takes time and leaves the rod ten or fifteen minutes in the fire the whole iron will become red hot with the heat that is in the fire.  So if we are to get the fire of God’s holiness and love and power we must take more time with God in fellowship.  That was what gave men like Abraham and Moses their strength.  They were men who were separated to a fellowship with God, and the living God made them strong.  Oh, if we did but realize what prayer can do!

Another, and a most important phase of prayer is intercession.  What a work God has set open for those who are His priests—­intercessors!  We find a wonderful expression in the prophecy of Isaiah; God says, “Let him take hold of me;” and again, “There is none that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.”  In other passages God refers to the intercessors for Israel.  Have you ever taken hold of God?  Thank God, some of us have; but oh, friends, representatives of the church of Christ in the United States, if God were to show us how much there is of intense prayer for a revival through the church, how much of sincere confession of the sins of the church, how much of pleading with God and giving Him no rest till He make Jerusalem a glory in the earth, I think we should all be ashamed.  We need to give up our hearts to the Holy Spirit, that He may pray for us and in us with groanings that can not be uttered.

What am I to do if I am to have this Holy Spirit within me?  The Spirit wants time and room in the heart; He wants the whole being.  He wants all my interest and influence going out for the honor and the glory of God; He wants me to give myself up.  Beloved friend, you do not know what you could do if you would give yourself up to intercession.  It is a work that a sick one lying on a bed year by year may do in power.  It is a work that a poor one who has hardly a penny to give to a missionary society can do day by day.  It is a work that a young girl who is in her father’s house and has to help in the housekeeping can do by the Holy Spirit.  People often ask:  What does the Church of our day do to reach the masses?  They ask, though they ask it tremblingly, for they feel so helpless:  What can we do against the materialism and infidelity in places like London and Berlin and New York and Paris?  We have given it up as hopeless.  Ah, if men and women could be called out to band themselves together to take hold upon God!  I am not speaking of any prayer union or any prayer time statedly set apart, but if the Spirit could find men and women who would give up their lives to cry to God, the Spirit would most surely come.  It is not selfishness and it is not mere happiness that we seek when we talk about the peace and the rest and the blessing Christ can give.  God wants us, Christ wants us, because He has to do a work; the work of Calvary is to be done in our hearts, we are to sacrifice our lives to pleading with God for men.  Oh, let us yield ourselves day by day and ask God that it may please Him to let His Holy Spirit work in us.