Tag: Andrew Murray

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

 

This then, is how you should pray: (Mt 6:9)

Because of the new fashion in which He wants His disciples to pray, the Lord offers a model for our emulation. Jesus offers the prayer as a framework through which our own hearts are to poured and our priorities aligned. It was not meant to be simply copied, though that was not prohibited. It is our model, used to teach us how our own prayers are to be formed and it contains ideas new to the first disciples that were stunning in how they change our approach to the throne.

“Our Father in heaven,”…We may take this entreaty for granted having learned this from an early age but, to fully grasp the depth of this adoration we must be mindful that the disciples had never before considered God as their Father. This revelation links us inextricably with the Lord in the household of God—he is our father and the Father of the Son. All that follows in prayer, our trust for provision, our pleas for protection, our expression of confidence, everything is now in the context of the personal. God is not an abstract concept that sits distant from us and deigns to address our words. He is our loving and merciful Father in whom we seek to live our life.

Murray closes with this,

Children of God! It is thus Jesus would have us pray to the Father in heaven. O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted Thine, will have the power in faith to speak out the Our too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bring us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End.

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

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. (Mt 6:6)

Why does the Lord send us to a secret place to pray? If we read the verse above in its context we find that Jesus wants our prayers to be pure, to be lifted to God’s ears alone rather than simply spouted for show. He wants us to realize the intimacy of the act of prayer. Praying is our time of intimate communion with our Heavenly Father not to be shared with or divided by the outside influences that swirl around us at all times. By entering our prayer closet and closing the door behind us, we are shutting out the world both figuratively and literally. We are alone with God and our beating heart.

Jesus also telegraphs to us His understanding of our fallen nature. He knows that we will either pray for the admiration of those around us in our worst state or we will be constrained by the fear of the crowd’s judgment in our least. The privacy of our closet removes the inhibition that clouds true prayer and the joy of nestling in the Father’s presence, allowing its great comfort and security to wash over us and releasing the prayer of our hearts more than that of our heads.

We are not naturally inclined to the spiritual discipline of prayer. We are able to develop a habit of speaking prayer forms as we hear them from others but the deep communion of a conversation with God. It is something that we must be taught to do properly just as the first disciples were when they said to the Lord “teach us to pray.” South African pastor Andrew Murray left us with a classic primer with which to guide our training in the discipline. With Christ in the School of Prayer was first published in 1885 and has served the Church since as a basic training manual in how to pray and it will do the same for us as we develop our strength in the discipline.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1

As we have seen we delve into the Scriptures, Jesus was The master of prayer. His communion with the Father, unimpeded by sin as our is, was full and deep and perfect. Where prayer before His ministry was to the majestic God of Israel, now the disciples would have been hearing Jesus address God much more personally, as the Father. They also knew the connection between the power of His ministry and His secret prayer life and they desired this same relationship for their own lives. We, like the disciples, begin our own discipline by petitioning Christ to be our teacher as well.

And so we begin, “Lord, teach us to pray…”