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Notes on prayer culled from the late Andrew Murray’s book
The late Andrew Murray observed that of all the promises connected with Jesus’ command, “Remain in me,” there is no higher command and none that sooner brings the confession “Not that I have already attained or am already made perfect,” than this: “If you remain in me... ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you” (Jn 15.7 NIV). Power with God is the highest attainment of the life of genuine remaining in Christ.
And of all the traits of a life like Christ there is none higher and more glorious than conformity to him in the work that now constantly engages him in the Father’s presence—namely, his all-prevailing intercession. The more we remain in him, and grow in his likeness, will his priestly life work mightily in us, and our life become what his is, a life that consistently intercedes and prevails for others—men, women and children.
“You have made us kings and priests to God.” Both in the king and the priest the chief thing is power, influence, blessing. In the king it is the power descending downward; in the priest, the power ascends, prevailing with God. In our blessed Priest-King, Jesus Christ, the kingly power is founded upon the priestly, “He is able to save completely because he ever lives to make intercession”(Hb 7.25). In us, his kings and priests it cannot be otherwise: it is in intercession that the Church is to find and wield its highest power.
So, it is with a deep conviction that the place and power of prayer in the Christian life is too little understood and practiced that these Primers on Prayer are being produced. I invite you to implement today what we learn together in the School of prayer.
The Bible makes it clear that God the Father waits to hear every prayer of faith, to give us whatever we desire, even whatever we ask in Jesus’ name. But we have become so accustomed to limiting the wonderful love and large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and clearest statement of our Lord without the qualifying clauses by which we guard and enclose them. If there is one thing the Church of Jesus Christ needs to learn, it is that God intends prayer to have an answer, and that it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for his child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. God hears prayer; this truth is nearly universally acknowledged, but few genuinely understand the meaning, or experience the power.
Many today complain that they do not have the power to pray in faith, to pray the effectual, fervent prayer that accomplishes much. The truth is, the blessed Lord Jesus is waiting, is longing, to give us precisely this. Christ is our life: in heaven he lives to intercede—to pray; his life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but trust him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises, but by showing us HIMSELF, the ever-living Intercessor, as our Life. It is when we believe this, and go and remain in him for our prayer-life, too, that our fears of not being able to pray correctly will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphantly trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be himself the life and power of our prayer.
Do you see?
These Primers on Prayer are designed so that together we can learn to make Christ our life, and so learn to pray. I invite you to do that today, right now.
Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus’ disciples saw him at prayer and later one of the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” This is a perennial need. Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the feeblest child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which man can rise. It is fellowship with the Unseen and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed at its disposal. It is the very essence of true religion, the channel of all blessings, the secret of power and life. Not only for ourselves, but for others, for the Church, for the world, it is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of him and his strength. It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfillment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation. And for this blessed work, how slothful and unfit we are. It is only the Spirit of God who can enable us to do it aright.
All too quickly we are deceived into a resting upon the outward form, the mechanics, while the power is missing. Our early training, the teaching of the Church, the influence of habit, the stirring of the emotions—too easily these lead to prayer which has no spiritual power, and accomplishes very little. And for true prayer, which takes hold of God’s strength, that accomplishes much, and to which the gates of heaven are really opened wide—who would not cry, “Oh for someone to teach me to pray like that?”
The good news is that Jesus has opened a school, in which he trains his redeemed ones, who specially desire it, to have power in prayer. Shall we not enter it with the petition also on our lips, “O teach us to pray”? It is exactly this that we need to be taught.
Join me at Jesus’ feet as we learn together.
The disciple of Jesus says, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Yes, we feel the need now of being taught to pray. At first, there is no work that seems so simple, later on, none that is more difficult. The confession is forced from us: we do not know how to pray as we ought. It is true that we have God’s Word, with its clear and certain promises; but sin has so darkened our mind, that we do not always know how to apply the Word. In spiritual matters we do not always seek the most necessary things, or we fail in praying according to the law of the sanctuary. In temporal things we are even less able to secure the wonderful liberty our Father has given us to ask what we need. And yet, when we know what to ask, how much there is still needed to make our prayer acceptable. It must be to the glory of God, in full surrender to his will, in full assurance of faith, in the name of Jesus, and with a perseverance that, if necessary, refuses to be denied.
