Teach Me to Pray - Final Week (#34): A Life of Prayer

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances." I Thessalonians 5:16-18

In the final chapter of Murray's book, Teach Me to Pray, he summarizes his teaching with the challenge to a life of prayer. Early in this book Murray spoke of Jesus "living to pray" (Heb. 7:25) and made the statement that because Jesus lives to pray, He can teach His followers to live to pray as well.

One of my greatest desires is to see a shift take place among God's people from a mindset of "praying to live" to a mindset of "living to pray." In other words, we orientate our life with the goal of effective prayer rather than orientating our life with prayer simply as a means to a better life. I'm asking the Lord to do this in me first of all and to do this for His Church at large. I'm convinced that the Holy Spirit is doing this in these days as I hear many people testify to how prayer is becoming much more important to them than before.

There is a vast difference between praying to live and living to pray. The Holy Spirit says through Peter in I Peter 4:7 that "the end of all things is near; therefore, be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers..." This is a startling word! When I was younger in my walk with God, I thought that I needed to pray in order to be disciplined; but here the Lord says that I need to be disciplined in order to pray. This makes prayer the number one objective in one's life.

Because real prayer is perhaps the hardest thing to do, it requires that I order my practical life so that I can be alert and effective in prayer. This gets down to hard decisions about how I spend my days and what I give my time and energy to. It boils down to putting prayer into my schedule as priority, making everything else fall into place around it rather than tacking prayer onto my day as something I hope to fit into my schedule.

It's like giving money to the Lord. If I wait to see if I have enough left over to give to God after I've taken care of everything else, it's more likely that I won't have any left for Him. But if I make Him the priority in my finances (which means giving to Him first before the other needs are cared for), then I discover that I have enough for those needs.

Prayer is a form of giving of my time to God. If I make Him priority in my time (which means giving to Him of my time before I give my time to other needs), then I discover that there is time enough for other needs in my life.

Murray's challenge in this chapter is to become people of prayer who serve rather than people of service who pray. As this mindset begins to take hold in us and the ordering of our day falls into line with this, we will discover that we are praying all the time everywhere (as we are admonished to do in I Thess. 5:17). We become praying people by prioritizing making time for conscious prayer.

I've quoted before from a saint in the distant past who said, "You will never pray all the time everywhere until you have prayed some of the time somewhere." In other words, without our calendar being affected by prayer, we cannot hope to become one who prays continually. God longs to meet with us regularly when we are giving Him the best time of our day and our attention. As we do this in an ongoing way, over time we will be delighted with the discovery that we are in communion with Him night and day.

Every person and circumstance has its peculiarities, so I suggest that you seek the Lord about how this should look for you. He is gracious and so wants a unique prayer life with us that He will help and patiently lead each of us. All we need is to have a strong enough desire and grace to obey His leading.

In closing I'll quote Murray: "Where the child of God truly lives and walks in the Spirit, where he is not content to remain carnal, but seeks to be spiritual, in everything a fit organ for the divine Spirit to reveal the life of Christ and Christ himself, there the never-ceasing intercession life of the blessed Son is revealed and then repeats itself in our experience.

"...our true aim must not be to work more, or to pray enough to keep the work on track, but to pray more and then work enough for the power and blessing obtained in prayer to find its way through us to others."

Lord, thank You for Andrew Murray and the gift of this book to us today. We cry out to you again and again that You would put within us the prayer that Your early disciples prayed: "Teach us to pray, Lord." Would you pour out Your Spirit upon us and strengthen desire within us to be a people of prayer who move according to what we have heard and seen in communion and union with You. Raise up a people at the end of the age who are characterized by effective, believing prayer that brings glory to You in the eyes of the nations of the earth and in the eyes of our own families. For Your name's sake, Jesus, we ask you for this and thank You for hearing and answering...Amen and amen!