouting into the dark; it is heard the first day.

2. E. M. Bounds — The Preacher Who Prayed Before Dawn

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835–1913) was born in Shelby County, Missouri, trained as a lawyer, and admitted to the bar as a very young man. The Civil War turned his life: he served as an army chaplain and was held for a time as a prisoner of war. Afterward he gave himself wholly to preaching, serving Methodist pastorates in Missouri, Tennessee — including McKendree Church in Nashville — Alabama, and Georgia. He was never famous in his lifetime. He was not a platform celebrity; he was a praying pastor. It is what he did with the first hours of the morning that made him immortal in the church's memory.

In his last years, settled at Washington, Georgia, Bounds kept a rule his biographers record plainly: he rose every morning at four o'clock, and gave himself to prayer until seven. Three hours, before the day began, before the letters and the visits and the preaching — the first and best of the day, given to God. Only then did he sit down to write. And write he did: nine books on prayer, among them The Necessity of Prayer, The Weapon of Prayer, Prayer and Praying Men, The Possibilities of Prayer, and the book the church knows best, Power Through Prayer (1912). Most of them were barely noticed while he lived; several were published from his manuscripts only after his death in 1913. The man who wrote them was content to be unknown, so long as the church learned to pray.

His burden in Power Through Prayer — written for preachers, and carried in this university's library — can be heard in two short sentences. Here is his diagnosis of the church's weakness:

"What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer."

And here is his summary of all church history:

"The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early upon their knees."

Bounds taught, preached, and embodied this: that the preacher's study is not his power-room — his closet is; that a sermon prayed over is a different weapon from a sermon merely prepared; that God does not anoint machinery, or methods, or organizations, but men — and men of prayer above all. His ministry stretched from the battlefields of the Civil War to a quiet Georgia room at 4 a.m., and the second half of it — unseen, unapplauded, on his knees — is the half that is still changing preachers more than a century later.

Bounds' lessons for the street preacher:

1. Give God the first hours, not the leftovers. Bounds prayed before dawn because the day belonged to God first.
2. Do not expect platform power without closet time. What the Holy Ghost uses is men — praying men.
3. Be content to be unknown. Bounds' books reached the world after his death; faithfulness is measured in heaven, not in applause.
4. Preach as a man who has been with God that morning — because you have.

3. George Müller — The Man Who Asked God Only

George Müller (1805–1898) was born at Kroppenstedt, in Prussia, and his youth was a record of theft, lying, drunkenness, and even a spell in prison. At university in Halle, outwardly studying divinity while living in sin, he was invited one Saturday evening in November 1825 to a small meeting of believers in a private home. There, for the first time in his life, he saw Christians on their knees in prayer — and he went home a changed man; by his own testimony in his Narrative, the work of God in his soul began that night.

He came to England in 1829, and in 1832 settled in Bristol, where with Henry Craik he ministered at Bethesda Chapel. There God led him step by step into the work that would make his journals one of the church's great proofs that God answers prayer. In 1834 he founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution. In April 1836 he opened his first orphan house, at 6 Wilson Street, Bristol. The houses grew until, on Ashley Down, five great orphan houses stood — at one time sheltering some two thousand children — and across his lifetime about ten thousand orphans were cared for. In total, by the careful reckoning of his own journals, some a million and a half pounds came in for the work.

And here is the fact that still staggers everyone who reads the record: Müller never asked any man for any of it. He made no appeals, ran no campaigns, contracted no debts, and told his needs to no one but God. When the money for breakfast was gone, the children sat down at an empty table and gave thanks — and the bread and milk arrived. His stated purpose was never merely to feed orphans; it was to set before the church and the world a visible proof that God still hears and answers prayer, so that the faith of God's children might be strengthened. His journals preserve tens of thousands of recorded answers to specific prayer.

His private rule is the part the preacher must not miss. Müller learned, in May 1841, by his own testimony, the great secret of his life: that the first business of the day was not service but fellowship. In his own words:

"The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord."

Before that discovery, he had often prayed briefly in the morning and then spent hours struggling through the day in a dry and unfed soul. After it, he rose, gave himself to prayer, and then to reading the Word of God with meditation — turning the text over, feeding on it, applying it to his own heart — until his soul was truly happy in the Lord. Only then did he go out to the day's work. He testified that he read the Bible through some two hundred times over his life, much of it on his knees, and that he never read it more profitably than when he read it as food, slowly, with meditation, before prayer.

Nor did the prayer life retire with age. In his seventies and eighties Müller undertook great preaching tours across Britain, Europe, America, and beyond — the orphan work by then running on the same prayer that built it. He died at Bristol in March 1898, aged ninety-two, and the city he had prayed over for sixty-six years turned out in thousands to line the streets at his funeral.

Over Müller's whole life stands one verse he loved and proved ten thousand times: "I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it" (Psalm 81:10). And its New Testament twin: "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).

Müller's lessons for the street preacher:

1. Get your soul happy in the Lord first — fed on the Word, with meditation — before you open your mouth for Him.
2. Ask God, and let God move men. Needs plainly carried to God are needs God delights to meet.
3. Keep a record of answers. Müller's journals strengthened millions because he wrote God's faithfulness down.
4. Expect God to provide for the work He gave you — for your voice, your signs, your tracts, your family — without begging, borrowing, or debt.
5. Pray on a scale worthy of the city before you. Müller began with one rented house and prayer carried it to ten thousand children.

4. The Wider Company of Men of Prayer

Daniel, Bounds, and Müller do not stand alone. The line of praying men runs unbroken through the church's story, and the street preacher stands in their succession.

