If you’re a Christian who really needs a wake-up call to pray and be serious about your faith, read Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill. This is an older book with a very direct style, think of the author as a prophet called to wake up those who are spiritually asleep. A lot of the book is worth quoting, so I put this article together to share some of my favorite Leonard Ravenhill quotes from the book.
“Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few prayers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”
“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.”
“The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning.”
“The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.”
“A sermon born in the head reaches the head; a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart.”
“Mere preachers may help anybody and hurt nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody. The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it. A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him. The preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.”
“John the Baptist did well to evade prison for six months. He and Elijah would not last six weeks in the streets of a modern city. They would be cast into a prison or mental home for judging sin and not muting their message.”
“The world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel.”
“Men build our churches but do not enter them, print our Bibles but do not read them, talk about God but do not believe him, speak of Christ but do not trust Him for salvation, sing our hymns and then forget them.”
“We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).”
“…there is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word.”
“God honors not wisdom nor personality but faith.”
“But what an army of priests could not do in four hundred years, one man “sent of God” John the Baptist, God-fashioned, God-filled, and God-fired, did in six months! I share the view of E.M. Bounds that it takes God twenty years to make a preacher. John the Baptist’s training was in God’s University of Silence. God takes all His great men there. Though to Paul, the proud, law-keeping Pharisee of colossal intellect, and boasted pedigree, Christ made a challenge on the Damascus road, it needed his three years in Arabia for emptying and unlearning before he could say, ‘God revealed Himself in me.’ God can fill in a moment what may take years to empty. Hallelujah.”
“Yes, but John was great! Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone —alone with God. Such loneliness is hard to endure and impossible to enjoy unless God-accompanied. Truly John made the grade in greatness.”
If you enjoyed these Leonard Ravenhill quotes, check out the article 8 Amazing Books to Strengthen Your Faith.
