Andrew Fuller and Prayer, or Lack of it.

Isn't it amazing that Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), the great strict  and Particular Baptist preacher, who was born in Cambridgeshire and settled in Kettering, England.  He contended for the faith, and restated Calvinist theology for the Particular Baptist churches, and founded the Baptist Missionary Society.. Why this was done was because Calvin's theology was not baptistic, but reformed.  

This great man confessed on his death-bed how little he prayed.  And so sad.  But the man was truthful.  Perhaps he spent more time in his books than before the Lord in humble prayer.  I think we can all confess to the same wrong priority!  It is good to do the one thing but without leaving the other undone!  I think this is a very timely warning to all reformed men (and women).  I wonder if this is also true of all the great reformed men in the church today! I know I went through a stage when prayer was a duty. In my preaching during my "high ortho" days, I depended much more on my preparation than on the Lord's unction.  Thankfully, that is all different now, but I, too, am ashamed at my lack of earnest, pleading, prevailing prayer to the living God.  I wish I was a much better man of prayer than I am.  I can put the matter right, but there is that something inside me that resists the need to seek the Lord's face.  

I am humbled by Martin Luther, I think it was, who looked at his very full diary one day and resolved that he will have to spend at least four hours in prayer.  That humbles me into the dust!  What a fraud I am in the light of this!