Prayer by John Bunyan (Available from Amazon or free here) - Reading Chapters 2 (What it is to pray with the spirit) & 3 (What it is to pray with the spirit and with the understanding).
In Chapter 2 Bunyan explains what it is to pray with the Spirit. Without the Spirit man would:
(i) not think one right thought of God;
(ii) make prayers that are hypocritical, cold, unseemly and abominable to God;
(iii) not know his misery and not be in a right posture to pray;
(iv) not pray because he would see his sins and flee;
(v) not approach God the right way;
(vi) not be able to claim a share in God or his mercy;
(vii) not be able to lift up his heart to God in prayer;
(viii) not be held up in prayer to pray aright;
(ix) not express himself in prayer;
(x) faint in the prosecution of the work.
Then in Chapter 3 Bunyan teaches us that we should not only pray in the Spirit, but also pray with understanding. Praying with understanding means the man:
(i) is instructed as to what he lacks;
(ii) espies in the heart of God a readiness and willingness to give those things the soul needs;
(iii) knows the way the soul comes to God and is encouraged;
(iv) sees the largeness of the promises and is encouraged further;
(v) comes to God with suitable arguments;
(vi) is useful in the matter and manner of prayer;
(vii) will continue in prayer.
I particularly liked how Bunyan drove home the importance of the Spirit by pointing to the fact that it was the Apostle Paul who made the statement 'For we know not what we should pray': '"For we" consider first the person speaking, even Paul, and in his person all the apostles,—(We extraordinary officers, the wise master-builders, that have some of us been caught up into paradise—"We know not what-we should pray for." Surely, there is no man but will confess, that Paul and his companions were as able to have done any work for God, as any pope or proud prelate in the church of Home, and could as well have made a Common Prayer Book, as those who at first composed this; as being not a whit behind them either in grace or gifts.'
If Paul couldn't pray without the Holy Spirit, how should we expect to be able to pray without the Holy Spirit!
R
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
1 comment:
I found Bunyan's arguments against written Prayer Book prayers a bit polemic (although I certainly understand his dislike of forcible use of standardised prayers! having being thrown in jail for refusal to use such). I don't think that the using of another's well-written, well-worded Biblical prayers is necessarily a bad thing, (from my time as an Anglican I still find Cranmer's exquisitely phrased words coming to mind when I pray) and formalism in our prayers is a danger to all of us, no matter our backgrounds.
The section on understanding was excellent! "Men without understanding may say the same words in prayer as others do; but if there be an understanding in the one, and none in the other, there is a mighty difference in speaking the very same words!" The Lord doesn't look at our words, no matter how excellently phrased and apt they may be, but at our hearts.
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