Unclothed - Ravenhill

We are all unclothed in the prayer closet. Maybe this is why we are so uncomfortable there. Do we shrink from the eyes that are a flame of fire because we know He cannot be deceived?He cannot be influenced by anything except pure motive.He cannot be persuaded to give us our priorities just for the asking.Our poverty in prayer is the seedbed of all our failure.Leonard Ravenhill

I can honestly say that in the prayer closet is where I am the MOST comfortable. When I am amidst the world- I long to get back into my precious space with the Lord. I do not care what He searches out in me- I just want to be with Him. He is my shelter and my peace and my safety.Many times I RUN to be alone with Him after 'having" to be amidst people and the world.I cannot think of anything better i'd like to do with me time.Thank you Lord, that you have brought me to this place.In Him, Chanin

Beginnings are like childhood, sweet and tender.Too many hold on to and build hiding places in beginnings, hiding from necessary growth.This is, by the way, the worldly position taken towards any process of growth in society in which true fatherhood is generally denied and therefore lost.True fatherhood brings you further on into maturity, but never without an unclothing.The way of an intercessor, the way unto maturity and priestliness, even unto general revival, brings such a person through a furnace, through deserts, and through priestly agony which alone prepares for His testimony to be established.The Lord is in no way able to accept or use our testimony, our dreams or thoughts as an indication of the presence of the Kingdom. He needs to see His own testimony being planted in our innermost being – the testimony of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of prophecy. That takes unclothing.There is no cross in that which is to be labelled our testimony.His testimony is based on the continuous work of the Cross.Look for the Cross to be found as the foundation for true fellowship with God and proper Christian approach to life. Test any testimony by this rod – can the cross be seen through this.Lars W.

It is an awesome privilege. . . It is an awesome task. . . It cannot be taken lightly.It is an invitation to rest together with the Father.It is at the same time call to priestly agony together with the High priest, our Lord Jesus Christ.It is a call to go to battle with the Holy One of Israel.It is a call to a walk of the Cross together with the Holy Spirit.

Finney preached and sometimes the whole congregation would get up and leave!That is good preaching.Leonard Ravenhill

Ravenhill:After I spoke at a session in the Bible School of Wales, dear Mrs. Rees Howells called me for a private talk. We stood in the veranda of her home overlooking beautiful Swansea Bay. I can see her finger upheld as she said, “Many talk of my husband’s buying this place with a shilling (fourteen cents) in his pocket. What they forget is that he prayed twelve hours a day for eleven months to know the mind of God.”Brethren, that’s discipline!Discipline, then, is a harness by which we enable the Spirit to get the best out of our frail humanity. The Apostle Paul was a disciplinarian like his Master:He disciplined his body: “I keep my body under.”He disciplined himself to loneliness: “All men forsook me.”He disciplined himself to scorn: “We are fools for Christ’s sake”.He disciplined himself to poverty: “We suffered need.”He disciplined himself to rejection: We are despised.”He disciplined himself to death: “I die daily.”He disciplined himself to suffering: “Persecuted, but not forsaken.”May this be our prayer, “Oh, Lord, I bow my neck to Thy yoke!”Leonard RavenhillMeat for Men

God will not meet us on our terms; He will not play our games. He waits for that which is true, real, and earnest, that which acknowledges sin, corruption, and need. Only then can we experience the grace of God. Our prayer is relative to the reality to which we have come, and that kind of prayer is powerful and moves heaven. It has moved out of a casual, conglomeration of saints, whose essential focus is on themselves, and whose spiritual egocentricity has never been broken. We can bring ego-centrism into the church as profoundly as we knew it in the world. All we have done is shifted the object. In the world, it was carnal pleasure and delight and material things. In the church, it is still ego and self: “How did you enjoy the meeting? What did you think of the speaker?” That self-focus is an inveterate power that can only be broken when we ourselves are not the center of our own concern and preoccupation, but God and His purposes in the context that I am setting forth and calling apostolic.Art Katz