601 SFL - Essential discipleship: Prayer

This is taken from
Spiritual
Disciplines for
the Christian
Life
Donald S. Whitney
Tuesday, 13 August 13

PRAYER...
FORTHE PURPOSE OF
GODLINESS
Chapter 4

A survey of 17,000 evangelical
Christians found that on average
they prayed for less than 5
minutes each day
A survey of 2,000 pastors and
their wives found they prayed for
less than 7 minutes per day.
Whitney says that prayer is
second in importance only to
God’s word.
Carl Lundqvist said this about
prayer and the wog...

“The NewTestament church built two other disciplines upon
prayer and Bible study, the Lord’s Supper and small cell
groups. JohnWesley emphasized ﬁve works of piety by
adding fasting.The medieval mystics wrote about nine
disciplines clustered around three experiences: purgation of
sin, enlightenment of the spirit and union with God. Later the
Keswick Convention approach to practical holiness revolved
around ﬁve different religious exercises.Today Richard
Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline, lists twelve disciplines
– all of them relevant to the contemporary Christian. But
whatever varying religious exercises we may practice, without
the two basic ones of Emmaus – prayer and Bible reading –
the others are empty and powerless.”

PRAYER IS EXPECTED
Jesus expects us to pray
Matt 6:6-9 But when you pray, go
into your room, close the door and pray
to your Father,who is unseen.Then your
Father, who sees what is done in
secret, will reward you. 7 And when you
pray, do not keep on babbling like
pagans, for they think they will be
heard because of their many words...
9 “This, then, is how you should
pray:“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
Lk 11:9, 18:1

GOD’S WORD MAKES IT CLEAR

Col 4:2 Devote yourselves
to prayer, being watchful
and thankful.

and thankful.
1 Thess 5:17 pray
continually,

and thankful.
1 Thess 5:17 pray
continually,
Did you notice anything
about these two verses?

and thankful.
1 Thess 5:17 pray
continually,
Did you notice anything
about these two verses?
They are commands

How devoted are you to prayer -
compare this devotion to your
devotion to other things in your life.
This emphasises that prayer is
relational - it comes out of an
unbroken relationship with the
Father.Whitney suggests it is like
having two phone lines - God is
always on one of them and you are
aware of him even when speaking on
the other.

Martin Luther,
“As it is the
business of tailors
to make clothes
and cobblers to
mend shoes, so it
is the business of
Christians to
pray.”

What excuses do you use for not
praying? Most people claim other
demands, priorities etc. - yet if
you asked them they would gladly
tell you how important it is to
pray!
The call to prayer is also an
invitation - Heb 4:16 Let us
then approach God’s throne of
grace with conﬁdence, so that we
may receive mercy and ﬁnd grace to
help us in our time of need.

Note here that there is no need
to be pessimistic about praying -
God is happy to hear and give
grace - prayer is not an obligation
but an opportunity to respond
and receive
God’s command is a command of
love - he wants to hear from us,
to communicate with us and to
bless us.

Prayer is important in spiritual
warfare: John Piper suggests we can
see prayer as the use of a walkie-talkie
in warfare, not for our own
convenience or ease of life.
The example of Jesus in prayer is
important - he prayed and so should
we, he needed it, so do we - Lk
5:16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely
places and prayed.
Major reasons for prayerlessness:
- a lack of discipline - prayer time is
not planned or prioritised

- the problem of often not “seeing” the
result of prayer - after all it is primarily
a spiritual activity
- sometimes we do not feel God’s
nearness when we pray, it is easy to
pray when we feel God’s closeness
- when we don’t see the need to pray,
Jn 15:5 “apart from me you can do
nothing” - yet we are proud and self
sufﬁcient
- when we do not see God’s greatness,
when we lose focus on the cross

PRAYER IS LEARNED
We start the Christian lives in need
of learning to pray - and continue
to grow and learn about prayer
throughout our Christian lives.
On one level we know instinctively
how to pray - much as a baby
knows how to ‘talk’ from its
earliest days - yet still we need to
see, as the disciples did, that we
need Jesus to teach us to pray - Lk
11:1 - how do we do this?

