Without God, all our ploughing, cultivating, and sowing would be in vain, but God gives no harvest unless we plough and cultivate and sow. The number of men on earth today who will be saved depends entirely upon the faithfulness of those who are already saved. It depends upon your faithfulness and upon my faithfulness. The day has past when any student of the Bible thinks this work belongs only to ministers. James was not writing to ministers, but to ordinary Christians.
Prayer avails more for the conversion of sinners than any other thing.
Sinners have been converted with very little direct effort of others on their behalf. But I doubt if any sinner was ever converted without some definite and direct praying. That is why I am here preaching the gospel and not in hell bewailing my lost estate. Soon after my own conversion, God gave me one of the unlikeliest men to pray for, and I prayed every day for perhaps 15 years. For a long time there was no result, but he came at last.