Conclusion

What These Men Leave to Us You have now walked through the lives of fifteen men who prayed. They came from different centuries, different continents, different denominations, and different backgrounds. Some were scholars and some were uneducated. Some pastored great churches and some served in obscurity.

Some are celebrated names in church history and some are known only to those who search deeply for the hidden heroes of the faith. But every single one of them discovered the same truth: that prayer is not one activity among many, but the foundation on which all genuine ministry is built.

Look at what prayer did in their lives. It brought the revival Andrew Murray's father had prayed for over thirty years. It filled D. L. Moody with the power of the Holy Spirit on a New York street and sent him to preach to millions. It turned the tide of World War II through a small company of intercessors in a Welsh Bible College. It planted a church in the hardest city in America and grew it to five thousand people. It brought rain to a remote Chinese island when an idol's followers challenged the living God. It converted a Cambridge atheist through a Bible read alone in an army barracks. It turned a dying congregation of ten people in the Canadian prairies into a church that planted thirty-eight daughters.

Prayer works. Not as a magic formula. Not as a technique. Not as a religious duty performed to earn God's favour. Prayer works because God is real, God is present, God is listening, and God is powerful. Prayer works because Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession for us (Heb rews 7:25). Prayer works because the Holy Spirit within us “helps our weakness” and “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). When we pray, we are not speaking into an empty sky. We are speaking to the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the One who holds every nation in the palm of His hand, the One who loved us enough to send His only Son to die for us.

The Common Thread Looking at these fifteen men together, several patterns emerge that are worth naming.

First: they were all men of the Word. Not one of them prayed in isolation from Scripture.

Andrew Murray insisted that the Word and the Spirit must be united in prayer. E. M. Bounds declared that the Word of God is “the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong.” A. R .

Torrey taught that “prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears.” Timothy Keller described prayer as “continuing a conversation that God has started through His Word.” For all fifteen men, the Bible was not separate from prayer — it was the language of prayer, the fuel of prayer, and the foundation of prayer.

Second: they were all men who depended on the Holy Spirit. They did not trust in their own eloquence, their theological training, their organisational ability, or their natural gifts. Spurgeon said, “Prayer is the creation of the Holy Spirit.” Moody prayed until God came and overwhelmed him on a New York street. Torrey taught that entering God's presence is only possible by the Holy Spirit's power. Finney experienced the Spirit descending “in waves of liquid love.” Rees Howells spent his entire ministry under the direct guidance and anointing of the Holy Spirit. For all of these men, the Holy Spirit was not a doctrine to be discussed but a Person to be depended upon.

Third: they were all men who paid a price. Prayer is not easy. It is not convenient. It costs time, energy, sleep, comfort, and pride. E. M. Bounds rose at four in the morning every day for thirty years. Rees Howells and his community prayed every evening until midnight during the darkest years of the war. Andrew Murray lost his voice for two years in the crucible of surrender.

Watchman Nee spent twenty years in prison. Jonathan Edwards was dismissed by his own congregation. Charles Finney was mocked and opposed. Derek Prince gave up a brilliant academic career. Timothy Keller faced cancer with prayer as his only weapon. None of them told us prayer was easy. They told us it was worth it.

Fourth: they were all men whose prayers outlived them. The prayers of Andrew Murray's father for revival were answered in 1860, decades after those prayers began. E. M. Bounds’ prayer for a praying Church was answered through eight books published after his death. Rees Howells interceded for the State of Israel before it existed, and the nation was reborn in 1948, two years before he died. Loren Cunningham received a vision in prayer in 1956 that he spent sixty-seven years watching unfold. Billy Graham prayed for lost souls at every crusade, and the fruit of those prayers continued to ripple through individuals, families, and communities long after each meeting ended. Prayer is not limited by the lifetime of the one who prays. It reaches into eternity.

A Word to Ugandan Pastors You are serving God in one of the most spiritually strategic places on earth. Uganda sits at the heart of the African continent, a nation with a history of Christian martyrdom, revival, and the extraordinary blessing of the Holy Spirit. The missionaries who came to Uganda in the nineteenth century paid a tremendous price. The Uganda Martyrs died with the name of Christ on their lips. The East African Revival of the twentieth century sent waves of Holy Spirit power through Uganda and beyond. You are the heirs of all of that.

