Required reading
Thoughts on public prayer by Samuel Miller (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence Chapter 5 by reading up to the paragraph commencing ''VII. Another important feature of great excellence in public prayer, is a desirable degree of variety'.
My summary
Now that Miller has given us a list of what to avoid in public prayer, he starts to gives us a list of what should characterise good prayer.
Thus today Miller advises that a good prayer will:
(i) abound in the language of the word of God;
(ii) be orderly;
(iii) be dignified and general in its plan, and comprehensive in its requests, without descending to too much detail;
(iv) be carefully guarded in all its parts against undue prolixity;
(v) be seasonable and appropriate to the occasion on which it is uttered;
(vi) include so much gospel truth as to be richly instructive to all who join in it as well as all who listen to it.
What grabbed me
At times there was a bit of overlap with last week's chapter, which Miller himself admitted.
Though I did appreciate the encoruagement to be orderly in prayer: 'A good and tasteful order in prayer has also a tendency to operate favourably on the minds of all the worshippers who join in it. When the leader mingles together all the several parts of prayer, so that his fellow-worshippers are constantly interrupted by his passing from one to another without warning, and without order, it breaks in on the flow of appropriate feeling ; so that when the mind is in some measure prepared to indulge in a devout flow of feeling, something comes in to change the current, before it has time to take effect, and make the appropriate and profitable impression. This cannot fail of producing an effect equally unfriendly to comfort and to edification. '
Structure is important in prayer as well as in sermons.
Next week's reading
Conclude Chapter 5.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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