1. By praying
Just as we learn a foreign
language by using it - we
might read about it, know
how to pronounce words,
build sentences etc. - but
ultimately we have to speak
out the language - HSp
helps us in this, Jn
16:13 But when he, the
Spirit of truth, comes, he will
guide you into all the truth.

2. By meditating on
scripture
Meditation is the missing link
between Bible intake and prayer.
Reading the Bible should lead us
into prayer, should help us to
pray.After reading the Bible
meditation allows us to take it
deeper into ourselves, to digest it
- then we can take it back and talk
to the Lord about it in a
meaningful way.What we read has
now become more meaningful and
purposeful in our lives.

John Owen: “Pray as you think.
Consciously embrace with your
heart every gleam of light and
truth that comes to your mind.
Thank God for and pray about
everything that strikes you
powerfully”
Matthew remarked on Psalm 19:14
“David’s prayers were not his
words only, but his meditations; as
meditation is the best preparation
for prayer, so prayer is the best
result of meditation. Meditation
and prayer go together.”

Thomas Manton, Puritan pastor said
“God’s Word feeds meditation and
meditation feeds prayer. These duties
go hand in hand; meditation must
follow hearing and precede prayer.
To hear and not to pray is unfruitful.
It is rashness to pray and not
meditate. What we take in by the
Word we digest by meditation and let
out by prayer. Men are barren, dry
and sapless in their their prayers for
want of exercising themselves in holy
thoughts.”

William Bates, Puritan pastor indicated
“What is the reason that our desires
like an arrow shot from a weak bow
do not reach the mark? But only this,
we do not meditate before we pray.
Our prayers are ineffectual if we
don’t meditate before we pray.”

Speaking of the puritans PeterToon wrote,
“To read the Bible and not to meditate was
seen as an unfruitful exercise: better to read
one chapter and meditate afterward then to
read several chapters and not to meditate.
Likewise to meditate and not to pray was like
preparing to run a race and never leaving the
starting line. The three duties of reading
Scripture, meditation, and prayer belonged
together, and though each could be done
occasionally on its own, as formal duties to
God they were best done together.”

Whitney finishes this section with some insight from
George Muller,
“It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of
which I have not lost, for more than fourteen years.The point is
this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and
primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to
have my soul happy in the Lord.The first thing to be concerned
about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might
glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state,
and how my inner man might be nourished...Before this time
my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an
habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed
myself in the morning...

Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to
give myself to the reading of theWord of God, and to meditation
on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged,
warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the
Word of God, while meditating on it, my heart might be brought
into experiential communion with the Lord...I began therefore to
meditate on the NewTestament from the beginning, early in the
morning.The ﬁrst thing I did, after having asked in a few words
the Lord’s blessing upon his preciousWord, was, to begin to
meditate on theWord of God, searching as it were into every
verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public
ministry of theWord, not for the sake of preaching on what I
had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my
own soul.

The result I have found to be almost
invariably this, that after a very few
minutes my soul has been led to
confession, or to thanksgiving, or to
intercession, or to supplication; so
that, though I did not, as it were,
give myself to prayer, but to
meditation, yet it turned almost
immediately more or less into
prayer.
The full story is well
worth reading: http://
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?
q=cache:lHJJhsc8TlEJ:www.connsbrook.org.uk/
George%2520Muller%2520and%2520Bible
%2520Reading.doc+&hl=en&gl=uk

3. By praying with others
One of the great learning experiences for
the disciples must have been being with
him and hearing Jesus pray.
Find good models in prayer and learn
from them.
Do not repeat their habits but learn from
their insight, passion, use of scripture etc.
Do not repeat their words - or repeat
the same words over and over Matt
6:7
Make it a habit to pray with other people
- many great movements have started in
this way

4. By reading about
prayer
Remember Proverbs
27:17 & 13:20
Take time to read of the
“great” prayer warriors -
learn from their struggles as
well as their successes.
Almost every great man or
woman who achieved things
for God were people who
prayed and prayed and
prayed.

