“Behold, he prayeth.” – Acts 9:11

Do you not see, my dear brethren, that the best mark of our being sons of God is to be found in our devotion? “Behold, he prayeth.” Well, then, does it not follow, as a natural consequence, that the more we are found in prayer the brighter will our evidences be? Perhaps you have lost your evidence this morning; you do not know whether you are a child of God or not; I will tell you where you lost your confidence-you lost it in your closet. I speak what I have felt. I have often gone back from God-never so as to fall finally, I know, but I have often lost that sweet savor of His love which I once enjoyed. I have had to cry,

“Those peaceful hours I once enjoyed,
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void,
The world can never fill.”

I have gone up to God’s house to preach, without either fire or energy; I have read the Bible, and there has been no light upon it; I have tried to have communion with God, but all has been a failure. Shall I tell where that commenced! It commenced in my closet. I had ceased, in a measure, to pray. Here I stand, and do confess my faults; I do acknowledge that whenever I depart from God it is there it doth begin. O Christians, would you be happy? Be much in prayer. Would ye be victorious? Be much in prayer.

“Restraining prayer, we cease to fight,
Prayer makes the Christian’s armor bright.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0016.cfm