Pray Much

We all know that we ought to pray. If you are like me, you may have at one time bought resources to help build patterns for daily prayer hence revitalizing your personal prayer life, but after a while these resources made prayer feel like a chore. For most people prayer is a routine, a naming of items on a checklist and ticking them off as we pray through them. Is this what prayer is all about? Is there a formula or technique out there that makes prayer exciting and engaging as some make it out to be?

James Montgomery who lived in the late 1700’s to the mid 1800’s wrote, “We perish if we cease from prayer.” We all know that we ought to pray. If you are like me, you may have at one time bought resources to help build patterns for daily prayer hence revitalizing your personal prayer life, but after a while these resources made prayer feel like a chore. For most people prayer is a routine, a naming of items on a checklist and ticking them off as we pray through them. Is this what prayer is all about? Is there a formula or technique out there that makes prayer exciting and engaging as some make it out to be?

In his book, Praying; Finding our way through Duty to Delight, J. I. Packer uses the word struggle as a realistic word to describe the typical Christian experience of praying. Packer goes on to quote an Anglican Bishop of Liverpool England, John Charles Ryle, who in 1852, wrote a tract that sold by the thousands under the title Do You Pray? The tract is now reprinted under the title A Call to Prayer.  As food for thought and reflection I will leave you extracts from J.C. Ryle’s work;

I ask whether you pray, because a habit of prayer is one of the surest marks of a true Christian. All the children of God are alike in this respect. From the moment there is any life and reality about their religion they pray. Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying. This is one of the common marks of all the elect of God. “They cry day and night unto him.” (Luke 18:7) The Holy Spirit, who makes them new creatures, works in them the feeling of adoption, and makes them cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). It is as much a part of their nature to pray as it is of a child to cry. They see their need of mercy and grace. They feel their emptiness and weakness. They cannot do otherwise than they do. They must pray.

I ask whether you pray because there is no duty in religion so neglected as private prayer. I believe there are tens of thousands whose prayers are nothing but a mere form, as set of words repeated by rote without a thought about their meaning. Many even those who use good forms mutter their prayers after they go into bed, or while they wash and dress in the morning. Men may think they please, but they may depend upon it that in the sight of God this is not praying. Words said without heart are utterly useless to our souls as the drumbeating of the poor heathen before their idols. Where there is no heart, there may be lip-work and tongue work, but there is nothing that God listens to; there is no prayer.

Have you forgotten that it is not fashionable to pray? It is one of the things that many would be rather ashamed to own. There are hundreds who would sooner storm a breach, than confess publicly that they make a habit of prayer. There are thousands who, if obligated to sleep in the same room with a stranger, would lie down in bed without a prayer.

Praying and sinning never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer. I cannot forget this. I look at men’s lives. I believe few pray.

I ask whether you pray, because diligence in prayer is the secret to eminent holiness. Without controversy there is a vast difference among true Christians. I believe the difference in nineteen cases out of twenty arises from different habits about private prayer. I believe that those who are not eminently holy pray little and those who are eminently holy pray much.

Let me speak to those who do pray. I trust that some who read this tract know well what prayer is and have the Spirit of adoption. To all such, I offer a few words of brotherly counsel and exhortation Brethren who pray, if I know anything of a Christian heart, you are often sick of your own prayers. There are few children of God who do not often find the season of prayer a season of conflict. The devil has special wrath against us when he sees us on our knees.

It is essential to your souls health to make praying part of the business of every twenty four hours of your life. Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.

Never forget that you may tie together morning and evening devotions by an endless chain of short ejaculatory prayers throughout the day. Even in company or business, or in the very streets, you may be silently sending up little winged messengers to God as Nehemiah did in the very presence of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 2:4). And never think that time is wasted which is given to God. A Christian never finds he is a loser, in the long run, by persevering in prayer.

Tell me what a man’s prayers are, and I will soon tell you the state of his soul. Prayer is the spiritual pulse. By this spiritual health may be tested. Oh, let us keep an eye continually upon our private devotions.