The life of prayer is a thing of gradual attainment, through all the degrees that separate the child who learns the Lord’s Prayer by rote at his mother’s knee from the saint who, out of great tribulation, has wrought his life into a Lord’s Prayer. For, however natural a function prayer may be of our personality, it is hard to practise in our sinful state. We can no more pray at will, without having carefully acquired the capacity, than we can perform on a musical instrument that we have never seen or handled before. We have therefore to learn to pray. The rudimentary instinct, indeed, is present throughout the human race, as we see from the recorded history of every people in every age. But its action is often atrophied, and always spasmodic, irregular, uncertain, until it has been trained; and its training is a laborious work.
Ante orationem proaepara animam team. The wisman giffis the counsale, O christin man and woman, to prepare thi mynd afore thi prayer. That is to say, afore thow begyn to mak thi prayer, tak gud tent that thow mak it with sic ane mynd, that it may be acceptabil to God, and hard of him. Thairfor thow sal understand, that thair is thre vertewis, quhairwith thou suld prepare thi mynd afore thi prayer. The first is faith. The secund is hoip. The thrid is cherite. [Note: Archbishop Hamilton’s Catechism, 241.]
1. The best way to learn to pray is to practise praying. We shall look at that in a moment. But notice three exercises which help to bring us into the right mind for prayer. And first, Meditation. To live before God, to meditate on His words and works, to ascribe glory to His name, revealed to us now fully, is impossible without the transition of this state of realizing God into the act of prayer. Meditation is the necessary basis and element out of which prayer proceeds, and into which it returns.
“Shut thy door.” The reason is plain. He who would pray must first retire: the spirit of the world and the spirit of prayer are contrary the one to the other. Business or pleasure, or even common conversation if it continue for any long time, will strangely indispose the mind for devotion; and the soul, before she can take her flight to heaven, must plume and balance her wings by holy meditation; she must rally her scattered and dissipated thoughts, and fix them on the business she is going about; she must consider the nature of God to whom she is to pray; of herself who is to pray to Him: she must know the sins she has been guilty of to confess them; and the grace she stands in need of to petition for it. All this is not to be done but by deep meditation, which is the mother of devotion and the daughter of retirement. They who do not meditate cannot pray; and they who do not retire can do neither. [Note: Bishop Horne.]
Here be those men reproved that give them more to meditation than to prayer. They know not that God’s word is full of fire, and may purge the filth of sin. Also the souls of them that pray be inflamed with love, and though we may not bring our heart into stableness and sadness [i.e. stedfastness] of prayer soon as we will, yet shall we not leave off our prayer, but we shall waxen by little and little, and at the last Christ of His goodness will put our heart in stedfastness; and to this helpeth meditation, if it be reasonable and measurable. [Note: Richard Rolle, The Mending of Life, 48.]
2. Fasting is to be used. Now, as ordinarily employed, the term “fasting” stands for abstinence from food and from certain forms of pleasure that appeal to the senses. By this abstinence it is believed that the spirit grows stronger and is furthered in its efforts to reach out into the unseen and the invisible. This view is true as far as it goes, but we look instinctively for a deeper significance, and we find that fasting is a symbol of tremendous import. In its highest aspect it represents that inward act of supreme self-abnegation by which, in view of some stupendous undertaking which demands the concentrated force of his entire nature, a man withdraws, for a while, all his energies and interests from the various spheres in which they are operating, and brings them to bear upon the single task before him.
Fasting represents an attitude of detachment from the things of time and sense, whether it be from food, or pleasure, or lawful ambition. Prayer represents the complementary attitude of attachment to the things of God and the spiritual world. When we thus realize our need of detachment from earth we shall readily determine, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what particular forms our fasting shall take. In the times of our Puritan forefathers the spiritual value of fasting from food was fully realized, and there can be no doubt whatever of the relation of physical food to spiritual blessing. The sin of overeating is only too apt to hinder spiritual power in prayer, while if we “keep under the body” we shall certainly be conscious of more liberty and blessing as we fulfil our work of prayer and intercession. What we need concerning food, dress, books, recreation, friendship, ambition, is the resolute determination to be above them, superior to them, in order that the spiritual may rule everything. Like St. Paul, we should say, “All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1Co_6:12). This is the true idea of fasting, and in this spirit of detachment from things earthly we obtain one of the true accompaniments of, and helps to, that spirit of attachment to God which is found in prayer. [Note: W. H. Griffith Thomas, Life Abiding and Abounding, 96.]
3. Prayer may often be profitably preceded by the reading of Scripture. No other book is such a mirror both of man and of God. Here we see our own countenance, and we are humbled; here we see the countenance of God, and we are comforted. Here we behold the human heart, with its unbelief, its selfish and carnal thoughts, its tendency to hypocrisy, to seek rest in mere shadows. In reading Scripture, we feel in the presence of Him before whose eyes all things are naked and open. The Word is like a sharp sword; all that is confused and mixed in our thoughts and hearts is severed, the heavenly separated from the earthly, and the thoughts and intents of the hearts discerned. When in this Book we read the experiences of God’s people, the patriarchs, the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness, the life of David, we feel that we are reading our own history. As Ulysses wept when he heard his own sorrows recited by the minstrel at the court of King Alcinous, so, as we read in Scripture of the sins, failures, hopes, and fears of God’s children, we see our own hearts and lives. When the inner life of God’s saints is unveiled to us, as in the Psalms, the Book of Job, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and indeed throughout Scripture, so that, as Luther says, “we see into the very hearts of these men, and not merely behold paradise and heaven itself there, but also death, and even hell,”we possess in these apparently subjective and purely human delineations the teaching of the Holy Ghost, who presents to us truthfully and perfectly the conflict in human souls between God’s grace and their sin and weakness, and provides us with a guidebook, in which all possible difficulties and errors are noticed, and the true remedies and correctives indicated.
Little of the Word, with little prayer, is death to the spiritual life. Much of the Word, with little prayer, gives a sickly life. Much prayer with little of the Word gives more life, but without stedfastness. A full measure of the Word and prayer each day give a healthy and powerful life. [Note: Andrew Murray, The Prayer-Life, 100.]
I have often noticed how frequently in Wesley’s hymns, which are surely a storehouse of devotional utterance, the prayer has been suggested by a text. The poet’s eye has caught the full beauty of the idea concealed in some almost unnoticed text, and, as in a moment, the spiritual aspiration converts the text into a prayer, that is all the more effectual because it is the inspired child of an inspiration. [Note: Canon Hay Aitken, The Divine Ordinance of Prayer, 307.]
