Teach Me to Pray - Week #3

Again this week I'm working out of chapter one ("The Only Teacher") of Murray's book, "Teach Me to Pray." Murray says,

"Prayer is what we need to be taught. Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that even a small child can pray, it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which anyone can rise...At first there is no work that appears so simple as prayer. But (then) we feel the need of being taught to pray. Later we may see that there is no task that is more difficult..."

This resonates with me because the more I probe into prayer with the desire to mature in it, the more I am aware of how little I understand it and need to be taught. While the smallest child can pray and the lost man or woman cry out to God, it takes work and a teachable spirit and a Teacher to bring the sincere believer into a life of mature prayer, or as Murray says, prayer that "takes hold of God's strength and to which the gates of heaven are opened wide":

"We know...that we are weak and unfit for this holy task. Only the Spirit of God can enable us to do it as it should be done. How quickly we are deceived into resting in the form of prayer, while the power is missing!...To be taught true prayer - that which takes hold of God's strength and to which the gates of heaven are opened wide - who would not cry, 'O for someone to teach me how to truly pray!'"

Andrew Murray gives five things needed to make our prayer acceptable/effective; our prayers must be:

1. To the glory of God
2. In full surrender to His will
3. In full assurance of faith
4. In the name of Jesus
   
5. With a perseverance that refuses to be denied

His main point in this chapter is that we must be taught this and that Jesus is the Teacher..."It is Jesus, praying Himself, who teaches us to pray. He knows what prayer is. He learned it in the trials and tears of His earthly life. In heaven it is still His beloved work; His life there is intercession. Nothing delights Him more than to find those whom He can take with Him into the Father's presence...He teaches not only by thoughts of what to ask or how to ask but also by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor."

To underscore his point, Murray concludes the chapter by saying that Jesus didn't teach His disciples to preach but to pray..."To know how to speak to God is more vital than knowing how to speak to men. It is power with God not man that is of supreme importance."

Andrew Murray always ends his chapters with a prayer, and this one is so good that I will quote it to end this posting; I encourage you to pray it in faith then to pray your own prayer, believing that He hears you:

"Blessed Lord, You ever live to pray, and You can teach me to live to pray...Lord Jesus, I confess I do not know how to pray as I ought. Teach me to wait on you and in so doing give you time to train me to pray. May a deep sense of my ignorance, of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer, and of the need of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer, lead me to surrender my thoughts of what I think I know. Draw me to kneel before You in true teachableness and poverty of spirit.

Fill me, Lord, with confidence that with You as my Teacher, I will learn to pray. With Jesus as my Teacher - He who ever prays to the Father and by His prayer rules the destinies of His church and the world - I need not be afraid. As much as I need to know of the mysteries of the prayer world, you will unfold for me. And when it is not for me to know, You will teach me to be strong in faith, giving glory to God.

Blessed Lord, You will not put to shame Your scholar who trusts You, nor will I by Your grace put You to shame. Amen."

Other Titles for "Teach Me to Pray"

For those of you wanting to get Murray's book, "Teach Me to Pray", if you have problems finding that edition of it, look for the former titles "With Christ in the School of Prayer" or "The Believer's School of Prayer."

"Teach Me to Pray" is an updated edition of this classic work of Murray's and is worded a little differently but is the same book.

God bless you this week!

Teach Me to Pray - Week #2

I pray that the spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing God will rest on our hearts and minds as we proceed through this book, Teach Me to Pray, by Andrew Murray. This week I'm taking a line from the preface and one from chapter one ("The Only Teacher"):

"Many complain that they lack power to pray in faith, to pray the effective prayer that accomplishes something. But Jesus is waiting, longing, to teach us this. In heaven He ever lives to pray for us. His life in us is an always-praying life...

Luke 11:1 'One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray."'...As we grow in the Christian life, the concept of Christ's never-failing intercession becomes increasingly wonderful. It stirs in us a desire to be like Christ in His intercession."

A truth that has meant a lot to me over the years but that is taking on a new level of meaning to me now is that of Jesus' eternal intercession for us at the Father's right hand (Heb. 7:25). Just as He accomplished the Father's will on earth through prayer and intercession, so He continues to do so and will forever do so..."His life in us is an always-praying life...It stirs in us a desire to be like Christ in His intercession." These words of Murray's suggest two things to me that I'd like to share.