But the inheritance of the past is not enough. Every generation must meet God afresh. The fire on the altar must be renewed every morning. And in your generation, the challenges are great: poverty and suffering among your people, family breakdown, political pressure, false teaching, spiritual warfare, the pull of material prosperity and personal ambition. Only a deep and sustained prayer life will equip you to face these challenges and lead your congregation through them.

You are also uniquely positioned for global influence. Uganda has given the world remarkable Christian leaders, preachers, and evangelists. Ugandan missionaries serve across Africa and beyond. Ugandan churches are sending churches. As you build your prayer life, you are not only serving your local congregation — you are building foundations for the global mission of the Church.

The fifteen men in this book were not super-humans. They were ordinary people who took God at His word. They prayed because they believed that God hears. They persisted because they believed that God answers. They sacrificed comfort and convenience because they believed that prayer is worth more than anything else they could do. Every one of them would say to you today: “You can do this. You must do this. The world you are trying to reach is waiting for you to pray.”

CALL TO ACTION A Charge to the Pastors and Teachers of Uganda This book is not meant to sit on a shelf. It is meant to send you to your knees. As you close these pages, the question is not “What did I learn?” but “What will I do?”

Here are seven practical commitments you can make in response to what you have read: 1. Establish a Daily Prayer Appointment Every man in this book set aside specific time for prayer. Some prayed for hours each morning.

All of them were deliberate and disciplined. Choose a time — whether it is thirty minutes at dawn, an hour at midday, or an evening vigil — and protect it. Tell your family. Guard it from interruption. And keep it even on the days you do not feel like praying, for those are often the days your prayer matters most.

2. Ground Your Prayers in Scripture As you pray, bring your Bible with you. Read a passage first. Let God speak before you speak.

Pray the promises back to God. Let the words of the Psalms become your own words. Let the prayers of Paul in Ephesians 1 and 3 shape the way you pray for your congregation. Let the great prayers of the Bible — Moses, Daniel, Nehemiah, Jesus — teach you what prayer looks like when it moves heaven.

3. Pray for the Filling of the Holy Spirit Ask God every day for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit. Not just for gifts and power — though those are real and important — but for the character of Christ to be formed in you. Ask the Spirit to show you what to pray for, to giv e you the burdens of God’s heart, and to intercede through you for the things that matter most to God.

4. Pray for Your Congregation by Name Take a list of the people in your congregation and pray through it regularly. Pray for their marriages, their children, their work, their struggles, and their faith. When people bring you prayer requests, keep a record and follow up. Let your congregation know that you pray for them by name. This is one of the most powerful things a pastor can do.

5. Build a Culture of Prayer in Your Church Spurgeon said the Monday evening prayer meeting was the engine of everything Metropolitan Tabernacle accomplished. Rees Howells’ prayer community gathered every evening. What is the prayer life of your congregation? Establish a regular prayer meeting. Teach on prayer from the pulpit. Share answered prayers publicly to build faith. Invite your elders and deacons to pray together before every meeting. Let prayer be the air your church breathes.

6. Find or Become a Prayer Partner Almost every man in this book had people who prayed with and for him. Charles Finney had Father Nash. Loren Cunningham had a community of YWAM intercessors. Henry Blackaby had a group of Saskatoon pastors who prayed together for two years before the revival came. Find one or two other pastors or elders who will commit to pray with you regularly. And pray for one another specifically, honestly, and persistently.

7. Intercede for Uganda and the Nations Your prayers are not limited to your congregation. The God you pray to is the God of the nations. Pray for Uganda — for its leaders, its families, its schools, its churches, its missionaries.

Pray for Africa. Pray for the unreached peoples of the earth. Pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God in every nation. As Rees Howells discovered, the scope of prayer is as wide as the heart of God.

A Final Word Andrew Murray wrote: “The man who mobilises the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelisation in history.”

E. M. Bounds declared : “Around us is a world lost in sin, above us is a God willing and able to save; it is ours to build the bridge that links heaven and earth, and prayer is the mighty instrument that does the work.”

Timothy Keller concluded: “There is absolutely nothing so great as prayer.”

These men were right. Prayer is the greatest work. It is the most important thing you will do today, and tomorrow, and every day of your ministry. It is the thing that makes everything else you do alive with the power of God. And it is available to you right now.

So close this book. Find a quiet place. Open your Bible. And pray. Not because you have to.

Because the God of Andrew Murray and Charles Spurgeon and Watchman Nee and D. L. Moody and all the rest — that same God — is waiting to meet you there.

“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

Matthew 21:22 To God Alone Be the Glory