All this must be learned.
It can really only be learned in the school of much prayer, for with the practice comes accomplishment. Amid the painful consciousness of ignorance and unworthiness, in the struggle between believing and doubting, the heavenly art of effective prayer is learned. Because, even when we do not remember it, there is One, the Beginner and Completer of faith and prayer, who watches over our praying, and sees to it that in all who trust him for it their education in the school of prayer shall be carried on to perfection. If the underlying attitude of all our prayer is the teachableness that comes from a sense of ignorance, and from faith in him as a perfect teacher, then we may be sure that we shall be taught. We shall learn to pray in power. Yes, we may depend upon it. He teaches to pray.
Check your own attitude. Do you want to learn to pray? Come to the feet of Jesus to learn in his school of prayer.
After watching and listening to Jesus at prayer, the disciple asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Make no mistake about it, none can teach like Jesus, none but Jesus. A pupil needs a teacher, who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the pupil’s needs. May God be praised! Jesus is all this and more. He knows what prayer is. It is Jesus, praying himself, who teaches us to pray. He knows what prayer is. He learned it himself in the trials and tears of his earthly life. And in heaven it is still his beloved work: his life there is prayer as he intercedes in behalf of those he loves. Nothing delights him more than to find those whom he can take with him into the Father’s presence, whom he can clothe with power to pray down God’s blessing on those around them, whom he can train to be his co-workers in the intercession by which the kingdom is to be revealed on earth.
He knows how to teach. First by the urgency of felt need, later by the confidence with which joy inspires it. Now by the teaching of the Word, there by the testimony of another believer who knows what it is to have prayer heard. By his Holy Spirit he has access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that hinders prayer, or giving us the assurance that we please God. He teaches, by giving not only thoughts of what to ask or how to ask, but by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor. We may indeed and most joyfully say, “Who can teach like Jesus?”
In the Gospels, Jesus never specifically taught his disciples to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well, but much of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to man. Not power with men, but power with God is the first thing.
So let’s keep first things first, and pray.
To the woman by the well at Sychar Jesus said, “The time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth”
(Jn 4.23-24 NIV). These words of Jesus are his first recorded teaching on the general subject of worship, which includes prayer. In the first place, the Father seeks worshipers: our worship satisfies his loving heart and is a joy to him. True worship is that which is in spirit and truth. The Son has come to open the way for this worship in spirit and in truth, and teach it to us. Therefore one of the first lessons in the School of Prayer must be to understand what it is to pray in spirit and in truth, and to know how we can attain to it. Jesus’ words, “The time is coming and now is”, make it clear that it is only in and through him that the worship of God will be in spirit and in truth.
The worship in spirit is the worship of the Father in the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship. The worship of the Father is only possible to those to whom the Spirit of the Son has been given, even to those to whom the Son has revealed the Father. Similarly, to worship in truth does not simply mean, in sincerity. No. Jesus is full of grace and truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through him the grace that is in Jesus is ours in deed and truth. So to worship in spirit is worship in truth; in actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father who is Spirit and the child praying in the spirit.
A living, vital relationship with Christ is therefore primary in prayer. Is this yours?
Jesus said, “(W)hen you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Mt 6.6 NIV). At the outset of his teaching on prayer Jesus insists that his disciples must have a secret place for prayer; every one must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God. That inner chamber, that solitary place, is Jesus’ schoolroom. It can be anywhere, but that secret place there must be, with the quiet time in which the pupil places himself in the Master’s place, to be by him prepared to worship the Father. There alone, Jesus comes to us to teach us to pray.
The first thing in closet-prayer is: I must meet my Father. The light that shines in the closet must be: God’s Father-love, God’s infinite Fatherliness. Thus each thought or petition we breathe out will be simple, hearty, childlike trust in the Father. This is how the Master teaches us to pray: he brings us into the Father’s living presence.
God is a God who hides himself from the fleshly eye. As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not meet him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But to the man, the woman, the young person who withdraws himself or herself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal himself. As he or she forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God’s presence, the light of the Father’s love will rise upon him. The Father is in secret: in these words Jesus teaches us where he is waiting for us, where he is always to be found.
Do you have a secret place, a place to meet God in prayer?
I encourage you to find a place today.