First, because He dwells in me by His Spirit as the Ever-interceding One, I can be assured that my desire to learn to pray as He prays will be met; the more my oneness and union with Him deepens (in other words, the more my heart and mind and will are aligned with His), the more my prayers will reflect His life. In the genuine struggle for maturity in prayer, I'm forced to go to Him over and over and over again, seeking to learn from Him and never content with the mere motions of prayer. This ongoing clinging to Him and crying out to Him for real and mature prayer progressively brings me into line with His thoughts and will and into deeper union with Him, and that produces fruit (John 15). One of the expressions of that fruit is effective praying (John 15:7).

Second, the truth that His life in us is an always-praying life tells me that to be like Him is to intercede and to be an intercessor; as His life increases in me, intercession will increase to the point that I become an intercessor. His Spirit who dwells within me increasingly prays in and through me as I grow in yielding to His heart and mind and will (Romans 8:26,27; I Cor. 2:9-16). This is the norm for the true believer in Him.

I heard a phrase sung this week: "I will lean into His prayer"; it was sung in context to His ever living to pray for us. I was impacted with that phrase because it says in different words what I believe Andrew Murray is referring to: we are utterly dependent on His intercession for us if we are to become like Him in all respects, including His prayer life. By faith in the cross of Jesus and His Holy Spirit, we are united with Him; His "always-praying" presence in us is our hope of learning to pray.

Lord, thank You that prayer in You is not like the praying of dead religions but is a living union with the great Intercessor Himself! Thank You that in the struggle to grow in prayer, it isn't a struggle to learn performance in prayer but a struggle to learn dependence on Your "always-praying" presence within. We say "yes" to Your leadership in this process and once again, we say without shame, "Lord, teach us to pray..." We want to be like You in intercession. Thank You that You hear and delight to answer this prayer. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Teach Me to Pray - Week #1

This week we'll begin looking at Andrew Murray's book, Teach Me to Pray.
As is true of Murray's writings, this book is both very simple and very profound. I'm being strongly challenged as I'm reading through it.

I'll be going slowly through this book because each page is packed with Jesus and truth in Him. If you’re interested in getting your own copy of it, it's available at amazon.com and through local bookstores.

The quote this week is taken from the preface of the book; this was part of what I quoted two weeks ago but I want to look more carefully at it this week because it's only as we pause long enough to allow the implications of what Murray is saying to really sink in, that we benefit from the truths he's presenting. I urge you to read these postings prayerfully, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth in Jesus and empower your heart to receive and to obey whatever He may want to do or say.

Murray writes:
"'Teach Me to Pray' has been written because of a deep conviction that the place and power of prayer in the Christian life has not been fully understood. As long as we look at prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our own Christian life, we cannot fully know what it is intended to be. But when we learn to regard it as the most important work entrusted to us and as the root and strength of all other work, then we understand that there is nothing we need more than to study and practice the art of praying in the correct manner."

What a statement! Is prayer really the "most important work entrusted to us and the root and strength of all other work..."?! If Murray is even partly correct in this, then we as western believers are in serious need of renewing our minds related to how the Kingdom of God operates and of restructuring our lives and ministries around that; also, if he's correct, then our great need is, as he says, "to study and practice the art of praying in the correct manner." The rest of Murray's book is about maturing in prayer.

I'm increasingly aware of the narrow understanding of prayer I grew up with. As the Holy Spirit continues to expand my understanding of God's kingdom and His purposes, I am seeing with greater clarity why the great men and women of God, both in Bible times and since then, understood the massive role of prayer in God's kingdom.

In this statement above, Murray is suggesting that we have limited the purpose of prayer to being about the maintaining of our personal life in God; I question if we modern western believers are even convinced of that. If we were fully convinced that we cannot live our personal lives in fullness for even one day without the grace of God (the empowerment of the Spirit) at work in us and if we were convinced that prayer is the means by which we access that grace, then our personal prayer lives would be much stronger than they are.

But then add to that the dimension of knowing God intimately through prayer, and then add to that the reality that Kingdom work is accomplished first and foremost through intercession, and the idea of 24/7 houses of prayer scattered across the earth becomes the most sensible thing as the end of the age approaches and God brings His people into full alignment with His thoughts and ways.

