Robert Trail wrote, “Some ministers of meaner gifts and parts are more successful than some that are far above them in abilities; not because they preach better, so much as because they pray more. Many good sermons are lost for lack of much prayer in study.” . . . The church today desperately needs such preachers whose private prayers season their pulpit messages. The Puritan pastors jealously guarded their personal devotional time. They set their priorities on spiritual, eternal realities. They knew that if they cased to watch and pray constantly, they would be courting spiritual disaster.

Joel Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (RHB, 2004), 164.