4. By reading about
prayer
Remember Proverbs
27:17 & 13:20
Take time to read of the
“great” prayer warriors -
learn from their struggles as
well as their successes.
Almost every great man or
woman who achieved things
for God were people who
prayed and prayed and
prayed.
As iron sharpens
iron, so one
person sharpens
another.
Walk with the
wise and become
wise, for a
companion of
fools suffers harm.

PRAYER IS ANSWERED
Psalm 65:2 You who answer
prayer, to you all people will come.
Whitney says all prayer is
answered, Matt 7:7-8 “Ask
and it will be given to you; seek
and you will ﬁnd; knock and the
door will be opened to you. For
everyone who asks receives; the
one who seeks ﬁnds; and to the
one who knocks, the door will be
opened.”

Andrew Murray comments on Christ’s
pledge. “Ask and you shall receive,
everyone that asks receives.”
Therefore, if you ask and receive not it
must be because there is something
wanting in our prayers. Maybe God
answered in a way that is not obvious
to us. Maybe we are asking for things
that are outside the will of God or will
not glorify Him. Maybe we are praying
with selﬁsh motives. Maybe we are
failing to deal with blatant sin in our
life. God does not mock us with His
promises to answer prayer.

C.H. Spurgeon said “I can’t
imagine anyone of you
tantalizing your child by exciting
in him a desire that you did not
intend to gratify.When God
leads you to pray, He means for
you to receive.”
We need to discipline
ourselves to pray and pray
aright so we can experience
the joy of answered prayer.

MORE APPLICATION
Since prayer is expected will
you pray?You need to develop a
speciﬁc plan about your prayer life.
At what time of the day will you
faithfully go before the Father? How
long will you pray each day? Will
you read the Bible? Will you read
books about prayer written by
godly men so you can learn how to
pray aright? Where will you pray?
You need a special place.Will you
take action today?

John Piper says, “Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the main
reasons so many of God’s children don’t have a significant life of
prayer is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t
plan to. If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just
get up one summer morning and say,‘Hey, let’s go today!’ You
won’t have anything ready.You won’t know where to go. Nothing
has been planned.
“But that is how many of us treat prayer.We get up day after
day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part
of our life, but nothing’s ever ready.We don’t know where to go.
Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure.
And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a
wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer.

“The opposite of planning is the rut. If you don’t plan a
vacation, you will probably stay home and watchTV.The natural,
unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality.
There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want
renewal in your life of prayer, you must plan to see it.
“Therefore, my simple exhortation is this: Let us take time this
very day to rethink our priorities and how prayer fits in. Make
some new resolve.Try some new venture with God. Set a time.
Set a place. Choose a portion of Scripture to guide you. Don’t be
tyrannized by the press of busy days.We all need midcourse
corrections. Make this a day of turning to prayer—for the glory
of God and for the fullness of your joy.”

Since prayer is learned, will
you learn to pray? Will you learn
about how others have prayed? Will
you meet others to pray? Will you
learn to pray by linking Bible reading
to prayer via meditation? When will
you start? Start where you are. If you
are not praying, start. If you are not
meditating, start. If you are not
reading your Bible, start.

Since prayer is answered will
you persistently pray? Matt 7:7-8 is
in the present, continuous tense.That
means we must pray persistently before
answers come. If we fail to persist it may
mean that at the heart of our prayer
lacks seriousness about our request.
God may want us to persist in order to
strengthen our faith in Him. George
Mueller observed, “The great fault of the
children of God is, they do not continue in
prayer, they do not persevere. If they desire
anything for God’s glory, they should pray
until they get it.”

Spuregon said, “Even as the moon
inﬂuences the tides of the sea, even
so does prayer inﬂuence the tides of
godliness.”
JC Ryle, "What is the reason that
some believers are so much brighter
and holier than others? 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."

601 SFL - Essential discipleship: Prayer

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