Lord, Teach Me to Pray - Week #4

In last week's posting, I quoted the prayer of Andrew Murray's at the end of chapter one, and there are three parts of that prayer that I'd like to focus on this week. The following is the entire prayer once again with three portions of it highlighted:

"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."

• "Blessed Lord, You ever live to pray, and You can teach me to live to pray..." It's critical that the truth of Jesus' eternal posture as the Great Intercessor become living understanding to us if we are to increasingly prioritize prayer in our lives. Throughout eternity He will do the Father's will through intercession, asking and agreeing with Him (the Father) for His will to be accomplished. This is an amazing thing, the condescension of Jesus to live eternally submitted to His Father, and this dependence is beautifully expressed through His life of intercession. Through the growing understanding that the One with Whom we are united by His Spirit is an Intercessor and through simple submission and obedience to Him, we will be led into a life of prayer. God is mightily at work in these days to bring His Church into her identity as a "house of prayer", which means that His people will move from a posture of "praying to live" to one of "living to pray." The implication of this is that our lives will become structured around prayer, rather than structuring prayer around all the affairs of life. He will accomplish this because He promised and prophesied that His house would be called a "house of prayer."
  

• "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." Teachableness is another necessary ingredient for our growth in prayer. Murray prays for three things here: "a deep sense of my ignorance", "(a deep sense of) the wonderful privilege and power of prayer", and "(a deep sense of) the need of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer" in order to be empowered to lay aside all that I think I know about prayer. This is very difficult, especially for those of us who have walked with the Lord a long time and who have genuinely learned from Him. But I'm discovering that if I want to take the next step in understanding prayer, I have to move forward (which implies walking away from where I've been). This doesn't mean that what I've known and experienced is false or wrong but simply that it's not the fullness and that there is much more ahead to learn and experience of God in prayer. I also need to be deeply convinced that prayer is a wonderful privilege (not a chore, though it is work) and is powerful in God. And finally I need a deep humility regarding my absolute need of the Holy Spirit, in order to pray and to grow in prayer.

• "Fill me, Lord, with confidence that with You as my Teacher, I will learn to pray." Murray prays for faith, the confidence that we will learn to pray; and this faith and confidence is ours by virtue of the fact that the One teaching us is the Lord Jesus Himself, and all I have to do is to ask and then obey what He speaks to me about.
  

How do we get to the place of structuring our lives around prayer and the place of teachableness and of confidence? We have so far to go in this that the temptation is to give up before we even start or to do the religious thing. I believe the first thing to do is to simply ask Jesus, "Lord, teach me to pray..." And then keep alert to where He begins to lead you. I encourage you also to ask Him to give you someone else with whom you can pray so that you are developing both your personal prayer life and your corporate prayer life in Him.

Lord Jesus, teach us to pray. You are zealous that we become those who "live to pray", and it's Your zeal that gives us confidence that we will learn to pray and that your Church will become a "house of prayer" as we approach the end of the age...open our eyes to see the fiery zeal in You for this so that faith grows and we increasingly step into the "more" of prayer that You have waiting for us. We love you and acknowledge humbly our absolute need of Your Spirit's power and grace for this great calling to pray. Thank You that You hear us and answer our cry. In the name of the Lord Jesus, the Great Eternal Intercessor. Amen.