Category Archives: Faith and Practice

Spending the Day in Prayer

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I long to grow in my life of prayer.

It is astonishing that I have come so far on so feeble prayer. Like holding my breath while running, it makes no sense, it will not last long, and I will not get very far without collapsing.

I need to commune with God, not just as a Pastor, but simply as a Christian. Prayer brings me back to my dependence on God for my every need. Prayer is worship before the throne of grace. Prayer is the least I could do, the simplest act of faith, and yet it is the greatest power of change in my life and one of the hardest disciplines to maintain.

I’ve been studying from Joel Beeke’s, Taking Hold of God; Reformed and Puritan Perspectives on Prayer*. I came across this summary of Matthew Henry’s “Directions for Praying All Day” that I thought worth sharing. May you be blessed and encouraged in your prayers as I was.

Directive One: Begin Every Day with God

Henry wrote, “It is our wisdom and duty to begin every day with God.” David testified in Psalm 5:3 that the morning hours are especially good for prayer. Likewise, Henry observed that the priests offered a sacrificial Lamb and burned incense every morning, and singers thanked the Lord every morning. He cited these examples to indicate that all Christians, who are spiritual priests in Christ, should offer spiritual sacrifices every morning to God. God who is Alpha, requires our first fruits; therefore, we should give him the first part of the day. God deserves our best, not just the leftovers of the day when we are tired and worn out. Henry wrote, “In the morning we are most free from company and business, and ordinarily have the best opportunity for solitude.” God gives us fresh mercies every morning, so we should give Him fresh thanksgivings and fresh meditations on His beauties. In the morning we prepare for the work of the day, let us commit it to God. Begin every day with God.

Directive Two: Spend Every Day With God

The Christian’s attendance upon God throughout the day is captured in the phrase to wait upon the Lord. “To wait on God, is to live a life of desire towards him, delight in him, dependence on him, and devoted ness to him,” Henry wrote. We should spend our days desiring God, like a beggar constantly looking to His benefactor, hungering not onl for His gifts but for the One who is the Bread of Life. We should live in delight of God, like a lover with his beloved. “Do we love God?” Henry asked. Constant dependence is the attitude of a child towards his Father whom he trusts and on whom he casts all his cares. A life of devotedness is that of a servant towards His Master, “ready to observe his will, and to do his work, and in everything to consult his honor and his interest.” It is “to make the will of his precept the rule of our practice,” and “to make the will of his providence the rule of our patience.” Henry thus argued that to pray without ceasing is a disposition of the heart waiting upon the Lord all through the day.

Directive Three: Close Every Day with God

Henry said we may end our days in contentment if we have the Lord as our God. He wrote, “Let this still every storm, on and and create a calm in thy soul. Having God Be ourGod in covenant, we have enough; we have all. And though the gracious soul still desires more of God, it never desires more than God; in him it reposted itself with a perfect complacency; in him it is at home, it is at rest.”

Henry advised us to lie down with thanksgiving to God when we go to bed at night. We should review his mercies and deliverances at the end of each day. “Every bite we eat, and every drop we drink, is mercy; every step we take, and every breath we draw, mercy.” We should be thankful for nighttime as God’s provision for our rest, for a place to lay our heads, and for the health of body and peace of mind which allows us to sleep.

Henry suggested we might fall asleep with thoughts such as these:

To thy glory, O God, I now go to sleep. Whether we eat or drink, yea, or sleep, for this is included in whatever we do – we must do it for the glory of God…. To thy grace, O God, and to the word of thy grace I now commend myself. It is good to fall asleep, with a fresh surrender of our whole selves, body, soul, and spirit, to God… O that when I awake I may still be with God; that the parenthesis of sleep, bough long, may not break off the thread of my communion with God, but that as soon as I awake I may resume it!

Oh may I, may we, learn to live in prayer like this!

* Beeke, Joel; Najapfour, Brian. Taking Hold of God: Reformed and Puritan Perspectives on Prayer. (Reformation Heritage Books, Grand Rapids, MI. 2011) pgs 153-152.

We Must Give Time to God

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The following is a devotion from A.W. Tozer found in his book, The Root of the Righteous. I post it here as a challenge for all Christians to go further, grow deeper, and walk closer with Christ. It will come as a challenge to most who sincerely read it and take it to heart, but only when we realize our lack of spiritual maturity can we begin to earnestly pray and work that God would bring this growth about in our lives.

Probably the most persistent problem to be found among Christians is the problem of a lack* spiritual progress. Why, after years of Christian profession, do so many persons find themselves no farther along than when they first believed?

Some would try to resolve the difficulty by asserting flatly that such persons were never saved, that they had never been truly regenerated. They are simply deceived professors who have stopped short of true conversion.

With a few this may be the answer, and we would accept this explanation as final did we not know that it is never the deceived professor who laments his lack of spiritual growth, but the true Christian who has had a real experience of conversion and who is sure that he is this very moment trusting in Christ for salvation. Uncounted numbers of such believers are among the disappointed ones who deplore their failure to make progress in the spiritual life.

The causes of a lack of growth are many. It would not be accurate to ascribe the trouble to one single fault. One there is, however, which is so universal that it may easily be the main cause: failure to give time to the cultivation of the knowledge of God.

The temptation to make our relation to God judicial instead of personal is very strong. Believing for salvation has these days been reduced to a once-done act that requires no further attention.  The young believer becomes aware of an impact of an act performed rather than of a living Savior to be followed and adored.

The Christian is strong or weak depending upon how closely he has cultivated the knowledge of God. Paul was anything but an advocate of the once-done, automatic school of Christianity. He devoted his whole life to the art of knowing Christ. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death… I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8, 10, 14).

Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience.  And such experience requires a whole life devoted to it and plenty of time spent at the holy task of cultivating God. God can be known satisfactorily only as we devote time to Him. Without meaning to do it we have written our serious fault into our book titles and gospel songs. “A little talk with Jesus,” we sing, and we call our books, “God’s Minute,” or something as revealing. The Christian who is satisfied to give God His “minute” and to have “a little talk with Jesus” is the same one who shows up at the evangelistic service weeping over his lack of spiritual growth and begging the evangelist to show him the way out of his difficulty.

We may as well accept it: there is not short cut to sanctity. Even the crises that come in the spiritual life are usually the result of long periods of thought and prayerful meditation. As the wonder grows more and more dazzling there is likely to occur a crisis of revolutionizing proportions. But that crisis is related to what has gone before. It is a sudden sweet explosion, an uprushing of the water that has been increasing its pressure within until we can no longer contain it. Back of it all is the slow buildup and preparation that comes from waiting upon God.

A thousand distractions would woo us away from thoughts of God, but if we are wise we will sternly put them from us and make room for the King and take time to entertain Him. Some things may be neglected with but little loss to the spiritual life, but to neglect communion with God is to hurt ourselves where we cannot afford it. God will respond to our efforts to know Him. The Bible tells us how; it is altogether a matter of how much determination we bring to the holy task.

Tozer, A.W. The Root of the Righteous. (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, INC., 1955.) Pages 10-13.

* The original text uses the word “retarded” to describe the lack of spiritual growth. Because of current cultural sensitivities, I have chosen to use the phrase “a lack of” in its place.

All Scripture quotations taken from the ESV.