Introduction: The Secret of Those Who Shook the World

There is a kind of power that no army can manufacture, no government can legislate, and no institution can produce. It cannot be bottled, packaged, or purchased. It has no public relations department and makes no noise before it arrives. Yet when it falls, nations are shaken, hardened hearts are broken open, and impossibilities dissolve like morning fog. This power is the answer to prayer — the direct, personal, sovereign response of the living God to the cry of His people.

And the men in this book had learned, each in his own way, how to lay hold of it.

The pages of church history are littered with extraordinary answers to prayer, but they did not happen by accident. They were the fruit of men and women who took God at His word when He declared, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3, NIV). That verse is not the polite offer of a distracted deity. It is the bold promise of the Almighty — an open invitation, issued across the centuries, to every soul willing to draw near. The men in this book heard that invitation and answered it with their lives.

What is a prayer warrior? He is not simply a man who prays with great volume or visible emotion, though both of those may be present. A prayer warrior is one who has discovered that prayer is not a monologue sent upward into an indifferent silence but a genuine conversation with a God who is intensely, personally, sovereignly interested in the affairs of His children. He is one who has made the great exchange — trading anxious striving for the peace that Paul describes: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7, NIV).

He has found that the space between his knees and the floor is, in fact, the most productive space in the universe.

These ten men came from different centuries, different continents, different temperaments, and different theological traditions. One was a thundering Victorian pulpiteer who filled the largest auditorium in London. Another was a frail young missionary dying of tuberculosis in the American wilderness.

One was a Welsh coal miner’s son who prayed through the turning points of a World War.

Another was a Yorkshire boy who trusted God to feed two thousand orphans without ever asking the public for a penny. What united them was not their personalities or their methods but their absolute, unshakable conviction that prayer was not supplementary to the work of the Kingdom — it was the work. Everything else was fruit.

Jesus Himself set the pattern for this conviction. He told His disciples a parable specifically to show them “that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1, NIV). That word always is remarkable. Not when the mood strikes. Not in moments of crisis. Always. The prayer warrior takes this command seriously, answering it with a rhythm of life in which prayer is not a compartment but a climate — a pervading atmosphere in which all of life is conducted. As Paul compressed it into three words: “Pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17, NIV).

These men paid a price for their prayer lives. They paid in sleep, in comfort, in reputation, and sometimes in health. John Hyde’s heart was found physically displaced in his chest from the strain of his prolonged weeping intercessions. David Brainerd spent days prostrate on the cold ground of New Jersey forests, too weak to stand but too burdened to stop praying. E. M. Bounds rose at four o’clock every morning for the last two decades of his life, giving the first hours of each day to God before giving the remaining hours to anyone else. Rees Howells and his students sometimes prayed through entire nights during the darkest months of the Second World War. These were not casual, comfortable men. They were warriors.

And yet their testimony, to a man, was that the cost was nothing compared to the reward. They had discovered what the Psalmist knew: “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8, NIV). They had poured out their hearts — and found that God caught every drop. They had asked, and received. They had sought, and found.

They had knocked, and watched doors swing open that no human hand could have moved. Jesus’ words proved true for them as they prove true for every generation that dares to believe them: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7–8, NIV).

James, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was not speaking in abstractions when he declared that “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16, NIV).

He was pointing to something real, something verifiable, something that the men in this book proved with their lives. Prayer works. Not because of the one who prays, but because of the One who answers.

These chapters are not academic biographies. They are invitations. As you read them, you will find yourself standing repeatedly at the edge of a deeper life — a life in which God is not an emergency contact but a daily companion, not a last resort but the first response. That life is available to you. It is the inheritance of every child of God who is willing to seek the Father with their whole heart.

May these ten lives stir something holy in you. May they make you dissatisfied with thin, hurried, mechanical religion. May they send you to your knees with fresh hunger and renewed expectation — and may you discover there the same inexhaustible God these men found waiting for them.