My desire in sharing this book's challenge to study and practice prayer isn't for condemnation nor to pressure people into religious activity that is fueled by the flesh. My prayer and desire is that each one would go directly to God with this issue and wrestle through it with Him, asking Him for revelation from the Word and the Spirit on this topic and then asking Him to help each of us to know how to begin to walk out a life of prayer in Him. Without living understanding on this subject, we won't be empowered to walk it out. This little book by Andrew Murray may be a good starting point for some, and that is why I'm going through it now with you. My primary prayer request to God in this time of my life is "Lord, teach me to pray."

So Spirit of God, we desperately need You to open our understanding and to convince us of the privilege and power and critical need of a vital prayer life if we are to live in the fullness of grace,persevering in faith till the end, and see Your Kingdom established here on earth in the age to come. "May (You) help us to believe what mighty influence our prayers can have, and may all fear of being unable to fulfill our calling (to prayer) vanish as we grasp the truth that Jesus is living in us and interceding for us." Thank You, Lord, that you hear this prayer, in Jesus' holy name. Amen!

Next Book

Next week I will start going through Andrew Murray's book on prayer that I quoted from last week, Teach Me to Pray, published by Bethany House Publishers. (This book is available on amazon.com and in local bookstores.)

I'll start by taking quotes from the preface and chapter one and elaborating on them for a couple of weeks, so if you don't have the book in time, it won't matter since I'll quote extensively from those chapters.

God bless you this week!

Loaves and Fishes

Recently I was having a small but real struggle within myself about something in which I felt so weak. I can't remember now exactly what the issue was, but I believe it was related to fasting and feeling like I hadn't been very strong in the fast that I was participating in.

As I was sort of "beating myself up" about this, I sensed the Lord quicken to me the story of the young boy's offering of his loaves and fish to Jesus (according to John 6). That simple ministry of the Holy Spirit to me lifted me out of my introspection into gratitude and faith. There are a couple of thoughts about that story that greatly helped me and so I would like to share them with you.

First of all, in full alignment with His Father's desire to care for the crowd by feeding them, Jesus performed the miracle of multiplying the small offering of food in order that all could eat and be satisfied.

Secondly, the young boy evidently had enough confidence in Jesus and his disciples to allow Him to have his lunch. (I'm assuming the boy didn't know ahead of time what Jesus would do with it but was willing to share it with Him.)

Applied to my little situation, I saw that my focus was misplaced; it was on the smallness and weakness of my offering (the fast) rather than on Him and His desires for the fast. I was taken up with my lack rather than with His desire and His ability to take my small and feeble offering and multiply it into blessing for many others in need.

When I shifted my focus onto His desire and His ability to bless many through my small offering and away from focus on how well I was doing the offering, faith and joy replaced discouragement and unbelief in my heart. Once again I realized that the little that I offer Him is much when given to Him in faith.

I believe this truth applies to all that we offer the Lord. In our fallenness and sinfulness, we are prone to look inward at how well we are performing for God rather than to look up and out of ourselves to Him and how desirous and powerful He is to do much with the little that we give Him in faith.

Religion demands perfectionism; God asks for abandonment. Perfectionism focuses on my offering to God and on getting it all right (self-righteousness); abandonment focuses on God and how perfectly He did it in the Lord Jesus. Perfectionism competes with God's offering; abandonment responds with an offering that is utterly dependent on God's Offering.

I've often heard the saying, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well." I agree with how G.K. Chesterton said it: "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." This isn't advocating sloppiness or carelessness but simply acknowledging that perfectionism keeps us from abandoning ourselves to God because we can't "do it well" and so we don't do it at all. In order to do anything well, you have to start by doing it not so well. In the case of our giving to God, we are utterly dependent forever on the efficacy of His perfect Offering upon which our offering depends.

I want to be increasingly like the young boy who, without worrying about how large his offering of bread and fish was, simply gave what he had to Jesus. He had his sights set on Jesus rather than on the inadequacy of his lunch.

So Lord, forgive us for the sin of perfectionism and introspection, the self-focus that pulls us into discouragement and unbelief. Thank You for Your forgiveness and for the empowering of Your Spirit to look outside of ourselves to You, the transcendent Lord and Father who is lovingly and sovereignly overseeing our growth in You. We gladly give you permission to always lift our gaze to that eternal and perfect Offering upon which our weak offerings depend utterly! Take our small but genuine offerings and make them what only You can make them for Your name's sake.