David Brainerd (1718–1747) was a frail young missionary to the Native Americans of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, expelled from Yale for his zeal, dead of consumption at twenty-nine in Jonathan Edwards' house at Northampton. Edwards published his diary, and it has driven Christians to their knees ever since. Brainerd's diary records whole days given to prayer and fasting alone in the woods, wrestling for the souls of people who had never heard Christ's name — and then records the awakening that followed, when scores of his hearers were broken down under conviction of sin. His own heart is in his famous prayer that he might never "loiter" in his heavenly journey, and in his resolve that he cared not where or how he lived, or what hardships he went through, so that he could but gain souls to Christ. He preached little in public compared to others in this company; he prayed — and his praying is still bearing fruit on mission fields he never saw.

John Hyde (1865–1912), known across the church simply as "Praying Hyde," was an American Presbyterian missionary to the Punjab in India. At the Sialkot conventions his fellow workers learned where the blessing came from: Hyde spent nights — sometimes whole nights — in prayer in his room, and emerged with his burdens named and numbered before God. By the account of those who laboured with him, he took up a definite aim in prayer: in one year, a soul a day — and saw above four hundred won; the next year, two souls a day; then four. The lesson is not the arithmetic; it is the definiteness. Hyde did not pray vague prayers for "blessing." He prayed for souls, by aim and by name, and would not let go. He died in 1912, only forty-six, his body spent — a man literally prayed out in the service of God.

Elijah on Carmel, Epaphras in his closet, Brainerd in the woods, Hyde in his room at Sialkot, Bounds at four in the morning, Müller at his table in Bristol, Daniel at his open window — the men differ in century, country, and calling. The secret is identical, and it is open to you.

PART THREE — THE PRACTICE: A RULE OF LIFE FOR THE STREET PREACHER'S PRAYER CLOSET

Teaching that ends in admiration is wasted. Here is the teaching reduced to a simple, keepable rule of life, drawn from Daniel, Bounds, Müller, and the Scriptures above. It is not a law; it is a trellis — something plain for a praying life to grow on.

1. The Morning Appointment — First, and Fed

Keep the example of the Lord Jesus and of Müller. Before the day's noise, meet God. David's vow is a good one to make your own: "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up" (Psalm 5:3). The psalmist even prevented — got ahead of — the dawn: "I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in thy word" (Psalm 119:147).

Work the morning in Müller's order:

1. Pray first, briefly and honestly — present yourself to God, confess sin, ask for His help for the hour.
2. Read the Word with meditation — a chapter or a portion; slowly; turn it over; ask what it says of God, of Christ, of sin, of yourself; take one verse to carry all day. Feed until your soul is, in Müller's phrase, happy in the Lord.
3. Then pray at length, fed — now intercede from a warmed heart (see the list below), commit the day, the preaching, the family, the needs, and wait on God. "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31).

Guard the hour. Put the phone in another room. Bounds gave God three hours; Müller gave Him the first of the morning; Daniel gave Him three appointments a day. Whatever your measure, let it be first, fixed, and defended.

2. The Day's Appointments — Daniel's Pattern

Daniel prayed three times a day as a habit of life. Find your own set points and keep them as appointments with the King: perhaps noon, perhaps on arriving at the preaching ground, perhaps at evening. David's pattern covers the whole day: "Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice" (Psalm 55:17). Paul's rule covers the whole life: "Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer" (Romans 12:12) — and, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Between the set appointments, learn to walk talking with God — in the car, on the pavement, in the crowd before you begin.

3. The Intercession List — Your City, by Name

Keep a written list, as Müller kept his journals and Hyde kept his aims. Put on it:

• Your city and its districts — "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee" (Psalm 122:6) is written for the city of God; the pattern holds for yours. Name your streets, your campuses, your stadiums, your waterfronts.
• Souls by name — the regulars who mock, the quiet listeners, the man who took a tract, the woman who wept last week. Pray for them by name, daily, as Paul had remembrance of Timothy "without ceasing," "in my prayers night and day" (2 Timothy 1:3).
• Fellow preachers and the churches — for open doors and boldness.
• Rulers and authorities — "first of all" in Paul's order (1 Timothy 2:1).
• Your family — the man of prayer prays at home first.
• Needs of the work — carried to God, Müller-style, and recorded when answered.

Date your requests. Underline the answers. Your list will become your own journal of God's faithfulness — and on a hard day it will preach to you.

4. Praying Before You Preach

Never step onto the box or lift the voice unprepared in prayer. The apostles' prayer for a preaching day is still the right one: boldness and an open door.

• For boldness: "that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel... that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak" (Ephesians 6:19–20).
• For opportunity: "praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ" (Colossians 4:3).
• For the Word's success: "pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified" (2 Thessalonians 3:1).
• Under threat or opposition, the church's prayer of Acts 4:29–31 — pray it as written, and expect the shaking.

When the Spirit redirects you — a different corner, a different text, a single conversation instead of open-air — obey. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14). Some of the greatest fruit in this ministry has come on the days the plan was surrendered in the closet.

5. The Evening Review

Close the day where Daniel closed his — in thanksgiving. Review the day with God: where He helped, where you failed, who needs prayer tomorrow. Confess quickly and sleep clean: "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens" (Lamentations 3:40–41). And obey the Lord's own summons, the largest and simplest promise in this whole teaching: "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not" (Jeremiah 33:3).

A Last Word to the Preacher

You will be tempted to measure your ministry by crowds, by comments, by videos, by fruit you can count. The men in this study measured theirs in a room with the door shut. Daniel's empire is dust, and his prayers are still being answered in the church's life today. Bounds' pastorates are forgotten, and his 4 a.m. closet is still raising up preachers. Müller's orphans are all in eternity, and his journals are still teaching the church that God hears prayer.

Go and do likewise. Give yourself continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word — in that order, and your preaching will carry a weight that no talent can imitate and no crowd can give you. The street is waiting for a man who has been with God.

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Amen.